preorder now : the amphitheater of the dead, by guy hocquenghem; translated by max fox

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SHIPS FEBRUARY 2019

Join Max Fox & Wayne Koestenbaum at McNally Jackson for the launch of The Amphitheater of the Dead on February 18, 2019!

GUILLOTINE SERIES #15 : THE AMPHITHEATER OF THE DEAD : GUY HOCQUENGHEM; TRANSLATED BY MAX FOX

Chapbook/Novella | 112pp. | 4.25” x 6.25” | January 2019

“Anyway, there’s only one way out this time. To denude myself. Not to undertake but to write, in this state of exaltation which rejuvenates me, to recount my earliest unfulfilled promises, my anguishes, to myself who will disappear. Because this time, I know the next infection will take me." A science-fiction memoir by the French thinker Guy Hocquenghem, written in the last months of his life with the intention of prolonging it. From May to the end of June 1988, Hocquenghem worked on this last book, writing in pen from his bed until complications from AIDS developed into paralysis and “his hand no longer responded to commands from his brain,” as his comrade Roland Surzur writes in the preface. He did not get to the end. Set in 2018, the novel dramatizes the task of living with death, imagining a future of chronic deferral remarkable for depictions of AIDS at the time. With the original preface by Roland Surzur and an introduction by the translator.

GUY HOCQUENGHEM was born in 1946 and arrived at the Sorbonne in time to occupy it in 1968, militating over the years with a series of communist and other left formations including the Front homosexuelle d’action revolutionnaire. His first book Le Désir homosexuel appeared in 1972, and he produced journalism, films, magazines, and novels until his death in August 1988. He is considered one of the forebears of queer theory. 

MAX FOX is a writer, translator, and a founding editor of Pinko Magazine. He lives in Philadelphia.

on sale now: the assassination of kathy acker, by matias viegener

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GUILLOTINE SERIES #13 : THE ASSASSINATION OF KATHY ACKER : MATIAS VIEGENER

Chapbook | $8 | 32 pp. | 4.25” x 6.25” |  April 2018

The day before she dies: Kathy wakes from a nap and tells me that the door is open. I tell her all the doors in the room are shut. But she is suspicious, and asks me to close the door. Which door? I ask. She looks around the room and then behind her bed. I think there’s a door behind me, she says. She dreamt that it was open and all the animals would get out.
No, I say, I think it’s closed.

Kathy Acker’s literary executor & friend Matias Viegener on her death & afterlife.

MATIAS VIEGENER is a writer, artist, and critic working solo and collaboratively in the fields of writing, visual art, and social practice.

dear friends and chosen family,

“I need anything, anything that will stop me from living in the kind of death the bourgeois eat, the death called comfort.”  –kathy acker, from in memoriam to identity

happy spring! well, almost. in some places, anyway. lennie briscoe and i are thrilled to bring you the newest installation from guillotine, Matias Viegener’s beautiful and haunting The Assassination of Kathy Acker. equal parts unsparing account of her death and transcendent meditation on her life, Assassination is a singular window into the interior world of this ferocious and magnificent patron saint of the queer, the fearless, and the furious. here's to kathy, who made so many of us possible.

keep loving, keep fighting

xoxo sarah

ON SALE NOW: MOTHERWORT BY LYRIC HUNTER

dear ones! at long last (and after long hiatus) guillotine is deeply proud to present MOTHERWORT by LYRIC HUNTER. forty-eight gorgeous pages about loss, longing, language, and revolutionary time. orders will ship in mid-february.

xoxo sarah

48PP. GUILLOTINE SERIES #11. FEBRUARY 2017.

"How do you explain black people in
America how do you explain you were raised by a white woman how
do you explain your Middle Passage in limping French how do you say
my family’s first ancestor with a name was Griffin Lewis born before
the end of the civil war and before that names weren’t recorded it was a
practice of erasure a practice of commodification it was very efficient so
I can’t tell you anything except what I am now so I say more baguette
please je suis pompette."

"Fearless poem-essay of a black girl abroad, mixed novel, radiant almanac. It left me breathless." -Sofia Samatar

LYRIC HUNTER is a writer from new york city. She received her BFA in Fine Art from the Cooper Union in 2012. Her chapbook Swallower was published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2014 and her work has also appeared in Poems by Sunday, Belleville Park Pages, and Arava Review. Motherwort (Guillotine, 2017) is her second chapbook. 

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: AFRO-DIASPORIC HERBAL

the sublimely brilliant lyric hunter is editing an herbal by/for african-diasporic folks with production support from guillotine. please circulate the call for submissions widely!!!

B R U J A  B E L L O W

W I T C H E S  B L O O M

C O N J U R E  B L O S S O M

You’re magic-makers, believers, writers, healers, community activists, health professionals, artists. You’re a black woman, you’re queer, you’re transgender, you’re genderfluid, you’re femme, you’re non-conforming. You’re differently-abled, you’re neuro-diverse, you’re thriving. 

A traditional herbal is a recipe book that teaches how to recognize, cultivate, and make medicine, from plants. The writing you create in response to the questions below will form part of a creative, contemporary African-diasporic herbal. In this case, the herbal will be a collection of writings exploring both historical and contemporary herbal and spiritual practices intended to heal the body and spirit, in an effort to decolonize mind, body, and soul, and to reclaim healthcare for many people of the African diaspora in the U.S. Contributors whose work is selected to be included in the herbal will be compensated.

If you have a plant-tending, herbal healing, plant-spiritual practice; if your self-care intersects with your writing or art, I’m collecting poems, stories, anecdotes, recipes, rituals, spells, manifestos, analyses, maps, songs, memoirs, dreams-- 

in short, creative-theoretical-hypothetical-real-magic responses framed by the questions:

Are plants central to, or do they intersect with, your self-care practice?

Where do you find your plant (do you buy it, grow it, or forage for it)? 

What does it look like, what are its properties? What drew you to it? 

What emotional/spiritual/magical/practical significance does it carry

(how do you use it)? How do you feel when you see it, use it, share it with others? 

How do you see the natural world intersecting with black health?

My name is Lyric Hunter and I am a writer from Queens, NY, and a graduate student in the MFA in Writing and Activism program at Pratt Institute. This herbal will be made available and easily accessible to black women and LGBTQ people in New York City.

Email lyric.hunter[at]gmail.com to submit or to ask questions. 

Accepting submissions until February 15.