How to Read Lauren Berlant: ‘On The Inconvenience of Other People’
Lauren Berlant’s oeuvre provokes ambivalence. As with their posthumous collection On The Inconvenience of Other People I consume Berlant, and Berlant consumes me.
Megan Volpert
Megan Volpert is author or editor of over a dozen books on pop culture, including a Georgia Author of the Year winner and two Lambda Literary Award finalists. Her newest work is Why Alanis Morissette Matters (University of Texas Press, 2025) and she has edited anthologies of philosophical essays on the music of Tom Petty and the television series RuPaul’s Drag Race. In addition to her integrative medicine practice, Volpert's other gigs include teaching at Kennesaw State University and Reinhardt University, and a fellowship at the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought.
Patti Smith’s ‘A Book of Days’ Captures Much More Than Her Instagram Posts
Patti Smith’s A Book of Days creates an ironic loop of parasocial relationshipping, generating a kind of intimacy through photographs of objects.
Manifesto ‘Rest Is Resistance’ Will Make You Crave a Nap
If a manifesto isn’t angry, it must rely on humor. The Nap Minister Tricia Hersey’s manifesto, Rest Is Resistance, struggles to compel one to inaction.
‘British Vogue’ Editor Edward Enninful Zigs Where Others Zag
British Vogue editor Edward Enninful tells the story of his career swerves as straightforwardly as possible in his absorbing memoir, A Visible Man.
Respect: Jessica Hopper’s ‘Women Who Rock’ Series
It’s electrifying to watch Nona Hendryx wax poetic about Chaka Khan and Khan praise Mavis Staples and so on in Jessica Hopper’s essential series, Women Who Rock.
Take a Whiff of ‘Perfume’ and Enter the World of Queer Culture
How did Calvin Klein’s gender-neutral CK One, with its scent like “a vodka tonic with lemon twist”, help inspire gender revolution?Perfume follows the fragrant path into queer culture.
Chuck Klosterman’s ‘The Nineties’ Reads Like a Complex Murder Board
Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties glosses subjects like Green Day, the Green Party, and Alan Greenspan like an insanely complex, cross-eyed inducing murder board.
Billy Porter Gets Real in Memoir ‘Unprotected’
Divine but not a diva, Billy Porter struggles and revels in the Ministry of Art. Memoir Unprotected is his book of revelation.
Why Hasn’t Daphne Gottlieb Won a Lambda Literary Award?
As always, Daphne Gottlieb’s excellent Saint 1001 will please all of her readers – hetero and queer. Does that make her work “not queer enough” for Lambda?
Just Keep Writhing Jessica Hopper
Music critic Jessica Hopper is revivified by high stakes for the second coming of The First Collection.
Scholar and Activist Tanya Pearson Gives Marianne Faithfull Her Feminine Aggression
The world badly needs more feminine aggression and Tanya Pearson is doing the work with her excellent new book, Why Marianne Faithfull Matters.
Brunch, Ladies? On Arielle Zibrak’s ‘Guilty Pleasures’
Arielle Zibrak’s ‘Guilty Pleasures’ is such a fun and fast conversation that reading it feels like having brunch with a hilarious dear friend.