Lauren Elkin

A dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies and art - and how we think about them.

For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it?

Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims.

Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag, Hélène Cixous and Maggie Nelson, Lauren Elkin demonstrates her power as a cultural critic, weaving daring links between disparate artists and writers - from Julia Margaret Cameron's photography to Kara Walker's silhouettes, Vanessa Bell's portraits to Eva Hesse's rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann's body art to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's trilingual masterpiece DICTEE - and shows that their work offers a potent celebration of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political.

'Destined to become a new classic' - Chris Kraus

Translated from the French by Naima Rashid, Natasha Lehrer, Lauren Elkin, Ruth Diver, Jessica Spivey, Jennifer Higgins, Clem Clement and Sophie Lewis.

As she tries to collect them for an essay she is planning to write, other women’s words begin interfering in Clara Schulmann’s life — heard on the radio, in podcasts, songs, and films; words of novelists, feminist intellectuals, friends or strangers overheard in the street. They invade her psyche, reshaping the essay that she once had in mind into a picaresque adventure which investigates the fault lines around women’s voices: and in particular those moments of overflow and excess where wayward words take seed.

Chicanes heralds a new French feminism through a meticulously orchestrated chorus of the wildest female voices, from figures in the history of feminist writing to the stranger on the street, blurring the boundaries between body and art; personal and political. A poly-translation, by eight female translators, from established to emerging, Chicanes brings the individual voice of each translator into subtle relief.

Worms #4 looks at psychogeography and the Situationists from a non-male perspective. Taking flâneuserie and the creative benefits of a good walk as its starting point, the issue features conversations with Eileen Myles, Alison Bechdel, Lauren Elkin, Tilly Lawless, Mckenzie Wark, Therese Estacion and Carmen Winant. 2021 was a fraught year for walking; the pandemic restricted our right to movement, while the murders of women walking in London led us to ask the question: how can the act of walking the streets spark political conversation?

Also included with this issue is an affirmation booklet in collaboration with @somuchluvindisclub

Worms is a biannual literary style magazine that celebrates female and non-binary writer culture.

‘If you’re reading this, you are a worm. We’re all worms, and in the end, we’re going to be eaten by them. As a (book)worm, you will fertilize your mind with glorious words…’

Founded in 2019 by Clem Macleod during her degree at Central Saint Martins, Worms began with a mad, spiralling obsession with the late Kathy Acker.

Detour/Détours imagines debt as a language game: as a broken pun; a break in a journey; a play on value and the meaning of money as it changes hands. Or in terms of Guy Debord’s détournement — as a debt reimagined through the integration of old works into something new.

The word debtor owes etymologically to the old French deteur. But — moving into English — its first appearance dates back to the early 13th century and — sounded out as dettur, dettour or detour — debt can be read as an elaboration on the mottled intimations of a detour with a little poetic license. A detour is a deviation, a digression; a play on our various senses of direction. Exploring the will, want or need to take the long way around — and seeking to bastardize and scrutinize our relationship with (and conceptualization of) a statement of debt — here we have a set of searching works that critique all our methods of repayment. Participating authors were given free rein to produce a piece of writing in response to these ideas, and the works included herein — five first English-language translations and five original texts — wind their way around the weight of the word ‘debt’ in ten attempts to reroute its meaning.

Questions of Worth by Noémi Lefebvre, translated by Natascha Lasorak and Sophie Lewis
Silent B by Lauren Elkin

A Problem of the Greek Type by Mathieu Larnaudie, translated by Adrian Nathan West
Emotional Debt/Speed of Recovery Matrix by Selma Dabbagh

Debt Night by Preti Taneja

The Pastoral Calculation by Sandra Lucbert, translated by Jessica Spivey

The Debt Collector by Jen Calleja

Unknown Soldier by Nicolas Bouyssi, translated by Amanda DeMarco

Good Relations by Joanna Walsh

Out of Debt by Thomas Clerc, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Edited by Emmanuel Bouju, Dominic Jaeckle & Cécile Menon
Limited Edition of 300 copies
180 x 120, paperback, 78 pages