Kill Marguerite and Other Stories - Softcover

Milks, Megan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0989473600 ISBN 13: 9780989473606

Publisher: Emergency Press, 2014

Synopsis

"Kill Marguerite and Other Stories" collects thirteen risk-taking stories obsessed with crossing boundaries, whether formal or corporeal. Narrative genres are giddily mongrelized: the Sweet Valley twins get stuck in a choose-your-own-adventure story; Mean Girls-like violence gets embedded within a classic video game. Protagonists cycle through a series of startling, sometimes violent, changes in gender, physiology, and even species, occasionally blurring into other characters or swapping identities entirely. One woman metamorphoses into a giant slug; another quite literally eats her heart out; a wasp falls in love with an orchid; and a Greek god impregnates a man s thigh with a sword. More than just a straightforward celebration of the carnivalesque, though, these fictions are deeply engaged, both critically and politically, with the ways that social power operates on, and through, queer bodies.
"

About this title

Review:

"Wittig's "Lesbian Body" goes superfreak in this celebration of excess, this inquiry into boundarylessness, this exercise in genre-fuck, this slug-and/or-be-slugged fest. In a collection whose voices range from hard-boiled to hyperbolic to hysterical, Milks seriously probes the implications of social constructionism: we've made a monster (albeit sometimes hot, albeit sometimes queer) of the sexed body, individual and politic. Somehow, happily, Milks keep it comic too. Lots of parts and effluvia, no gratuitous grossness!"
--Alexandra Chasin, author of "Brief" and "Kissed By"

"Megan Milks' debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," is a fearless romp through the post-avant wasteland of fictions both Lynchian and Homeric. Milks puts Shelley Jackson's "The Melancholy of Anatomy" through a cement mixer, grinding out tales as sure to delight as they radically defamiliarize. Here, "Sweet Valley High" gets a reboot finally worthy of the world their children's books helped to make weird. Milks is a master of the absurd grotesque, and "Kill Marguerite" is her powerful annunciation."
--Davis Schneiderman, author of "Drain," "Blank," and "[SIC] Ink."

"Genre conventions are commonly thought of as restrictive rules, but in "Kill Marguerite" Megan Milks shows that these conventions can be agents of perversion, both glaringly porous and ridiculously invasive. Over the course of the book, Milks invokes and employs the genre conventions of fan fiction on, for example, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," and then mixes in teen comedies, young adult novels, video games, choose-your-own adventure tales, epistolary novels, gothic tales, family romances, and 'trauma-rama' entries, until this melee of genres interrupt each other, parasite each other, and distort each other. The result of this romp is absurd, grotesque, parapornographic, violent, gurlesque, but mot of all hilarious in a dead-pan kind of way."
--Johannes Goransson, Action Books

"Killl

"Wittig's "Lesbian Body" goes superfreak in this celebration of excess, this inquiry into boundarylessness, this exercise in genre-fuck, this slug-and/or-be-slugged fest. In a collection whose voices range from hard-boiled to hyperbolic to hysterical, Milks seriously probes the implications of social constructionism: we've made a monster (albeit sometimes hot, albeit sometimes queer) of the sexed body, individual and politic. Somehow, happily, Milks keep it comic too. Lots of parts and effluvia, no gratuitous grossness!"
--Alexandra Chasin, author of "Brief" and "Kissed By"

"Megan Milks' debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," is a fearless romp through the post-avant wasteland of fictions both Lynchian and Homeric. Milks puts Shelley Jackson's "The Melancholy of Anatomy" through a cement mixer, grinding out tales as sure to delight as they radically defamiliarize. Here, "Sweet Valley High" gets a reboot finally worthy of the weird world it built. Milks is a master of the absurd grotesque, and "Kill Marguerite" is her powerful annunciation."
--Davis Schneiderman, author of "Drain," and the DEAD/BOOKS trilogy: "Blank," "[SIC], " and "Ink."

