Stephanie LaCava

A punky, raw novel of millenial disaffection, trauma and 1960s cinema.

Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New York and heads to to the Pacific Northwest. She's seeking to escape both the eyes of the world and the echoing voice of that last bad man. But a chance encounter with a dubious doctor in a graveyard, and the discovery of a dozen old film reels, opens the door to a study of both the peculiarities of her body and the absurdities of her famous family.

A literary take on cinema du corps, Stephanie LaCava's new novel is an audaciously sexy and moving exploration of culture and connections, bodies and breakdowns.

An erotic and darkly comic novel about female friendship, set at the intersection between counterculture and the multimillion dollar art industry.

Over the course of a few days in the fall of 2015, the sophisticated and awkward, wry, and beautiful Mathilde upends her tidy world. She takes a short leave from her job at one of New York's leading auction houses and follows her best friend Gretchen on an impromptu trip to Paris. While there, she confronts her late mother's hidden life, attempts to rein in Gretchen's encounters with an aloof and withholding sometime-boyfriend, and faces the traumatic loss of both her parents when she was a teenager.

Worms and Luncheon have come together to bring the tastiest of fertilisers, to accompany your lunch for one. Think of this publication as a wine pairing for bookworms. Each story has been tailored to your taste, with a serving suggestion accompanying each piece. Not to be read in the company of others, and only to be consumed with food.

Featuring contributions from Eileen Myles, Cecilia Pavón, Clem MacLeod, Kate Morgan, Pierce Eldridge, Juliet Jacques, Lynne Tillman, Estelle Hoy, Jodie Hill, Leone Ross, Slutty Cheff, Izdihar Afyouni, Gabriela Aquije and Stephanie LaCava. With photographs by Chieska Fortune Smith.

The 88 page thread bound publication consists of poetry, short stories, personal essays, illustrations and photographs of the cosiest spots to dine alone in.

Concept initiated by Clem MacLeod and France Armstrong Jones

Writing Commissioned by Clem MacLeod 

Editors Clem MacLeod, Caitlin McLoughlin, Pierce Eldridge, Arcadia Molinas and Violet Conroy 

Cover image by Annie Collinge  

Art direction and design by Caitlin McLoughlin and Mariana Sameiro 

Illustrations by Clemmie Bache

Poems presents four unpublished poems by American writer and actress Zoë Lund (1962–1999), written in the 1980s. An incandescent voice emerges, revealing the might, sincerity, and precision of her expression, as well as her vulnerability and defiance in the face of death. This is the first publication dedicated to her work.

Translated into French by Stephanie LaCava and Manon Lutanie, and presented in a bilingual volume (English, French), the poems are introduced by Stephanie LaCava, who retraces their genesis and examines the personality of their author:

"She is unsure of her identity, but hints at certain proclivities: action as the only true form of activism (sustained readiness to strike); a taste for contradictory characters (strength exists where there is also cowardice); romance. [...] Uninterested in mute beauty, Lund wanted to write and produce her own projects. In a news clipping from 1983, titled 'Young Political Filmmaker Shooting at Mount Holyoke,' there is a striking picture of Lund 'working on a film about the radicalization of a young woman,' per the caption. The article talks of her 'uncompromising idealism' and feelings about the naïveté of both American liberals and leftists.

Three years later, in 1986, 'Touchstone Levity' was written, and [...], the same year, "Opium Wars." The latter speaks to Lund's interest in drugs (she had a taste for heroin and would die of heart failure at thirty-seven)."

Printed offset in Italy on a matte, natural paper, stapled, the book also features black-and-white pictures of Lund taken in Paris by the filmmaker, critic, and activist Édouard de Laurot, then the author's partner, in the early 1980s. It's striking to see her in Paris on these images, smoking and posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, disheveled in a nightclub, caught on camera at a shooting range, at such a young age—when we know she would die in Paris fifteen years later. It seemed right to choose these images to accompany the poems, which were written in the same decade, and in the context of this French-American publication.

Isabelle Graw reflects on the purposes and struggles of friendship in competitive social milieus.

By focusing on her own social milieu—the art world—Graw demonstrates how friendships are neither totally disinterested nor reduceable to their use. Written in the intimate form of a fictional diary, this book laments useful friendships while praising true friendship in all its forms. For Graw, friendship is an existential necessity—if only because it points to how we relate to and depend on others. Friendship, she finds, is as important as the air we breathe—with it, we are able to fully live.

"On the Benefits of Friendship strangely calls to mind the fictional schoolboy-diary format Robert Walser staged to deliver his first novel. Aware of its own performance while successfully assuming its desired voice, Graw's diaristic story is a clever vehicle for social critique of utility friendships." 
— Stephanie LaCava, author of I Fear My Pain Interests You

"Isabelle Graw has written the Elective Affinities for the twenty-first century, as a feminist novel and a dysfunctional family portrait set in the contemporary art world."
— Violaine Huisman, author of The Book of Mother

Isabelle Graw is Professor for Art Theory and Art History at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main, where she co-founded the Institute of Art Criticism. She is an art critic and co-founder ofTexte zur Kunst in Berlin.