I’m so delighted to share the news that Dominic Pettman‘s and my book of short stories (inspired by Vilém Flusser’s work on the theory of gesture) is now available! Head on over to the Punctum Press site, where you can download a free ebook or link over to buy a paper copy. I love these stories so much. We’re plotting a book launch in NYC … Continue reading Metagestures: A Book!
Long time no post! I’ve been hibernating while on leave, but there’s so much to tell and leave is over and I’ll be posting a bunch in the weeks to come. First off, here are the first drafty bits of what seems to be taking shape as a kind of weird magical lifestyle guide/cookbook, now available at The Invisible College. Also check out Carrie Jenkins’s … Continue reading Glass, and Light, and Cotton, and Celery: Bits of a new lifestyle guide/cookbook
“Big boys, the story in this little book is told for you.” Thus begins the preface to Zhang Tianyi’s The Pidgin Warrior (Balestier Press, 2017), as translated by the wonderful David Hull. Not just for boys (big or small), The Pidgin Warrior is a moving, hilarious novel set in 1930s Shanghai during wartime. Hull’s translation is a sensitive and humane rendering of characters that are by turns laughable and … Continue reading The Pidgin Warrior: An Interview
Folkses! For a while now, Professor Carrie Jenkins and I have been writing and working together, first as colleagues at UBC who found each other via Twitter during a kinda tumultuous time at the university, then as friends and co-teachers in the UBC Arts One program, then-then as co-makers of a book that we’ve been writing together. We’re both artist-scholars who are working to make space … Continue reading The Invisible College!
There’s a very cool section in the latest issue of Late Imperial China devoted to engaging the arts as late imperial (or early modern) historians. I have a little piece in the issue on fictioning with late imperial Chinese history and it’s a sneak peek of the monograph I’m finishing. The essay is sisters with the recent PMLA piece on fictioning with history, and the two contain … Continue reading Imagining History/Writing Late Imperial China
Happy holidays! I’ve just added a page for a project that I’m very, very excited about. Carrie Jenkins and I are writing a book together, reimagining Plato’s Symposium in a hybrid poetry/fiction format. You’ll find our own versions of the speeches of the text – of Phaedrus, of Aristophanes, of Diotima, etc – as inspired by Tarot cards, outer space, a love affair between Sappho and Medusa, and much … Continue reading Symposium, Reimagined
I’m so excited to share the first public fruits of the Meta-gestures project that Dominic Pettman and I are collaborating on. The project itself is a hybrid of fiction and theory that explores gesture through Vilém Flusser’s work. We just published our first pair of stories in the wonderful new Thresholds journal. Head over there to explore our gestures of photographing! We designed the piece … Continue reading Gestures of Photographing
The wonderful “Conjectures” series at The Public Domain Review has just published a piece from The Elizabeths that started the whole project. I’m very grateful to them, and you can read it by heading over here. Continue reading The Elizabeths at Public Domain Review
Dominic Pettman and I have spent the last year and a half (or so) conducting an experiment born out of a series of related questions: As a writer, what can it look like to meaningfully engage theory? As we respond to a work of cultural theory, what might fiction writing help us understand, see, and make that straight-up academic theory writing might not offer? Thus was … Continue reading Metagestures
Happy it’s-almost-summer, everyone! This is mostly a post to wave hello-again-nice-to-see-you-again as the website and I emerge from the fog of the academic year. I’ll be back to updating the site regularly from here on out, posting from Berlin as I finish a book manuscript and start a new project this summer. In the meantime, here’s a thing: I’ll be part of a small group … Continue reading Long time no post! Plus, What History Could Have Been 3…
Carla Nappi 