"Genre conventions are commonly thought of as restrictive rules, but in "Kill Marguerite" Megan Milks shows that these conventions can be agents of perversion, both glaringly porous and ridiculously invasive. Over the course of the book, Milks invokes and employs the genre conventions of fan fiction on, for example, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," and then mixes in teen comedies, young adult novels, video games, choose-your-own adventure tales, epistolary novels, gothic tales, family romances, and 'traumarama' entries, until this melee of genres interrupt each other, parasite each other, and distort each other. The result of this romp is absurd, grotesque, parapornographic, violent, gurlesque, but most of all hilarious in a deadpan kind of way."
--Johannes Goransson, Action Books, and author of "Hau

"This collection establishes Milks as a writer who can do just about anything but who will, one expects, keep doing the bidding of her macabre but humane imagination."
--Daphne Sidor, "Lambda Literary Review"

"A totally awesome experimental collection!"
--Valerie Stivers-Isakova, "Huffington Post"
"Wittig's "Lesbian Body" goes superfreak in this celebration of excess, this inquiry into boundarylessness, this exercise in genre-fuck, this slug-and/or-be-slugged fest. In a collection whose voices range from hard-boiled to hyperbolic to hysterical, Milks seriously probes the implications of social constructionism: we've made a monster (albeit sometimes hot, albeit sometimes queer) of the sexed body, individual and politic. Somehow, happily, Milks keep it comic too. Lots of parts and effluvia, no gratuitous grossness!"
--Alexandra Chasin, author of "Brief" and "Kissed By"

"Megan Milks' debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," is a fearless romp through the post-avant wasteland of fictions both Lynchian and Homeric. Milks puts Shelley Jackson's "The Melancholy of Anatomy" through a cement mixer, grinding out tales as sure to delight as they radically defamiliarize. Here, "Sweet Valley High" gets a reboot finally worthy of the weird world it built. Milks is a master of the absurd grotesque, and "Kill Marguerite" is her powerful annunciation."
--Davis Schneiderman, author of "Drain," and the DEAD/BOOKS trilogy: "Blank," "[SIC], " and "Ink."

"Genre conventions are commonly thought of as restrictive rules, but in "Kill Marguerite" Megan Milks shows that these conventions can be agents of perversion, both glaringly porous and ridiculously invasive. Over the course of the book, Milks invokes and employs the genre conventions of fan fiction on, for example, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," and then mixes in teen comedies, young adult novels, video games, choose-your-own adventure tales, epistolary novels, gothic tales, fami

"A totally awesome experimental collection!"
--Valerie Stivers-Isakova, "Huffington Post"
"Milks's debut from Emergency Press is full of such lovely, thought-provoking arrangements of form and content. These are genderqueer girl stories of the most awesome kind, taking the basic narrative of boys, youth, sex and identity, scrambling them with their influences (pop music, porn, sexual fantasy, teen magazines and books, even video games), and then destroying them in gory pornographic explosions."
--"HTML Giant"

"This collection establishes Milks as a writer who can do just about anything but who will, one expects, keep doing the bidding of her macabre but humane imagination."
--Daphne Sidor, "Lambda Literary Review"

"Milks' stories in her debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," draw influence from cultures both high and low, from Homer and Joyce to video games and teen magazine columns. They never sit quietly, but rather unsettle convention and defy expectation. In fact, the moment you think you know what's happening, the story opens into an unexpected black hole, thrusting you into a passage that devours and reconfigures expectations."
--Anne Yoder, "Newcity Lit"

"Wittig's "Lesbian Body" goes superfreak in this celebration of excess, this inquiry into boundarylessness, this exercise in genre-fuck, this slug-and/or-be-slugged fest. In a collection whose voices range from hard-boiled to hyperbolic to hysterical, Milks seriously probes the implications of social constructionism: we've made a monster (albeit sometimes hot, albeit sometimes queer) of the sexed body, individual and politic. Somehow, happily, Milks keep it comic too. Lots of parts and effluvia, no gratuitous grossness!"
--Alexandra Chasin, author of "Brief" and "Kissed By"

"Megan Milks' debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," is a fearless romp through the post-avant wasteland of fictions both Lynchian and Homeric. Milks puts Sh

