Queers at the End of the World

Tonee Mae Moll joins Nino (and Nat!) to talk about You Cannot Save Here, her gorgeous 2023 book out now from the Washington Writers Publishing House. We cover teaching in and learning from the end times, polyamory as apocalypse preparedness, video games as canon, and wading into the lyric absurdity of endings. Tonee Mae Moll is a queer & trans poet & essayist. They are the author of Out of Step: A Memoir, which won the Lambda Literary Award in bisexual nonfiction and the Non/Fiction Collection Prize. Her latest book, You Cannot Save Here, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize and is available now from Washington Writers' Publishing House. Their poetry has also received the Adele V. Holden award for creative excellence and the Bill Knott Poetry Prize, along with nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net. Tonee holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from University of Baltimore and a Ph.D. in English from Morgan State University. She is a Gemini. Find her at https://toneemoll.com or @toneemoll on socials.

Sara Ahmed talks with Nino about her new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way, out now from Seal Press. Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of color whose work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. We talk about the radical potential of killing joy, complaining as an inter-temporal feminist practice, and why utopia might just be beside the point. Get your Killjoy Handbook here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-feminist-killjoy-handbook-the-radical-potential-of-getting-in-the-way-sara-ahmed/19712059?ean=9781541603752 and find Sara's recommended books from UQP Press by Chelsea Watego and Eileen Moreton-Robinson at these links. Sara Ahmed blogs at feministkilljoy.com. You can find her on twitter @SaraNAhmed and Instagram @SaraNoAhmed.

Nino discusses a 2006 postapocalyptic artifact from the US's "war on terror"--World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars, and talks with oral historian and librarian Kae Bara Kratcha about what it means to be a speculative oral historian, and why oral history is such a meaningful tool for recording-and imagining-queer history. Find more of Kae's work at their podcast feed, Subjunctive Mood Transmissions: https://open.spotify.com/show/4O6MWjBArrJ5iDzoBPmf0n https://bodyhomemaker.ohmaexhibits.org/ Bodyhome Maker is a companion project to the amazing podcast Working 2050, you can find all its episodes on any podcast app. For the real oral history projects we talked about, visit the NYC Trans Oral History Project to listen to trans New Yorkers narrate their lives: https://nyctransoralhistory.org/ and find the Queens memory project here: https://queensmemory.org/

M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi talk with Nino about Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, their novel of oral histories that document a speculative near future of world-wide luxury communism. "Everybody in the book is queer or trans," as M.E. puts it. We talk about the erotic pleasures of mass protest, Why apocalypse movies are always destroying NYC, the political desires that created this book, and what it means to be ready for a new world just around the corner. Find Everything for Everyone at Common Notions Press, and find M.E. O'Brien's newest book, Family Abolition, here!

We’re covering The Martian! Both the book AND the movie, in which NASA scientist Mark Watney gets left for dead on the red planet and the only billionaires who can save him are the collective coffers of the US and China because Elon blew his monthly allowance trying to buy Twitter :( Y’all! We talk poop farming, colonization, space travel and bodies, nerd masculinity and so much more. You can find the Chanda Prescod-Weinstein article that we discuss here: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/becoming-martian-prescod-weinstein and Nikki Giovanni’s “Quilting the Black Eyed Pea (We’re going to Mars)” here: https://issues.org/quilting-the-black-eyed-pea-going-to-mars-poem-giovanni/ Meanwhile, apologies for the sound quality—we had some mic snafus over the course of the recording. To lift your spirits, listen to Nino’s favorite extra-planetary spiritual (it’s true even though they misquoted it in the episode) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSMUyUft2Zk And for more great media recommendations related to the episode, join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/QueersattheEndoftheWorld

In our intro episode for Season Two, Nat and Nino talk about the song Les and Ray by electropunk feminist performance artists Le Tigre, as well as Octavia Butler’s unfinished sequel to the Parable novels, Parable of the Trickster, as we try to figure out what’s drawing us to Sci-Fi tropes of escape and escapism. A content warning for this one: we talk about interpersonal abuse and child abuse in this episode. Finally, big big BIG big thanks to Kathleen Hanna for permission to play “Les and Ray” on Queers at the End of the World!

Season Two of Queers at the End of the World is coming up this winter! Listen here for a teeny little preview of where we plan to go next. Music for the trailer comes from the generous hearts at free music archive, and is Siddhartha Corsus, “Oh Radiant One” from Love Is Alive. We accessed it at: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Siddhartha/love-is-alive/oh-radiant-one Sound effects hail from freesound.org, and you can find sources for the rest of the found audio in the trailer at these three links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgeyVE3NHJM&list=PLdkS9iEGpZ-RGIIiPHfQ877SfbyxSHfFB&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BXnE9yxFFY https://archive.org/details/RTFM-NASA-950515

Nat and Nina interview Avery Alder, who designs queer table top roleplaying games of monstrosity, love and community—like the acclaimed Monsterhearts 2 and the post-apocalyptic game The Quiet Year. Avery's game Dream Askew, is designed to help folks imagine what queer community looks like in a post-collapse society, and that makes it the perfect vehicle to help Queers at the End of the World put our money where our mouths are and get some of this season's guests on the show—Ellie, Austen, TreaAndrea and Roo—together to try and create a story of queer utopia in the ruins. We talk to Avery about what it's like to make queer games, what community means to her, growing up without tech and making slow connections to people, among many other things in this fantastic conversation.

In this episode, we start out talking about Station 11, the 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, and end up talking about Covid, grief, and the transition into a new phase of the pandemic. Nat and Nina are joined by novelist and friend of the show A.E. Osworth in the first half of this episode as they reflect on their year and the ways Station 11 has stuck with all of us through our own experience of a world-wide plague. Find A.E. Osworth's new novel (!!!) We are Watching Eliza Bright, out now from Grand Central Publishing, wherever books and audiobooks are sold.

