/// MAY 1, 2018 
/// OUT NOW ///

The New York Times / profile
The New York Times / review
The New Yorker / review
Vogue / interview
The Washington Post / review 
LA Times / Summer Books Preview
The New York Times / editor’s choice
Philadelphia Weekly / interview 
Nylon / interview
PAPER / interview
Buzzfeed / feature
Booklist / starred review 
Refinery29 / interview
Kirkus Reviews / starred review
The Ringer / profile
Entertainment Weekly / May books
I-D / interview
Elle / Summer Books 
Vulture / 10 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Spring
Esquire / Summer Books
The Millions / interview
Parade / Summer Books
Publishers Weekly / review 
Village Voice / Debut Novels for Summer
Electric Literature / interview
The Times UK / review
The Rumpus / review
HuffPo / fish sex exposé
The Creative Independent / interview
LA Review of Books / interview
Bookforum / review
Inverse / interview
Bookreporter / review
Tor.com / review
Erotic Review / review
The Independent / Summer Reading
Bust / 11 New Books By Women To Read Now
Elle / Books We’re Excited to Read in 2018
New York Post / must reads
LunaLuna / review
Hazlitt / interview
Kirkus Reviews / interview
Bustle / review
Otherppl / podcast interview
The Mental Illness Happy Hour / podcast interview
Babe? / podcast interview
Fully Booked / podcast interview
Nylon / May books
Nylon Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018
Buzzfeed / The 33 Most Exciting New Books Of 2018
The Week / 21 Books to Read in 2018
Bitch / May Books
Newsday / new books
The Rumpus / What To Read In 2018
Mashable / Books You Need To Read This Spring
The Millions / The Great 2018 Book Preview
Tor.com / genre-bending books
Bookpage / Our Most Anticipated Fiction
Bustle / May fiction
Bookriot / May must read
Alma / 10 Books By Women We Can’t Wait to Read
Hello Giggles / Books We Can’t Wait To Read In 2018
Bustle / Most Anticipated Fiction of 2018
HuffPost / Books We Can’t Wait to Read In 2018


3 poems in the new issue of Fence, excited abt this one. it’s not online but order it–so tight. always.

did a thing at Blackbook w Myles Klee

read poems w Mira Gonzalez and w Marina Blitshteyn in Venice and taped dat shit

reviewed god and botox A++ highly recommend


NEW POEM IN GIGANTIC HALLOWEEN ISSUE

3 NEW POEMS IN PAPERBAG

NEW POEM AT BUSHWICK SWEETHEARTS

I LIVE IN VENICE LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA NOW, BTW


I am not in love with anyone, only god. God of the caves and god of the boys. God of the dumpsters and god of the ash.

And I don’t want to be taught anything anymore.

When I read ______’s essays I feel completely wrong, like everything I have done is wrong, cos this is who I am most of the time–the kind of person who feels wrong. A person who does not trust herself.

No I don’t want to be taught anything anymore.

Sometimes there is trust. When I am alone on my _______ I am aware that things would be easier if I got a better one, and that I would be safer with a ______, and maybe even safer if I had more knowledge, but this is the one I have, and this is the knowledge I have, and so the only one.

Trust that this is the only way and feel free.

I felt a freedom like this in walking down the street alone in ________, writing on my ______, oblivious to everything around me including time. I could have been anywhere though I was very much in ________. 

I was scared that when I moved to ___________ I would lose those pockets of freedom, like that freedom was contingent on place, like the need for it wasn’t inside me and it wasn’t something I would make happen anywhere.

But lo and behold I have found the pockets here too–or I am making them–the same amount of pockets, maybe even more, where I actually like myself cos I have disappeared.


Fell out of a red MG on my way to San Francisco in 1969 and got 16 stitches and a 70s bush. Landed at a blurry discotheque with Leda Leda Leda and her fat swan. Grabbed at her titties while she shook her black hair. Suddenly there were no titties because her hair was blonde. Obvi I am a soft heart in a jar of gefilte fish. Do you ever get the feeling that Jesus had six eyes? Stevie Nicks reclines under a black statue of Jesus and plots to win him back. I am rooting for her!

 


Mama Cass climbs a red rope liquorice into the arms of St Teresa who dreamt it all on a bus to Des Moines.

I am trapped under a god-size hair dryer with every woman ever wondering how to love each other.

I ate a candy necklace dipped in brill cream off the neck of an emo buddhist and he blessed me.

I talked about making out with readers in the L magazine.

I am playing spin the bottle with 3 failed memes and a feminine archetype.

The perfect storm of synapses is invite-only.

I talked to JA Tyler about abyssness, moreness and not-enoughness.

I will follow friday into a forest of twizzlers.


MEAT HEART IS AVAIL FOR PREORDER

AND

TODAY IS SEVEN YEARS
(some of you know
what that means)

AND

THE EGO IS A DESERT

AND

IT DRIES AND DRIES

BUT

SOME THINGS NEVER DRY

LIKE

_ _ _’S LOVE

AND

I AM SO GRATEFUL


I Had Some Dreams They Were Clouds in My Coffee

What up yo?

