Janice Lee

A complex and entangled text that explores inherited trauma, the presence of ghosts, interspecies communication, the dream world, grief, and human/animal separation.
Weaving wisdom from her shamanic practice and the interstices of language, and in the difficult moments anticipating the deaths of her beloved dog companions, Separation Anxiety marks the first collection of poetry from acclaimed prose writer Janice Lee, and is a meditation on inhabitation and existence beyond the human.

Separation Anxiety

[BLACK AND WHITE EDITION] "Janice Lee is a genius." - Eileen Myles, author of Inferno (a poet's novel) ART: Original Holga photographs by Rochelle Ritchie Spencer SOUND: original music by Resident Anti-Hero "Daughter is quantum. There is a girl, there is an octopus, there is language -- in minimal bursts of physical intensities, their magnitude measured in intimate discretes. Janice Lee's prose is energy transfer of the elementary particles of the matter of language. There is a girl, there is an octopus, there is language, understood at the infinitesimal level. No other book ever written has entered my body and being so physically pure. There is not distance between the state of narrative and the matter of being. I turn the page of her body." - Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water and Reel to Reel "Daughter, the new volume by Janice Lee, seems to rise as intuitive quantum ascent. It is praxis of the marred, of the seemingly uneven. Janice Lee understands that writing cannot exist as narrative outcome. In Daughter there is reckoning with the cosmos as phantom, as something that does and does not exist. Energies appear by means of paradox and evaporation." - poet Will Alexander, author of The Sri Lankan Loxodrome "In Daughter, Janice Lee floods the body of a book with the body of a body, all its hybrid, constantly damaging and mending cells. From field to field among the pages we are subject to a brain-damaged, collide-o-scopic file of some internet-age Acker'd Frankenstein having lived to see god die; and yet still must go on walking in the deity's corpse... The result is a meticulous and terrifying resurrection, a glitchy screamtext passed in dire silence to the reader the way blood passes from mother into child. - Blake Butler, author of There is No Year "Lee's surgical cadences and sharp fragments work here as writing will work-to force attention to detail. Which is the unnatural order of things. - Vanessa Place, author of La Medusa and Dies: A Sentence

Daughter

In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn't the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. The writer, traumatized by the violent death of her mother when she was a child, lives alone with her dog and struggles to finish her book. The photographer, stunted by the death of his grandmother and caretaker, struggles to take a single picture and enters into a complicated relationship with the writer. The old man, facing his past in small doses, spends his time watching television and reorganizing the objects in his apartment to stay distracted from the deterioration around him. A depiction of the cycles of abuse and trauma in a prolonged end-time, Imagine a Death examines the ways in which our pasts envelop us, the ways in which we justify horrible things in the name of survival, all of the horrible and beautiful things we are capable of when we are hurt and broken, and the animal (and plant) companions that ground us.

A Novel

Imagine a Death

No technique of cinema is as royal and as risky as the Long Take-audacious in its promise of unified time and space, terrifying in what that might imply. Inspired by the films of Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr, famous for his long take, and the novels and screenplays of Tarr's great collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Janice Lee's Damnation is both an ekphrasis and confession, an obsessive response, a poetic meditation and mirror on time; time that ruthlessly pulls forward with our endurance; time unleashed from chronology and prediction; time which resides in a dank, drunk, sordid hiss of relentless static.As declared in Tarr's film Damnation, "All stories are about disintegration.”

Damnation

KEROTAKIS is Janice Lee's postmodern exploration of consciousness, form and narrative, as it follows the journey of G.I.L.L. A contemporary reimagining of Frankenstein that takes us forwards, backwards and sideways through time and space, this is a cutting-edge novel for the multimedia age. You can find more of her work in Women Writing the Weird.

