Apogee Journal

I was wasting time online the other day, thinking about writing this essay on what the legacy of José Esteban Muñoz means to me- a person who never knew him, but experiences a synapses changing euphoria when I read his work. Online, I came across a picture of a friend in an airplane. They - gender ambiguous, creature-like, with their wildly colored hair and their face painted neon- tongued their lip in the direction of their neighbor, a regal transwoman. Behind these two, another happy-looking queer (the only other figure in the picture) winked into the camera. For a moment, I allowed myself to daydream that the entire plane was filled with queers. I imagined an aircraft hurtling 500 miles per hour, 35,000 feet above the earth, where every being chose their own unique gender and performed it without inhibition. Then I opened Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia and underlined the first sentence: “Queerness is not yet here.” Muñoz takes queerness as the wilderness of identity. He captures ephemeral moments where queerness exposes itself to the present. Drawing on Ernst Bloch, he defines utopias: “They are the hopes of a collective, an emergent group, or even the solitary oddball who is the...

Visual Art

Silent Auction Items

Apogee Journal

21 May 2014

Still haven’t bought a ticket to our joint benefit with MoCADA this Thursday? If the readings by acclaimed writers Cathy Park Hong, Kiese Laymon, Mahogany Browne, and Saeed Jones, the installation by artist Shantell Martin, and being among the first to get your copy of Apogee Issue 3, isn’t motivation enough, then check out our silent auction items. (Oh, and if you have bought your ticket, maybe you should start thinking strategically about how to have your name last on the list when the auction closes…) Silent Auction Items: GOTHAM WRITERS WORKSHOP ONE DAY WRITING INTENSIVE Admission to a One- Day Intensive with Gotham Writers Workshop, New York City’s leading private creative writing school. Intensives are fun, fast-paced immersions in a genre of writing of your choice. Ideal for both the beginner and someone wanting a quick refresher course. Value, $150 each (2 for auction) ENTRANCE FOR TWO TO THE NEW YORK WRITERS’ COALITION WRITE-A-THON Two tickets to the New York Writers’ Coalition Write-A-Thon, New York City’s most popular marathon writing event, to be held on November 1st 2014. Value, $300 THE DEVIL IN SILVER AND BIG MACHINE, BY VICTOR LaVALLE Signed, hard cover editions of two novels by acclaimed fiction writer...