Oh, me. Not much. Just blogging when I’m supposed to be writing poetry. Like, all the feckin’ time. When I die, my literary estate is going to consist of blog posts.

Here’s are some recent greatest hits from the succubus:

Letters To a Young Poet. From a publicist.  new!

Open letter to the significant other of an author with a first book coming out from an indie press.

The groupie’s guide to the galaxy.

Dear HTMLGiant.

How (not) to run a reading series. *poached from this blog…now with more content!

We who are about to diet.

Vice DOs and DON’Ts: dead poets edition.

What not to include in your lit mag submission letter.

Big Titular.


20 Years of Schoolin & They Put You On the Day Shift

I consider it a luxury to work in an office with a door that closes. A brief look into the history of my employment may reveal why.

My first job out of college was as a canvasser for CALPIRG. I was the one with the the clipboard and the “rap” about old growth forest. You shut the door on me. Nader’s little sweatshop kept me fed for four months; if people asked what I did, I told them I was an Activist.

None of my early 20’s jobs–pizza delivery girl, Peachy Puff, waitress at “horror” theme restaurant Jekyll and Hyde (they still owe me $200 from a shift serving Mummy Burgers to 50 Down Syndrome children on Christmas)–could ever compare to my second job after college.

When I was 22, I spent a year working as a Secretary for a Tantric sexuality non-profit (yes) in Marin County, California (where else?) called Celebrations of Love. Please. See for yourself. This woman was my boss.


Falling Off the Richter Scale

On a recent trip to SF, I did a scavenger hunt to see how many of the people/places/things I could find from my poem (in MotherFalling Off the Richter Scale. Below are the poem and the results of the hunt.

(more…)


You Had One Eye In the Mirror As You Watched Yourself Gavotte

What up yo?

Oh me? Not much. Fresh off the boat from AWP, alone in an LA hotel room (Cali freaks–come to these readings) making sweet love to a box of Vitamuffins at midnight. You know.

*

New poems up at Miracle MonacleFive Dials and poems from the book at Swink.

*

I’m being a joiner and blogging for a blog. Another blog. A group blog called We Who Are About To Die.

These are my posts thus far:

What not to include in your literary submissions letter.

Vice DOs and DON’Ts: dead poets edition.

Big titular.

*

Talked about a few of my favorite things: poetry, Belle and Sebastian and Gossip Girl on TV.

*

And Tao Lin turned me and my pet guinea pigs into a hamster.


This Is My Happening and It Freaks Me Out

Okay. After much hemming and hawing I’ve decided to go to AWP. Z-Man (love of my life) in his ascot from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls won’t be there, nor will Strawberry Alarm Clock be a featured presenter, but that’s okay.

For those of you NYC stragglers who aren’t going to AWP, there will be a special AWP East party at Polestar guest-hosted by the talented Mr. Riippi:

Sunday April 11th
4 PM
CakeShop
152 Ludlow Street
NYC
Readings by Joanna Fuhrman, Michael Leong, Laura Hinton, Adam Gallari and Joel Allegretti

After AWP, it’s off to California for me.  Cali freaks–come say hi at these two events:

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
7-9 PM
The Bar
w/
Dava Krause
5851 West Sunset
LOS ANGELES

Saturday, April 17, 2010
6-9 PM
Elbo Room
w/
Dava Krause + D.W. Lichtenberg + Del Ray Cross
647 Valencia Street
SAN FRANCISCO


McEqualizer

Sometimes I feel jealous of Arda Collins.

Then I watch Micky-Mick struttin’ and remember: Arda can’t do this.


Mother F-er

Below is a select list of nouns that appear both in Mother and in L.J. Moore’s Play-Doh retro, Sgt. Pepper-clever, monster mash of poems: F-STEIN.

(more…)


I Wanna See You Come Back As the Light

I love this Devendra vid for Seahorse. It makes me want to move to Topanga Canyon, surround myself in faux bois (and real bois) and grow facial hair. That would be beatific.


Milk Fed

MILK FED

"Milk Fed is a romp…a pageant of bodily juices and exploratory fingers and moan after moan of delight."
–Los Angeles Times

"A dizzily compelling story of love, lust, addiction, faith, maternal longing, and…frozen yogurt."
–Vogue

"A revelation…Melissa Broder has produced one of the strangest and sexiest novels of the new year..."
–Entertainment Weekly

"A thrilling examination of hunger, desire, faith, family and love."
–Time

"Milk Fed bravely questions the particularly female lionization of thin and loathing of fat, landing on fresh explanations…deliciously droll…a celebration of bodily liberation."
–The New York Times

"Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is a delectable exploration of physical and emotional hunger."
–The Washington Post

"A sensuous and delightfully delirious tale… Filled with an unadulterated filthiness that would make Philip Roth blush, Broder’s latest is a devour-it-in-one-sitting wonder."
–O, the Oprah Magazine