K?rotakis

Memory assists perception, grounding our understanding of those around us and those who have left their traces through time - but how reliable is memory really? Memory is malleable, shaped and shifted through consolidation and reconsolidation. Consolidation is the neurological process that stores memories after an event's occurrence; reconsolidation refers to a process whereby consolidated memories later become unstable, causing false or loose recall. Reconsolidation: Or, it's the ghosts who will answer you is a lyrical montage born out of the eternal loss of a loved one. Powerfully crafted during grief's inertia, Janice Lee elegantly weaves the present with recollections of a tenuous past, arresting memory's flexible and vulnerable position in the lifelong process of mourning. A eulogy for a loved one - pure and honest - Reconsolidation is a poetic search for a lost connection.

Or, It's the Ghosts Who Will Answer You

Reconsolidation

In every manner of framing, there is a house. There is a door one must enter through, a door one must shut behind herself in order to leave. In every manner of space, there is an intimate and crucial rivalry between open and close, between time and memory, between myself and yourself. The further we walk together, the further we walk in parallel, that distance between us that wavers, minuscule on some days, and incredibly vast on others, but always and certainly there, that distance persists. The entire sky between us. The entire sky between us.

The Sky Isn't Blue

Lynette Chambers

In one earth shattering moment, Sheldon Henry Stottz's near perfect life is changed forever. The influenza epidemic of 1918 had already taken many lives, but now it had resulted in the untimely death of his wife, Lila and their newborn, Rose. In what seemed like a single breath, the people Sheldon Henry loved the most where gone, and his rock-solid faith shaken to the core. Why was God letting this happen? What had he done to deserve such agony, such utter pain? "I've always been faithful." he thought, "I have always believed."Just when he thought things could not get worse, they did. At the graveside service of his beloved family, Sheldon Henry is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a German spy. "This can't be happening." he thought, "Not here. Not now."Still in shock over the deaths of his beloved family, he is ripped away and immediately transported to a military prison for questioning."Why God?" "What have I done to deserve this?" "Is this a test?" "Is there something you are trying to teach me?" "Have I done something wrong?" "Tell me, Father, please tell me."In the days that follow, Sheldon Henry is tested to the limits of his personal and spiritual endurance. His confusion over what has happened, and the isolation of prison, only amplify his unbearable sense of loss. He dreams of Lila. Her voice. Her tender touch. She is always on his mind even though he knows she is gone forever.Shortly after his release from prison, Sheldon stumbles upon a young woman in tears. She's deeply broken, and while trying to offer some comfort, Sheldon suddenly realizes that God has spared him for a purpose; a purpose he would perhaps soon understand.AuthorsLynette Chambers & Janice Lee

Chasing Rainbows

Ramsey Campbell

Jeffrey Thomas

Paul Tremblay

John Langan

Daniel Mills

Michael Cisco

Cody Goodfellow

Richard Gavin

Damien Angelica Walters

Nadia Bulkin

Gemma Files

Maura McHugh

Molly Tanzer

Orrin Grey

Rhys Hughes

Robert Levy

Michael Griffin

S. P. Miskowski

Nathan Carson

David Nickel

Reginald Oliver

22 Weird tales by a pantheon of top Horror writers, inspired by the classic film "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." The origins of Noir, Expressionist, Existential, and Horror films to this day carry echos of the film, and these tales express and recombine those themes in each author's inimitable style.

The Madness of Dr. Caligari

In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn’t the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. The writer, traumatized by the violent death of her mother when she was a child, lives alone with her dog and struggles to finish her book. The photographer, stunted by the death of his grandmother and caretaker, struggles to take a single picture and enters into a complicated relationship with the writer. The old man, facing his past in small doses, spends his time watching television and reorganizing the objects in his apartment to stay distracted from the deterioration around him. A depiction of the cycles of abuse and trauma in a prolonged end-time, Imagine a Death examines the ways in which our pasts envelop us, the ways in which we justify horrible things in the name of survival, all of the horrible and beautiful things we are capable of when we are hurt and broken, and the animal (and plant) companions that ground us.

Janice Lee

Books

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