Straight on the heels of the World Fantasy Convention, I hopped on a red-eye flight to Tallahassee to give my lecture, “What Strange Death Is This? Monstrum, the Macabre, and Pop Menageries” at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts. Despite being deliriously exhausted, it was fabulous to finally see the exhibit and do a gallery walk in conjunction with my lecture.
I then had l dinner with curator Carrie Ann Baade, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer (the fabulous editor of Weird Tales for a good number of years) , and Selena Chambers. We talked about all realms of the odd, fantastic, slipstream, interstitial, weird, macabre, and grotesque–how they interrelate, how they’re different in terms of rhetorical power and such. It was a great conversation and one that I think will spark some interesting projects ahead.
And please do order the beautiful catalogue from University of Washington Press, which has the full essay and goes into the work of each artist. You can read the full intro my essay “Revelatory Monsters” over a Weird Fiction Review.