In this issue, artists, writers, and sex workers contemplate pornography’s visual and literary perimeters.
Sublevel magazine announces the launch of its fourth issue: EDGE. This new issue of the online literary publication explores what constitutes the pornographic today. Taking into consideration the inherent difficulty of defining its perimeters, Sublevel invited artists, writers, and sex workers to contemplate pornography’s various appearances and expressions within visual and literary cultures. Sublevel is based in the MFA Creative Writing Program in the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Click here for Sublevel #4: EDGE.
The issue includes a roundtable on the politics of labor and pleasure featuring Johanna Fateman, Lorelei Lee, and Tiana Reid; a conversation on the role of the pornographic in writing by Brontez Purnell and Sandra Simonds; a study on the pornographic gaze within advertising by Alec Recinos; new poetry by Precious Okoyomon and Ariana Reines; a trip to the mall by Melissa Broder; submissions by Nicholas Barone, Charles Leggett, and Nora Treatbaby and visual contributions by Missy Banger, Lizzi Bougatsos, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Eileen Myles, Laura Parnes, Clunie Reid, and Claude Wampler.
Sublevel’s EDGE Issue was launched online on March 9, 2020. A print counterpart will be launched in May with a forthcoming event in September.
About the magazine: Sublevel is an online literary magazine devoted to the nexus of literature, poetics, art, criticism, philosophy, culture, and politics. The magazine inherits and reflects the dynamism of contemporary Los Angeles as a hub of literature, art, and activism, while also stretching beyond its locality. Based in the CalArts MFA Creative Writing Program, an innovative and interdisciplinary environment dedicated to the experimental impulse in writing and thinking, Sublevel is a literary publication immersed in the world of art without being in service to it. The magazine makes no hard distinctions between creative and critical enterprise, but rather celebrates writing of any kind the editorial team finds stimulating, timely, or otherwise compelling. Sublevel publishes original essays, interviews, roundtables, and other features online. The online edition is published once a year in mid-March and complemented by our “B-sides”—a print counterpart launched in May.
Sublevel’s 2019-2020 Editorial Team: Misael Oquendo, Jayne Pugh, Rose Sheela, Allison Smith, Sarah Stockton, Daniel Spielberger, and Sofía Benitez Villanueva, and is led by Lauren Mackler and Sabrina Tarasoff.
Sublevel was co-founded by Janice Lee and Maggie Nelson in 2017.
Board of Advisors: Tisa Bryant, Gabrielle Civil, Andrew Culp, Arne De Boever, Brian Evenson, Chandra Khan, Norman Klein, Michael Leong, Anthony McCann, Janet Sarbanes, Matias Viegener, and Jon Wagner.
\Inquiries about Sublevel can be addressed to sublevelmag@gmail.com.
Find us online on Twitter & Facebook (@sublevelmag).