Just a little old 45-second hello from Nina and Nat and an update on our May hiatus, plus what to expect in June!

In this Queers at the End of the World Presents, Nat takes us through some recommendations of video games with much to say about queer identity, utopia, dystopia, and the ever popular abandoned mall. These games include Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, Kind Words, Ooblets, and Boyfriend Dungeon and you should totally check them out. And if you're interested, you can also read Nat's Edge Effects essay on bonding with family through gaming during the pandemic.

Nat and Nina talk to DeLesslin George-Warren (aka Roo) about food sovereignty, indigi-queer language revitalization and why the heck the Keeper of the Seeds in Mad Max: Fury Road is carrying around a Basil start in a skull. Roo is an artist, researcher, and educator from Catawba Indian Nation whose work ranges from performance to installation art to community education. To follow his projects and find ways to support the work he's doing, you can check out his website at delesslin.com, or follow him on Twitter, @DeLesslin. For more on agriculture and land management among Aboriginal Australian people, check out Dark Emu: Black Seeds, by Bruce Pascoe. 

Mad Max: Fury Road came out in 2015 and was hailed by critics as a post-apocalyptic action masterpiece. Nat and Nina revisit the film, discussing the leather-clad, snake-grabbing, dudefully alone Mad Max, and the queer possibilities and pitfalls in this mystifying and chaotic movie franchise set in a post-apocalyptic Australia where despite gasoline being scarce, everyone loves to drive.  After listening, you can check out the articles we mentioned in this episode!  Mad Max: Appropriation Road was recommended by a listener, and  Mad Max: The Car and Australian Governance ties together discussions of masculinity, car culture, and indigeneity in Australia. Finally, the prison justice project Nat mentioned working for is called the Education Justice Project. It can be found at https://educationjustice.net/.

In this Queers at the End of the World Presents, poet Holly Raymond joins us to read from her work in We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, published by Nightboat Books in 2020. We get to nerd out about poetry, goblins, slicing cold cuts at Wawa and fan translations of Final Fantasy with Holly, and she shares a bit of new work too. ALSO We Want It All is the only anthology to contain writing by both Sylvia Rivera and your co-host Nat Mesnard, who's gonna read one of their poems as well! Edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel, find it here: https://nightboat.org/book/we-want-it-all/

Mycologist Patty Kaishian and writer/educator Hasmik Djoulakian join Nina and Nat to talk about mushrooms as metaphors and creatures, non binary fungi, and the queer discipline of mycology. We talk the New Moon Mycology Summit, and the naming of the biological world. During the episode, Hasmik speaks about the violence against Armenians in Artsakh, and recommends several activist organizations where folks can learn more and offer support. These are Kooyrigs, https://kooyrigs.org/ and All for Armenia https://allforarmenia.org/

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind—Hayao Miyazaki's classic environmental epic—is the topic this time around, and Nat and Nina are joined by Ellie Yanigasawa, the artist behind the Queers at the End of the World logo! We discuss the 1984 Nausicaä film as well as the seven volume manga, uncovering the complexities of human-nature relationships in a contaminated world rich in fungi and fraught with war.

Welcome to the Apocalibrary! In this Queers at the End of the World Presents, Nina takes us through some recommendations of exciting dystopian fiction that's either authored by queer, trans or two spirit indigenous authors, or includes queer, trans, and two spirit representation. A full book list is on our website. Happy reading!

Nat and Nina discuss Moon of the Crusted Snow, a 2018 novel set in a far northern Anishinaabe community just after an apocalypse. This time we get to talk with the author, Waubgeshig Rice himself, about monsters, masculinity, and surviving beyond apocalypse. To support folks fighting that Wendigo Infrastructure right now, check out Stop Line Three at https://www.stopline3.org/#intro and Honor the Earth: https://www.honorearth.org/line_3_factsheet (which in addition to being Anishinaabe economist and activist Winona LaDuke's organization, also has queer cred as an org started in collaboration with the G-D Indigo Girls)

Poet, librarian and educator, Alison Rollins talks with Nat and Nina about survival of many kinds, including wilderness time travel, archives, and letting the birds come to you. Find Alison's book Library of Small Catastrophes with Copper Canyon Press, and find another great interview with Alison and fellow queer survivalist Latria Graham at the Poetry Podcast. Also! You can now support Queers At the End of the World on Patreon by going to patreon.com/queersattheendoftheworld. Come to support queer art, stay for a bunch more queer art! Please note that this version of the interview is a slightly edited form of the episode we originally put out, and that’s because one of our awesome listeners from Australia got in touch to tell us that the course name for Cody Lundin’s class includes a word that is incredibly offensive there, a slur that’s used against indigenous people. We’ve taken it out of this version, because we don’t want anyone else to feel that gut punch. We do want to say that we’re super grateful to the person who called us in about it. This show is a relationship with you, each other, and our guests, and that means we really, really hope that if any of you listeners is ever like, do Nat and Nina want to know that this thing they said caused me pain? Or do Nat and Nina want to know that something they said stands to harm folks I care about? The answer is yes. We want to know. And we’ll be grateful anytime we’re given a chance to try and repair. Send us a message if you want to talk, and thanks for listening!

Our first QatEotW Presents! Join us for a snippet of our interview on queer camps and the history of camping with Juniper Lewis, then check out their article: Queer Camping, Then and Now. For more on camping and whiteness, Juniper recommends Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney. Also! Also! Queers at the End of the World has a Patreon where we're putting great new content—like the rest of our interview with Juniper on video game environments. Come see us!