Thank you @marleywendt & @i_d for covering our last event and 10 years of Hard to Read, “your favorite reading’s favorite reading,” proudly woke and alienated since 2016
“She was this tiny person. It was like all her books would weigh more than her.” 🕊️
There are some writers who feel like a well-kept secret; a quiet radicalism passed from hand to hand like a talisman. Fanny Howe is one of them. 🙏 When we first began dreaming up our Faith & Worship issue, Fanny was the first person we wanted to reach out to. Her work didn’t just ask metaphysical questions; it grappled with them in the grit of the real world, finding the divine in the “monotony of office shit-work” and the “dreary descriptions of English cities.” She showed us that spirituality isn’t about personal development; it’s about a rigorous, collective politic and a refusal to look away from injustice. 💛
In this issue, Caitlin McLoughlin @caitlin_mcloughlin_ weaves together a tapestry of memory. From a bohemian apartment in Greenwich Village to shared Google Docs, friends and peers including Eileen Myles @eileen.myles Chris Kraus @chriskraus7 Kazim Ali @kazimalipoet and Fiona Alison Duncan @fifidunks reflect on the late, great author who left an indelible imprint on us all. 🪽 Fanny passed away as we began this journey, making this feature not just an interview, but a bridge to her legacy. It is an invitation to stay bewildered, to stay seeking, and to find beauty in the transience. 🌟
The new issue of Worms is out now. Whether you are a long-time devotee or a new seeker, you can purchase your copy of the magazine at the link in our bio. 🪱📖
The quotes featured here were provided by Fanny’s peers and images are by Lynn Christoffers and courtesy of Danzy Senna.
You’re invited to YEARS AS RUIN: A History of Los Angeles Art
Presented by East of Borneo and @hardtoread , YEARS AS RUIN highlights L.A. art through the ages, bringing together a dynamic group of East of Borneo contributors past and present for an evening of words, music, and visuals.
With readings by Norman Klein, Allison Noelle Conner (@loosepleasures ), Thomas Lawson (@thomaslawson739 ), Emma Dexter (@d3xtress ), Vivian Chang and Dr. Nizan Shaked (@nizanshaked ), and A. R. Stain (@euphorianth ).
Followed by Reynaldo Rivera (@rey999rivera ) in conversation with Fiona Duncan (@fifidunks ) on his Los Angeles.
Friday, May 8, 8pm at Human Resources (@humanresourcesla ) – 410 Cottage Home St.
Flyer art by @s30jin .
@hardtoread is a literary social practice founded by Fiona Duncan. YEARS AS RUIN is co-organized by Fiona Duncan and Adriana Widdoes (@driii.tv ).
*
“In the midst of our economic and political crisis, we must assume that art history will be remade. New points of origin will be invented, probably starting with the 1960s instead of the 1860s. Fluxus, Archigram, Conceptual art, Minimalism, Pop—1968 and ‘all that’... are now understood as the beginning, not the finale… Of course, that raises the question: the beginning of what?” —Norman Klein from “Notes on the Arts: Curating the Past 50 Years as Ruin,” East of Borneo, 2011
#eastofborneo #hardtoread #printedmatterartbookfairs #laabf2026
Fanny Fucking Howe (quoting @elenisikelianos ). More photos from FAN FAIRE at the @poetry_project last week. Thank you to everyone who read, shared and came out, it was a perfect night. I believe it’s available to livestream somewhere out there. Sending love to Fanny’s family, friends and fans - if you aren’t one yet, go buy one of her books
Fanny Fucking Howe (quoting @elenisikelianos ). Photos from FAN FAIRE at the @poetry_project last week. Thank you to everyone who read, shared and came out, it was a perfect night. I believe it’s available to livestream somewhere out there. Sending love to Fanny’s family, friends and fans - if you aren’t one yet, go buy one of her books
Friends, family, fans, and collaborators of the late Fanny Howe join in celebration of the great American poet and protector of the mystics of the future. Remembrances of Howe will be shared alongside readings of her work, with words from Kazim Ali, Sarah Callery, Peter Gizzi, Laura Henriksen, Linda Norton, Issa Quincy, Ariana Reines, Eleni Sikelianos, Ocean Vuong, and more. Books and zines by and about Howe will be present, thanks to Divided Publishing, Graywolf Press, Nightboat Books, Rachelle Rahmé, Semiotext(e), and Worms Magazine—including a first look at This Poor Book, completed just before Howe’s death (Graywolf Press, 2026).
Fan Faire is co-organized by Rachelle Rahmé, Hard to Read, Chase Bell, and Ariana Reines.
*
“Over the years I have written during days just like these, when there was snow, or cold, and some sense of safety and enclosure. More often I have written on the road in the middle of children, crowds at train stations, airports, motels, bus depots, in offices and schoolyards.”
—Fanny Howe, Night Philosophy (Divided Publishing, 2020)
Wednesday 4/8 in the Parish Hall at St Mark's Church. 7:30pm reception, 8pm event. Free to attend, no RSVP required.
Photo courtesy of the Estate of Fanny Howe.
Repost @savecoumba and then some. Coumba’s new art book, as colored in at and after our performance last month. The book is available through our friends at @bierkebooks — if it’s not sold out already, it might already be! (Big thanks to Leilani + Mia for leading the coloring table.)
@poeticresearch & @semiotexte present @constancdebre ’s Offenses at LA’s @2220arts . Debré will be in conversation with Hard to Read’s @fifidunks following a reading.
Tuesday, March 31, 7pm
2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA
Free and open to the public
*
Since publishing her first novel in 2018, Constance Debré’s work has exposed the flaws in the social order with dizzying passion and intelligence. Her first-person trilogy—Playboy, Love Me Tender, and Name—describes the trajectory of leaving a comfortable bourgeois life as mother and wife employed as a criminal justice attorney to become a writer and lesbian.
In Offenses, Debré trains her sights on a single case of inevitably flawed justice that, like hundreds of others like it, reveals the enmeshed culpabilities of the perpetrator, the victim, the place, and the past.
Photo from @bombmag
Thank god for art nerds and women 💝💝💝 Last month @toddlerew of the @libraryfoundla showed me this cookbook that the Friday Morning Club produced (fairy pudding!!). The Friday Morning Club was the white women suffragette’s club that first erected the building we just performed in (thx to @juliastoschekfoundation ); some of their materials were in the time capsule the @lapubliclibrary just excavated (happy centennial). I’m sharing pictures of that cookbook alongside @julianahalpert and @d3xtress ’s reviews of our event @cultured_mag & @hollywoodsuperstar_review and newspaper clippings about the friday morning club from the @latimes circa 1922-26. There’s nothing better than be reviewed by people as attuned to detail and history as you. I hope you enjoy our collective research
Forever a tumblr girl, forever a diva, never a corp. love, Fiona
