Introducing DOPAMINE.
A tortoise, a fundraiser, hot graphics + text.
Greetings. I’ve just spent the past few minutes scrubbing tortoise shit from the floor beneath my desk chair. I’m babysitting Hermes, Nicole J. Georges’ Russian Tortoise, and one of my favorite parts of this arrangement is letting her room freely through my office while I work. She seems to like to hang out under my chair a bit (she’s also partial to altars) and stayed there throughout a recent meeting with a publisher interested in putting out a novel I’ve finished. That felt pretty magical! However, I’ve since some to know that she is using that area at her porto-potty. Maybe it’s still magic? Tortoise turds are sticky and require a bit of elbow grease to detach from the floor, but they don’t gross me out since I’m feeding her every day and happen to know it’s just dandelion greens, lettuce, cucumber and the occasional hibiscus flower form the plant Nicole also brought along with Hermes. I felt a sense of dread seeing the plant. I am certain I can keep a reptile alive, less sure about a plant. The subliminal screams of the thirsty flowers haunt me.
Anyway - I’ve started a press! Perhaps you’ve noticed, like, on the internet? It is called DOPAMINE Books, and is a collaboration, first, with Beth Pickens, who I have done great things with in this life, namely she was the managing director of my old literary non-profit, RADAR (I do like all-caps, don’t I? Really like to YELL the names of my projects at you! Perhaps I fear no one will notice them if I’m not SCREAMING?) RADAR peaked during Beth’s era of management, when for six years we hosted a queer writing retreat in Mexico, toured Sister Spit, gave Justin Chin - RIP! RIP! We loved him - love him! - so! - a completion grant, all kinds of stuff that sort of amazes me to think about now. I asked Beth if she wanted to get the band back together, and she did! She whipped up a 501c(3) and boom, DOPAMINE is officially non-profit.
It’s also a collaboration with Semiotext(e). This is extra tender, because Semiotext(e) published my very first book ever, The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America. Through an act of benevolent subterfuge, Eileen Myles - whose own Not Me was my life-changing introduction to both the press and the author - passed my work to then-editor Chris Kraus, whose own work on the press is similarly life-changing. Chris agreed to publish it, even coming to my punk house in San Francisco and strewing the various ‘chapters’ across my bedroom floor as we tried to suss out an order. I remember drinking whiskey in my bedroom with Chris and my roommate Sash, and her telling us about the BDSM personal ads she answered and we were shocked - shocked - this being the 90s and us being queer and believing that basically all men were serial killers, especially the ones who seek submissive damsels via personal ads. Having now been that submissive damsel I do get why she was so amused by us, but I also think we were onto something with the all men are serial killers theory. Anyway.
Semiotext(e) is now helmed by Hedi el Kholti, who I freaking adore. He generously agreed to have a coffee with me so I could pick his brain about how one even publishes books, and during our time he actually offered for DOPAMINE to enter into a collaboration with Semiotext(e). Not an imprint - I’ve had two imprints, Sister Spit / City Lights and Amethyst Editions at The Feminist Press, and while I loved them and am eternally grateful to these presses for giving me a spot to play in and get authors I love published, in both instances I was prevented from going fully rogue and publishing everything I wanted. Which is totally understandable. With DOPAMINE, thought, I wanted total and complete freedom. And because Hedi - and Semiotext(e) - are sort of libertines, and because DOPAMINE will be responsible for paying for most all of this enterprise, we do have total and complete freedom - and we get to piggyback on Semiotext(e)’s production and distribution apparatus, as well as their impeccable reputation.
Our first book will be a massive anthology, SLUTS, edited by me. I’ve got some other massive, themed anthologies up my sleeves and, the good will of the writing community withstanding, am looking to these publications to be a sort of fundraiser for the press. Want to know who is in SLUTS? Too many writers to list here, like, forty or something. But, a taste? Nate Lippens, whose Strays is about young hustlers doing drugs and trying to get by.
I had grown up among women like her with genuinely hard lives. They had learned how to turn a good tale out of their misery and win sympathy, which was as close to compassion and understanding as they were going to get. Sometimes sympathy led to a helping hand, something as small as a meal or a ride to an appointment. Sometimes to something as glorious as free babysitting or secondhand clothes.
