From the magazine: ISSUE 89, December 2013/January 2014
In FADER's annual Now Issue, we get up close and personal with the artists setting the tone for the next year. We looked at record labels, models, producers, video directors and many more. Here are three authors to watch in 2014.
Age: 26
Location: “Touring the U.S.”
Notable works: His most recent self-published book, IF U DONT LOVE THE MOON YOUR AN ASS HOLE: POEMS AND SELFIES, is full of odd free verse like, “im not totaly sure how to ‘double dog dare’ but im hangin out with 2 dogs right now im thinkin of goin for it.” Equally compelling are high-energy, motivational YouTube videos like “make something beautiful before you are dead,” channeling Walt Whitman and Lil B. This year, he’ll open Boost House, an activism/art collective and publisher based in Maine.
Writing style: “I make poetry in the forms of the internet. My poems are short, video or image-based and filled with poor grammar. My style is playful and energetic.”
Feeling he hopes his work evokes: “I want my audience to feel appreciative of their life, out of breath from laughter and empowered to try hard at improving the world.”
Age: 26
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Notable works: Penney’s debut album and debut novel, both entitled Window, came out in 2013. The book is a vignetted, out-of-order memoir of Penney’s punk teen years and prolific nightlife—in and out of drag—in San Francisco and New York throughout his 20s, candidly recalling a whole lot of hookups (“Joshua and I had what was kind of my second three-way with a homeless dude…”). Interspersed between the short chapters are Penney’s photographic snapshots of friends.
Writing style: “I kind of just call it like I see it, though my point of view is a lot more theatrical than most people’s. I don’t like to sensationalize the crazy parts, I just like the whole story to be sensational.”
Feeling he hopes his work evokes: “Life is so strange and funny and beautiful and fucked up. I want to cover the whole scope of that with everything I do.”
Age: 31
Location: Kansas City, MO
Notable works: Online, there’s her devastatingly frank poem-gone-viral “The Rape Joke,” and the umpteen absurd sexts posted to her Twitter (example: “‘I’m so wet,’ you murmur. Marmaduke raises his glistening face. ‘That’s because I’m famous for drool,’ he laughs”). In June, Penguin will release Lockwood’s second book of poetry, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals.
Writing style: “Vladimir Nabokov ate only hot dogs his whole life, and now he is in a coma. But someone puts a pen in his hand, and he uses it.”
Feeling she hopes her work evokes: “Feeling of a poodle getting a haircut for the first time, and realizing he can be sculpted into whatever he wants.”