I’ve got a couple of announcements this month—but mostly, I want to talk about Samia’s 2025 album Bloodless.
Anathema Magazine is back!
After a long hiatus, Anathema Magazine is running a Kickstarter in order to fund their relaunch. Anathema publishes speculative fiction by queer people of color. This free online magazine has a special place in my heart: they published my first short story, so many years ago.
The Kickstarter campaign ends May 31st. Check it out!
Queer Author Salon at MoCA Arlington
On June 11th at 6:30pm, I’ll be reading with several other queer authors from the DMV at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. Tickets are free, but do make sure to grab a ticket—the event is likely to hit capacity!
You can find more info (and tickets) here.
May I recommend …
reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, an epistolary novel about the mystery of an impossible structure and its inhabitants. This is not a groundbreaking recommendation by any means, but I recently reread this novel and really enjoyed it.
listening to Bloodless by Samia. This album came out a year ago tomorrow, and it has become incredibly dear to me in that time. It’s about absence—literally, as in the absence of blood in bovine excision, and figuratively, as in the risk of becoming a vacancy in your own life by making yourself unknowable. It’s about the draw to exist as an idea or an outline, rather than as a human, because what’s missing creates the myth.
I recommend playing the whole album. If you’re just looking to sample a few songs, “Proof,” “Hole In A Frame,” and “Bovine Excision” get around the core concept. The chorus of “Proof” is just “you don’t know me, bitch,” but the verses are about not letting people know you. (Wanting someone to read your mind! While avoiding the vulnerability inherent in sharing your needs and desires! Agh!) The central image of “Hole In A Frame” is the hole left when Sid Vicious punched the wall at Cain’s Ballroom—a hole that has since been signed, framed, and memorialized with a plaque. (The absence is the appeal!) As for “Bovine Excision,” would we even care about those dead cows if they weren’t drained bloodless?
Dominique Dickey 