Wing-and-Jug Night Forever
Across three separate publications, Josh Sherman wove an entire story together involving the filming of hotel porn, hangovers, Gordon Ramsay, and memory. The stories linked back to the other entries, across platforms. WING-AND-JUG NIGHT FOREVER was a culmination but also a refined, sad reflection of memory – both digital and personal.
Holoceners
by Kyle Kirshbom
An absolute banger of a poem in form, theme(s), language, and primordial gut punch.
Expert-level play with tenses; a penetrating gaze at the details poking out just beyond the periphery,
and a taut, crisp work that demands to be read over and over.
Blood on Our Hands
The author behind one of the year’s most anticipated (and photographed, because its girth is impressive) novels of the year FUCKED UP (Expat Press) dropped this hybrid work right after the U.S. elections and its political themes were spot-the-fuck-on. What begins as a poem turns into prose or, more accurately perhaps, a desperate plea. The ending, specifically the last sentence, is such a warm, pleasant surprise after getting your shit kicked in.
Nothing
A piece that thrives on language, sumptuous ringing-in-your-ears language. In this piece the prose builds up to a poem. The party scenes, the observational details, and the way in which Jane Judith switches up the style as soon as a reader becomes comfortable: each time you read it you come away with a new observation. But, above all, there is a humor in this piece, unexpectedly so I believe, that keeps me coming back to it.
Hardship
It’s difficult not to fall in love with Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich the writer, Eris the person or persona, and it’s not easy to read her work objectively, which might be part of the allure. You imagine her performing her work, as you take in every utterance, every little language choice which keeps swaying and surprising long after you’ve finished the piece. At the time I’m writing this it’s unclear whether her debut novel from Expat Press will be coming out at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021 but, regardless, it will shape that year and several others besides, once it arrives. This piece is heartbreaking, beautiful, and keeps a distance – has a mystery, remains essentially unknowable. How that differs from the author herself, I have no idea.
A Perfect Surface
by Jon Berger
“It was the night after Christmas and we split some acid.” The dangerous beginning to the perfect short piece of adventure & madness from the author so nice, I almost listed him twice. It was extremely difficult to pick between this and Jon Berger’s “The Roofer” published on Misery Tourism on December 2nd, 2020. Yes, in the span of basically a week he put out two of the best pieces of writing on the internet this year. Eventually, I settled on “A Perfect Surface” because every single sentence is so beautifully, carefully constructed that you just sit back in fucking awe.
Postmate
by Sean Thor Conroe
You’ll read nothing like it because Sean Thor Conroe is a completely unique voice. Every bit of fat is chewed away and what’s left is only what is necessary. It is walking around a city. It is a community of people trying to live together, trying to explore a world outside their own heads but always being beckoned there – to that liminal space – and having to fight that struggle. It’s spiritual, in that way. It’s funny. It’s perceptive of all of the details that make up a moment.
I Definitely Never Loved You
At one point
XRAY mentioned this was their most-read piece of the year (I believe, if I’m wrong you can scream at me). It nabbed Cory Bennet a hard-earned Pushcart nomination. I cried when I first read it. I cried because of what wasn’t in the piece. Actually, bits of it were, a hint here or there, but the author demanded to take you where he was going and wouldn’t be sidetracked with your questions. It stinks of death and fire. The piece begins “It’s that time of year when California burns,” and we’re left wondering if there is a time of year Cory Bennet doesn’t burn.
Cat World
Elle’s writing is surgical, impeccable. Her humor, her ability to dangle various threads and then bring them together in delectable crescendos, her play with form, and her characters so real they shock you: all of this and bird furries are present in “Cat World.” It’s a tour de force of what great literary work, when filtered through the lens of those of us who grew up with and inside the internet, can be.
Open Mic
by Jake Blackwood
There’s nothing more frustrating that the phrase “you had to be there.” Especially when you weren’t (and I wasn’t). There’s no piece of writing or art, and this is both and spans two different mediums, that better encapsulated the fragmented, depressed, self-aware reality of 2020 than Jake Blackwood’s “Open Mic.” But it does require some background: Misery Tourism has been having Zoom readings, cleverly branded Misery Loves Company, every Friday night at 8:00 p.m. EST since, I believe, mid-July. As Misery Tourism co-editor William Duryea likes to start off the show with each week (paraphrasing): it’s a place for outsider and transgressive writers to share their work. On September 25th, Jake Blackwood read during Open Mic. A satire of writers, philosophers, artists, the entire scene. A satire of our depression, individual and communal. A snapshot of a time and, yet, timeless in our need to be seen, to be heard, to be read.
About Mixtapes
These mixtapes are a way for the Neutral Spaces community to read and share each others writing.
The idea is to go through the site and select 5 pieces from 5 authors.
For Neutral Spaces authors, these get collected and you are given a space to write about your mini-collection.
On the page, the curator and the 5 selected authors have their website linked, together with the 5 external links for the chosen work.
If you run a journal, I would love to spotlight your site with 5 pieces, you can use the introduction to let people know what you're trying to do with your site.
If you want to put together a mixtape, e-mail me.