In my three months’ binge of Drag Race, while Violet Chachki experimented with new ways to cinch her waist, I experimented with backward baseball hats and letterman jackets. Under the influence of sequins and glitter, I figured out which boyish colors went best with my skin tone: navy, brown, gray, and dark green. Raglan became my favorite word. At the age of twenty-seven, I learned how to tie boat shoes. I bled breaking in my inaugural pair, like a new queen strutting in stilettos for the first time. . . . The advice I have for my boyhood ghost is something that’s never come out of a drag queen’s mouth. To him, I say, it’s okay to fit in—it’s okay to enjoy and flaunt the style of the thing that’s also oppressing you.
This spring, Tin House delves the sugar highs and dark licorice lows that come with our love for all things decadent, indulgent, and sweet: intoxication, delight, solace, sourness, secrecy, and revelation. Rebecca Makkai chronicles her Hungarian family’s candy smuggling behind the Iron Curtain; Alex McElroy fields “Hazardous Cravings” as a teenage cone-slinger at Dairy Queen; Timothy Liu sings a song confectionary in “Ode to Candy Crush”—we’ve got all that and much more, in an issue that will both entice and disgust, and will pointedly reveal the darkness hidden within our pursuit of sugar.
Featuring:
Fiction from Tara Ison, Steven Millhauser, Maria Adelmann, Julia Elliott, Sean Ennis and Joy Baglio
Poetry from Timothy Liu, Kaveh Akbar, Cecily Parks, Justin Boening, Katherine Riegel, Eve Ewing, Leah Naomi Green, Danusha Lameris, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Lucy Anderton, Amber Flora Thomas and Aidan Forster
Nonfiction from Aaron Hamburger, Rebecca Makkai, Lori Lynn Turner, Logan Scherer, Alex McElroy and Jim Goldberg
Sweet Dish by Dorthe Nors, Chinelo Okparanta, Alejandro Zambra and Ellen Litman
Books Lost & Found ny Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, Rachel Riederer, Kate Schmier, Amy Newlove Schroeder, and Marcia DeSanctis
And a Readable Feast from Annalisa Quinn
A Celebration of Reading 