Using such models as Joseph Cornell’s box constructions, crazy quilts, and specimen displays, Joni Tevis places fragments in relationship to each other in order to puzzle out lost histories, particularly those of women. Navigating the peril and excitement of outward journeys complicated by an inward longing for home, The Wet Collection follows Tevis through several adventures that coalesce into a narrative imbued with the light of Tevis’s Southern upbringing. Written with a poet’s lyricism, a scientist’s precision, and a theologian’s understanding of the world as it shifts around us, The Wet Collection is the exciting debut of a distinctive voice. "Tevis’s writing, a showcase for her interests in religion, memoir, natural study and women’s history, is precise and unique, and in this collection of musings, she builds big ideas out of small fragments...Far from the typical memoir or essay collection, this volume showcases a unique, meticulous and inviting voice.” — Publishers Weekly

Taking aim at the mostly male bastion of art theory and criticism, Mira Schor brings a maverick perspective and provocative voice to the issues of contemporary painting, gender representation, and feminist art. Writing from her dual perspective of a practicing painter and art critic, Schor's writing has been widely read over the past fifteen years in Artforum, Art Journal, Heresies, and M/E/A/N/I/N/G, a journal she coedited. Collected here, these essays challenge established hierarchies of the art world of the 1980s and 1990s and document the intellectual and artistic development that have marked Schor's own progress as a critic. Bridging the gap between art practice, artwork, and critical theory, Wet includes some of Schor's most influential essays that have made a significant contribution to debates over essentialism. Articles range from discussions of contemporary women artists Ida Applebroog, Mary Kelly, and the Guerrilla Girls, to "Figure/Ground," an examination of utopian modernism's fear of the "goo" of painting and femininity. From the provocative "Representations of the Penis," which suggests novel readings of familiar images of masculinity and introduces new ones, to "Appropriated Sexuality," a trenchant analysis of David Salle's depiction of women, Wet is a fascinating and informative collection. Complemented by over twenty illustrations, the essays in Wet reveal Schor's remarkable ability to see and to make others see art in a radically new light.

A collection of mostly Black and White images glorifying the female form with water and light.

This “magnificently compelling” essay collection explores obsession, anxiety, and Existential dread from the Book of Revelation to the Liberace Museum (Minneapolis Star Tribune). The sermons of Joni Tevis’ youth filled her with dread, a sense “that an even worse story—one you hadn’t read yet—could likewise come true.” In this revelatory collection, she reckons with her childhood fears by exploring the uniquely American fascination with apocalypse. From a haunted widow’s wildly expanding mansion, to atomic test sites in the Nevada desert, her settings are often places of destruction and loss. And yet Tevis transforms these eerie destinations into sites of creation as well, uncovering powerful points of connection. Whether she’s relating her experience of motherhood or describing the timbre of Freddy Mercury’s voice in “Somebody to Love,” she relies on the same reverence for detail and sense of awe. And by anchoring her attention to the raw materials of our world—nails and beams, dirt and stone, bones and blood—she discovers grandeur in the seemingly mundane. Winner of the 2016 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction Finalist for the 2016 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize

In this hilarious tale of blame, compassion, and forgiveness, a very embarrassed bear is reminded that accidents can happen--but with the support of good friends, life goes on. Reuben the bear's got donuts for everyone in his scout troop, but his friends are all staring at something else: there's a wet spot on Reuben's pants, and it's in a specific area. "WHO WET MY PANTS?" he shouts, and a blame game starts. His buddies try to reassure him there was no crime. Just an accident. It could happen to anyone! But as all the clues begin to point in Reuben's own direction as the culprit, Reuben must come to terms with the truth. Who Wet My Pants? isn't a potty-training book. It's a witty and wise story about embarrassment and anger, empathy and acceptance, and ultimately...forgiveness.

An adorable and hilarious collection of dog photographs. Every dog owner knows too well the fun and misery of bath time: the wriggles, the poignant looks, the playful splashes. Wet Dog, by photographer Sophie Gamand, is a stunning and touching capture of this intimate moment. Elevating dog photography to the status of art, these expressive portraits of our canine friends mirror our very own human emotions.

Poetry. LGBT Studies. Latino/Latina Studies. "Lucas de Lima's stunning book affected me so profoundly at all the stages of reading it, encountering it before it was a book and afterwards, when it was. In the work of this extraordinary writer, the fragment is not an activity of form. It's an activity of evisceration." Bhanu Kapil "These poems lurch from the murky waters of our collective unconscious and side-swipe us with a lyric invocation of the dark forces of... what? Nature? History? The alien life- force that drives planetary evolution? A primal being raises itself from the swamp of human consciousness, animated by the archaic and archetypal Sobek, the Egyptian god in crocodile form. The two voices that alternate in this narrative of trauma the quotidian voice of the poet and a ritual voice of invocation queer the story in the most profound way. Together with de Lima we call forth the god who will transform the narrative. As queers, we are the incarnation of countless shamans, medicine men, magicians and priests. The poet places himself in this tradition through his invocation." AA Bronson"