FINALIST, Lambda Literary Awards for Debut Fiction

"A totally awesome experimental collection!"
Valerie Stivers-Isakova, "Huffington Post"
"Milks s debut from Emergency Press is full of such lovely, thought-provoking arrangements of form and content. These are genderqueer girl stories of the most awesome kind, taking the basic narrative of boys, youth, sex and identity, scrambling them with their influences (pop music, porn, sexual fantasy, teen magazines and books, even video games), and then destroying them in gory pornographic explosions."
"HTML Giant"

"This collection establishes Milks as a writer who can do just about anything but who will, one expects, keep doing the bidding of her macabre but humane imagination."
Daphne Sidor, "Lambda Literary Review"

"Milks stories in her debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," draw influence from cultures both high and low, from Homer and Joyce to video games and teen magazine columns. They never sit quietly, but rather unsettle convention and defy expectation. In fact, the moment you think you know what s happening, the story opens into an unexpected black hole, thrusting you into a passage that devours and reconfigures expectations."
Anne Yoder, "Newcity Lit"

Wittig s "Lesbian Body" goes superfreak in this celebration of excess, this inquiry into boundarylessness, this exercise in genre-fuck, this slug-and/or-be-slugged fest. In a collection whose voices range from hard-boiled to hyperbolic to hysterical, Milks seriously probes the implications of social constructionism: we ve made a monster (albeit sometimes hot, albeit sometimes queer) of the sexed body, individual and politic. Somehow, happily, Milks keep it comic too. Lots of parts and effluvia, no gratuitous grossness!
Alexandra Chasin, author of "Brief" and "Kissed By"

Megan Milks' debut collection, "Kill Marguerite," is a fearless romp through the post-avant wasteland of fictions both Lynchian and Homeric. Milks puts Shelley Jackson's "The Melancholy of Anatomy" through a cement mixer, grinding out tales as sure to delight as they radically defamiliarize. Here, "Sweet Valley High" gets a reboot finally worthy of the weird world it built. Milks is a master of the absurd grotesque, and "Kill Marguerite" is her powerful annunciation.
Davis Schneiderman, author of "Drain," and the DEAD/BOOKS trilogy: "Blank," "[SIC], " and "Ink."

Genre conventions are commonly thought of as restrictive rules, but in "Kill Marguerite" Megan Milks shows that these conventions can be agents of perversion, both glaringly porous and ridiculously invasive. Over the course of the book, Milks invokes and employs the genre conventions of fan fiction on, for example, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," and then mixes in teen comedies, young adult novels, video games, choose-your-own adventure tales, epistolary novels, gothic tales, family romances, and traumarama entries, until this melee of genres interrupt each other, parasite each other, and distort each other. The result of this romp is absurd, grotesque, parapornographic, violent, gurlesque, but most of all hilarious in a deadpan kind of way.
Johannes Goransson, Action Books, and author of "Haute Couture" and "Entrance to a Colonial Pageant"

""Kill Marguerite" mixes pop culture, Greek myth, queer feminism and childhood nostalgia into a gory and gorgeous mess. I got my hands dirty digging into Megan Milks' sanguine collection of short stories. This prose oozes. This prose dripped perversely into my consciousness and stuck. Only a steady and sagacious writer like Milks can make paddling through this kind of muck so absolutely pleasurable.
Amber Dawn, author of "Sub Rosa" and "How Poetry Saved My Life"

"The stories in Megan Milks' "Kill Marguerite" are pure force: they norm deviance, make violence effulgent, ungender and regender sexualities. Each story is a kitsch throwback to back in the day when reading was a fun choose your own adventure; or, these stories are not just carnal, not just animalistic, not just girly: they're amphibian, our full corporeal tenderized to satisfaction, which is to sayhot."
Lily Hoang, author of "Unfinished," "The Evolutionary Revolution," "Changing," and "Parabola"
"

About the Author:

Megan Milks lives in Chicago. Her work has been included in "30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers"; "Wreckage of Reason"; and "Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire," as well as many journals. She is the editor of the anthology "The &NOW Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing," and co-editor of the volume "Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives," published by Routledge.

About this edition

• Publisher: Emergency Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0989473600
• ISBN 13: 9780989473606
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 207