Episode 71: Joe Vallese, Editor of It Came from the Closet

Emily Einolander — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 07:00:52 +0000

The personal essay collection about horror films and queerness you didn’t know you needed (but now you do).

When Joe Vallese conceived of an essay collection about horror movies and queerness five years ago, he figured there must already be one out there. Turns out, there wasn’t! So, Joe set about coralling a chorus of queer voices to write about their personal experiences through the lens of horror movies.

Joe tells us about the process of putting together the analogy It Came from the Closet from conception, to getting the proposal accepted by The Feminist Press, to reading and compiling the essays. Naturally, the conversation is peppered with our own shared love of horror movies (and Joe and Corinne’s shared adoration of Tori Amos).

That’s queerness, right? It’s campy, and it’s dead serious. It’s fabulous and artistic, and it’s emotional. So, if you’re looking for a collection of funny as essays about queerness and horror, you’re not going to quite find them. Though there are moments of humor in many of the essays, this is serious memoir, all in the language of horror movies.

—Joe Vallese

Guest Bio

Joe Vallese is co editor of the anthology What’s Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey. His creative and pop culture writing appears in Bomb, VICE, Backstage, PopMatters, Southeast Review, North American Review, Narrative Northeast, VIA: Voices in Italian-Americana, among others. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a notable in Best American Essays for his essay “Blood, Brothers.” He is currently clinical associate professor in the Expository Writing Program at New York University, and previously served as site director and faculty for the Bard Prison Initiative. Joe holds an MFA New York University, and MAT and BA degrees from Bard College.

It Came from the Closet Book Summary

Through the lens of horror—from Halloween to Hereditary—queer and trans writers consider the films that deepened, amplified, and illuminated their own experiences. Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes—such as the circumspect and resilient “final girl,” body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet—spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.

It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.

Relevant Links

Order It Came from the Closet on Bookshop.org
A PDF of this episode’s transcript
Joe’s website
Joe on Twitter

The post Episode 71: Joe Vallese, Editor of It Came from the Closet first appeared on Hybrid Pub Scout.

The post Episode 71: Joe Vallese, Editor of It Came from the Closet appeared first on Hybrid Pub Scout.

Episode 38: Greg Gerding — Author and Publisher at University of Hell

Emily Einolander — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 18:00:44 +0000

Welcome to the University of Hell, with your professor (publisher) Greg Gerding!

What do you do if you’ve got 30 notebooks full of your writing and no one to publish them? If you’re University of Hell Press founder Greg Gerding, you do it yourself and create a self-publishing empire. The author of seven published books of prose and poetry, Greg’s initial spark for the press came from a weekly reading series he’d hosted at a bar in Washington, D.C., aptly called Hell. After moving to San Diego, he was inspired by the city’s local music scene’s DIY ethos and began calling on his friends to design covers, among other things. Finding himself in Portland a few years later and virtually swimming in literary goings-on, Greg expanded the press and at this point, publishes a combination of solicited and unsolicited material, and spends most of his time trying to convince other folks to start their own self-publishing empires. His birthday buddies include Stephen Baldwin (boo) and Tony Hawk (yay)!

“Hopefully if you’re a writer, you’re constantly reading as well, and you’re being exposed to all these products, and you’re probably drawn to a certain kind of aesthetic. So then start deconstructing that aesthetic and figure out what you would like to see in the final product of your work, and how you can make that happen.”

Greg Gerding is a noted underground writer and publisher. He runs University of Hell Press, an indie book publishing imprint, and is the Editor-in-Chief of leading opinions and editorials website The Big Smoke America.

Greg graduated from the University of Maryland with a BA in English Language and Literature, and then hit the streets to continue his education as a scholar and scrivener of the real world. He has had seven books published: five books of prose poetry (Poetry in Hell, The Burning Album of Lame, Loser Makes Good, Piss Artist, and The Idiot Parade), a collection of short stories (Venue Voyeurisms), and his most recent book, I’ll Show You Mine, an oral history on the subject of intimacy, was published by The Sager Group in 2013.

Greg founded the University of Hell Press in 2005 as a self-publishing brand and then expanded it to publishing others beginning in 2012, launching a platform for unconventional artistry. He started The Big Smoke America in late 2015 and has published over 1,700 articles and essays since. He has collaborated on projects with musicians and visual artists, and is well known for organizing readings on both coasts. Greg was born in Kentucky, has lived and/or worked in nearly every city in America, and currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

You can find University of Hell Press on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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