where we ask our favourite WRITERS to fill in a Library Card with the books they have on loan, reserved, lost & found, and on their top shelf.
Inspired by library sections and driven by the curiosity to get to know the books behind our favourite writers, tune in every month as we reveal what titles fill their bookshelves. What they’re currently reading, what they’re going to read next, what vintage classic they can’t get out of their heads and what book is their favourite of all time. Find out on DUE DATE.
Presenting Michelle Tea!
Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books of memoir, fiction, poetry and children's lit — including her latest, Free Love: Adventures in Marriage and Polyamory. Her memoir Valencia won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction, even though it was obviously all true. It was also made into a sprawling, feature-length art film using nearly 20 different directors and different Michelles. Her recent-ish essay collection, Against Memoir, was awarded the PEN/America Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the recipient of the legendary Rona Jaffe Awards, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
ON LOAn: What are you currently reading?
I read books in a completely mad way, and am always reading many. Currently I'll be working on Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz; Ida by Gertrude Stein; Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor; George Bataille's Story of the Eye, Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumaphilia; and A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller 1932-1953
RESERVED: WHAT ARE YOU excited to read next?
My most recent acquisitions, which I have not yet begun, are Out of Synch: Ventriloquism in Popular Media by Sarah Kessler, and Good Girl by Holly Coleman.
LOST & FOUND: WHAT IS A classic YOU loved reading or HAVE recently rediscovered?
There are a lot of vintage books in my current pile, but this year I read Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence, The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Cesares, and The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes. I also recently reread The Thief's Journal by Jean Genet to confirm it is still a favorite and yes, it is.
TOP SHELF: What’s your favourite book ever?
Oh, boy . . . Colors by Andrew Berardini, Cool for You and Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles, Cruddy by Lynda Barry, New Mistakes by Clement Goldberg, Look at Me by Jennifer Eagan, The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson, Genet by Edmund White, Aliens and Anorexia and After Kathy Acker by Chris Kraus, Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell, Ch-ching! by Ali Liebegott, Zippermouth by Laurie Weeks, The Bell Jar (duh), The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, Edgewise by Chloe Griffin, Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner, All Fours by Miranda July, Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters . . .okay, I think I'll stop there!