In Cyrus Dunham’s Sorry, tween memories refract melancholy.
He says he’s going to finish, like the end of everything is near. Now he parts his lips, closes his eyes, and exhales a small sigh. She says, “Ew, I don’t want to see it.” She doesn’t want to see the end. She doesn’t want the world to end. I do, but I don’t speak up. I want to be the one providing the ending. He says he has to or it will hurt. We tell him to go to the bathroom and do it in there. We say do it in your hand and show us. He goes in there for a minute. The bathroom has turquoise tiles, my older sister’s makeup covering the counter. He comes back in with his hand cupped. The end looks like glue. A white, shiny puddle. She jams the tip of her pointer finger into the end and then mimes throwing up. I do the same. The end is hot, sticky. “Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew.”
An excerpt from Cristy C. Road’s post-apocalyptic work-in-progress about a band on tour at the end of the world:
CT: YALL. FULANITO AND I HAD A MOMENT
Reggy: Fucking jesus its 7AM
Oracle: Cool! …..Maybe you should tell him how you feel?…since were all
bandmates?
CT: eye roll emoji
Oracle: btw Im up now— wanna roll me a J and meet me on the porch?
CT: Fuck YEA.
Reggy : Can you all please text on a seperate thread? I just drove us down a dirt
path on a mountain for 3 hours while we got chased by goats. yOUrE WELcoMeee.
GOODMoRRNING.
CT: OMG REG WHY DO YOUR TEXTS MAKE SOUNDS??????
Oracle: (On a seperate thread) Damn, left on read. 20 minuitesss?!
Okay I’m going to stop there but there’s work by Hedi, Brontez Purnell, Drew Ariola-Sands (aka Trap Girl), Lydia Conklin, Chloe Caldwell, Bradford Nordeen, and more. SLUTS drops May 7th in the US and the UK, where it will be published by PILF (Press I’d Like to Fuck) Cipher Press.
Then, on September 15th - a date thoroughly vetted by astrologer Larry Arrington, whose cosmic wisdom I always recommend - we will publish New Mistakes by Clement Goldberg. This book is FIIIIIIIIIRE. Clement - who has been a close pal ever since we randomly sat next to one another at a queer film fest and had a sort of psychic feelings that we were meant to be collaborators (I’ve acted in their short In the Spotlight, did voices for their series The Deer in Between, and together we produced Valencia: The Movie, one of the best projects I’ve ever done in my life!) - had written a television pilot that blew my mind and left me despairing at how long it would take for me to ever know what becomes of these dynamic characters and this intriguing world? TV, I have found, is often literally impossible to make. But novels, I have found, happen, and I pledged to Clement that if they wrote this story as a book I would devote my life in service of getting it published. And, reader, they did! Who knew, when we had little writing groups together at the glamorous home of Semiotext(e) author Veronica Gonzalez (Twin Time; The Sad Passions), that by the time Clement finished, I’d have started a press?! Such magical synchronicities are all around DOPAMINE, the universe pushing me forward, infusing the press’ aura with go go go vibes!
A tiny taste of New Mistakes:
Avery stood on the sidewalk and self-berated. He had a plump semi from the beautiful stranger’s open robe and a spank-bank deposit slip penned by his brain, the moment emblazoned with precision down to the shape of her nipples. He would feel bad calling it forth when he got home later and that dread, would turn him on even more. Disgusted with himself for being such a basic man, he gathered his book-filled tote onto his shoulder and dashed across the street. The fact that he was wearing his “I’m With Her” Aileen Wuornos T-shirt today made matters worse. Everything pointed back to why the white cis het man lost enrollment for his Women’s Studies classes. Regardless of his fierce dyke mother and the world he was raised in, Avery was a stupid boy. His ex-girlfriend promised that she too had a Criterion Collection of masturbatory material hoarded from real world encounters. She said he was healthy and human. He felt there was a power differential that made her erotic curation unimpeachable. For him, it was just gross. He knew at least that much from reading underrated and amazing lesbian literature.
