Curious Specimens edited by Beth Couture and Wren Hanks

Featuring the work of Eric Baus, Mathias Svalina, Emily O’Neill, Sonya Vatomsky, Moss Angel, and MANDEM, among many others, Curious Specimens is an anthology of the strange and wondrous things that make us human.

“Beth Couture and I sought poetry, prose, and hybrid text / ephemera that explored what it meant to be someone (or something) caught between worlds. Like many queer writers, I’ve long been sympathetic to the monster in the scary story. Writing from the perspective of sea serpents and celestial wolves has allowed me to speak candidly about my trans body and to embrace the messiness of my (ever-shifting) queer identity. I hoped this anthology call might inspire other writers to use persona to interrogate their own relationship to monstrosity and possibly tap into this same kind of catharsis. Thankfully, submitters were both less literal and more creative than I could ever be! Andi and Lance Olsen catalog the effects ‘one’s memories breaking loose’ has on the body. A speaker warns of alternate selves coming for her ‘crystal core’. A Jackalope-Girl gets a late-night tattoo. Comfort comes in the form of Cerebus, crocodile eggs, a pile of bones. As Susan Slaviero writes, it might even be ‘better to be an anomaly,’ someone who defies easy classification.”
-Wren Hanks, editor of Curious Specimens