Superdoom

SUPERDOOM

The Pisces

THE PISCES

"A modern-day mythology for women on the verge — if everything on the surface stops making sense, all you need to do is dive deeper.."
–The New York Times

"The Pisces convincingly romances the void."
–The New Yorker

"Explosive, erotic, scathingly funny…a profound take on connection and longing that digs deep."
–Entertainment Weekly

"The dirtiest, most bizarre, most original works of fiction I’ve read in recent memory…Broder has a talent for distilling graphic sexual thoughts, humor, female neuroses and the rawest kind of emotion into a sort of delightfully nihilistic, anxiety-driven amuse bouche…"
–Vogue.com

"A page turner of a novel…funny and frank."
–Washington Post

"The Pisces is an intellectual, enthralling voyage into one woman’s swirling mind as she brushes with the extraordinary."
–Refinery29

"Get ready to laugh-cry over and over again...a perverse romance that captures the addictive and destructive forces of obsessive love. The Pisces is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking."
–Vulture.com

Last Sext

LAST SEXT

So Sad Today

SO SAD TODAY

"What separates Broder from her confessional cohort...is that she doesn’t seem to be out to shock, but to survive."
–Elle

"Broder presents a dizzying array of intimate dispatches and confessions…She has a near-supernatural ability to not only lay bare her darkest secrets, but to festoon those secrets with jokes, subterfuge, deep shame, bravado, and poetic turns of phrase."
–New York Magazine

"A triumph of unsettlingly relatable prose."
–Vanity Fair

"Her writing is deeply personal, sophisticated in its wit, and at the same time, devastating. SO SAD TODAY is a portrait of modern day existence told with provocative, irreverent honesty."
–Nylon

"At once devastating and delightful, this deeply personal collection of essays…is as raw as it is funny."
–Cosmopolitan

"Broder writes about the hot-pink toxins inhaled every day by girls and women...and the seemingly impossible struggle to exhale something pure, maybe even eternal...there's a bleak beauty in the way she articulates her lowest moments."
–Bookforum

"Broder may be talking about things like sexts, Botox, and crushes, but these things are considered alongside contemplations about mortality, identity, and the difficulty of finding substance in a world where sometimes it’s so much easier to exist behind a screen."
–The Fader

"…So Sad Today is uplifting and dispiriting in seemingly equal measure. It’s a book that’s incredibly human in the way it allows for deep self-reflection alongside Broder, which speaks not only to her powerful writing but also the internet’s magical ability to foster connections."
–A.V. Club

"...delightful...Broder embarks on an earnest, sophisticated inquiry into the roots and expressions of her own sadness...deeply confessional writing brings disarming humor and self-scrutiny...Broder's central insight is clear: it is ok to be sad, and our problems can't be reduced to a single diagnosis. "
–Publishers Weekly

"Broder is probably the Internet’s most powerful merchant of feelings…"
–GQ

"Vividly rendered and outspokenly delivered essays…Sordid, compulsively readable entries that lay bare a troubled soul painstakingly on the mend."
–Kirkus Reviews

Scarecrone

S C A R E C R O N E

"Broder manages to conjure a psychic realm best described as one part twisted funhouse and two parts Catholic school, heavy on libido and with a dash of magick. This gritty, cherry soda–black book...is bizarrely sexy in its monstrousness."
–Publishers Weekly

"I don’t know what a book is if not a latch to elsewhere, and Scarecrone has pressed its skull against the hidden door. It is neither drunk nor ecstatic to be here—it is a state unto itself."
–VICE

"Lushly dark and infused with references to black magic, Broder's work often feels less like a book and more like a mystical text."
–PAPERMAG

Meat Heart

MEAT HEART

"Out to 'crucify boredom,' her poems show us how any relationship with the divine is no less at risk of engendering grotesque lust...What makes Broder such a pleasure on the page is her insistence that these dramas play out on a workaday stage infused with surreal Pop and imaginative muscle..."
–Publishers Weekly

"With a title recalling Yeats...Broder risks the divine in her second book...shrewd, funny, twisted, sad poems..."
–The Chicago Tribune

"Meat Heart...is unbelievable and overwhelming for its imaginative power alone, but if you listen past the weird you can hear all sorts of things: sadness, seriousness, life, death, and a whole lot of laughter....Broder is a tremendous talent"
–Flavorwire

"...Meat Heart embodies that strain of sustenance, that sort of psychosomatic excitement most valiant art more or less tries to pull off…Her poems don’t bore or bear down. They beam oracle energy. They pump a music of visions for the life-lusty death dance."
–BOMB

Melissa Broder's Book Cover

MOTHER

“This debut from Broder is as funny and hip as it is disturbing… a bright and unusual debut.”
–Publishers Weekly

"…obsessive, energetic and pop-culture-infused poetry…"
–Time Out New York

"Broder’s insight and honesty will make your brain light up and your hair stand on end.”
–The San Francisco Examiner

"Broder’s verse is acrobatic and whip-smart… its own creature."
–Bomb