Our plans do not stop there. Vera Blossom, who is a friend in spite of (because of?) the fact that I am also obsessed with her - have I not already written about this here, about her newsletters and our work on the Your Magic podcast and her stunning turn on Sister Spit last year - we’ll be publishing her work How to Fuck Like Girl: Advice for New Girls of Color. Vera had done a spell to get a book deal this year, which I hadn’t known but obviously felt. We’re doing collections by Camp Books founder and queer occult scholar Brooke Palmieri; by comedian Amanda-Faye Jimenez; by Chief Executive Weirdo Jibz Cameron, aka Dynasty Handbag.
We also made a broadside with an excerpt of some writing Vera had in her newsletter earlier this year. Get ready.
My in-box is full of manuscripts to consider. I’ve already had to say no to some, not my favorite thing to do at all, tho, realistically, we will get far more submissions we can’t publish than those we can, so I’ve got to get used to it. People ask what we’re looking for, and the truest answer is, I know it when I see it. Profoundly unhelpful to writers, right? I can put it into language, but it gets a little cringey - weird, edgy, voicey, gritty, attitudey, unique, experimental maybe? I am looking for work that strikes me in a way I haven’t quite been striked before. If something is good - like, legit good - but reminds me of too many other existent works, I probably won’t do it. DOPAMINE is open to all genres, though, for the most part, even though I don’t think I’m going to publish my own YA-ish novel on it because I’ve learned through publishing my Mermaid trilogy with McSweeney’s that YA is sort of its own world, and I think I want to see if I can land the book on one of its satellites, anyway.
But, enough about me - back to DOPAMINE. I love doing events and so we’ve got a bunch of cool stuff coming up, the most important being our FUNDRAISER, happening on August 13th at Junior High in Glendale, my town! Even if you don’t live in LA you can buy a ticket if you want to support us, and we’ll donate it to someone here. We’ve gotten a plump donation from an incredible queer philanthropist, but we’re going to need to match those funds, and keep growing them, if we’re going to pull this off. We’re tax deductible! You can Paypal us donations at dopaminebooksLA@gmail.com, too.
What’s going on at this fundraiser? Performance by Hand Habits, Vera Blossom, Ali Liebegott, Amanda-Faye Jimenez, Brooke Palmieri, Sophie Robinson, Pau Pescador, Clement Goldberg. We’re raffling mystery bags curated by Miranda July, Darren Stein, Mimi Pond, Semiotext(e), Dynasty Handbag, myself, Beth Pickens and others. The Institute for Art and Olfaction is donating a mystery bag, and concocting scents in the essence of each performer. COULD YOU DIE? I’m ded.
DOPAMINE will be at the Printed Matter Book Fair August 12th + 13th, selling a broadsheet by Vera Blossom and the incredible DOPAZINE, a sampler of writing by future DOPAMINE authors Vera, Clement, Brooke, Amanda, and Jibz, plus new work from friend of the press Harry Dodge. Find us at the Semiotext(e) and Camp Books tables. This fall we’ll debut DOPAMINE Presents, literary affairs to fete beloved writers as they come to town. October 10th we salute Cristy C. Road at Stories with help from Molly Larkey, Gabrielle Korn, Emily Segal, Kamala Puligandla and Karen Tongson; on November 1st we celebrate Diary by Marisa Crawford, along with MT Vallarta, Kate Durbin, Morgan Parker, Tara Jepsen and, hopefully, Myriam Gurba. Follow us on Instagram to keep abreast of what we’re doing.
I am such a googley-eyed fan for so many presses that have made life in this hellhole worth living; Semiotext(e), High Risk, The Feminist Press, Serpent’s Tail, Cipher, Haunuman Books, Two-Dollar Radio, Black Sparrow, you get it. DOPAMINE stands on the shoulders of these and many more iconoclastic, daring, visionaries who inspire us to take risks as writers, readers and publishers.
Proud to be in “Sluts”!
This is so exciting! When you're ready to set up events in San Francisco, don't forget Fabulosa Books!