An established writer from an Eastern college returning to his former San Francisco haunts becomes entangled in a labyrinthine series of events that culminate in the sudden violent death of a respected poet. Described by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian as “a satiric look at the private world of poetry gone public in the wake of the Six Gallery HOWL reading of October, 1955,” The Tower of Babel includes finely detailed sketches of the San Francisco poetry world and gay life as they existed then.

Jack Spicer (30 January, 1925–17 August, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry. He spent most of his writing-life in San Francisco

“Richard Porter’s Queer Anthology of Healing is a subtle, devastating mix of cuteness and embarrassment, beauty and confession, magic tricks and pain. The artworks and writings in this collection suggest that healing can be achieved through revelation, invocation, observation and disclosure. It’s a much-needed gift right now.”—Chris Kraus

With Clay AD, Harry Agius, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Dodie Bellamy, Jack Bigglestone, Nick Blackburn, Helen Cammock, Charity Coleman, Swithun Cooper, Paul Gabrielli, Evan Garza, Erica Gillingham, Daniel Givens, Pete Hammond, Benedict Hawkins, Georgie Henley, Lubaina Himid, Fanny Howe, Jasmine Johnson, G.B. Jones, Kevin Killian, Wayne Koestenbaum, Nic Lachance, Olivia Laing, Benedict Leader, Paul Lee, Mary Manning, Ben Miller, D. Mortimer, Monique Mouton, Annie Murrells, Chuck Nanney, David Nash, Isobel Neviazsky, Paul P., Richard Porter, Peter Scalpello, Hyacinth Schuss, Ryan Skelton, Verity Spott, Edward Thomasson, Timothy Thornton, Declan Wiffen, Ian Wooldridge

The Bigness of Things surveys the intersection of New Narrative, San Francisco’s queer-and-punk-infused writing avant-garde, and visual culture, through photographs and essays on visual art, literary journals, and film. Including essays by Matt Sussman, Brandon Callender, Jamie Townsend, Stephanie Young, Ismail Muhammad, Syd Staiti, Brandon Brown; art from the Homes of Bruce Boone, Robert Glück, Jocely Saidenberg, Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian; and stills from the Films of Marc Huestis, Abigail Child, Cecilia Dougherty, and Leslie Singer.

For decades Kevin Killian won laurels for his novels, his poetry, and his work in the poets theater of the San Francisco bay area. Drawing from the late 1980s to the early 2010s, this is the first representative selection of Killian’s plays. Once describing his productions as a form of “blanket permission,” Killian added, “I think people might come away thinking, I could do that! Isn’t that the best kind of work, something generative? Action painting was sort of like that…” This is a book to read, where reading means catching some action.