Switchback Books is pleased to announce that the feminist
poetry press will publish actor/director/musician/handyman/model/writer James
Franco’s second full-length poetry book, CUNTSTUFF:
A Feminist Lexicon, in September of 2014.
Switchback Books believes that publishing exclusively women
constitutes a feminist act, but the press has now decided that publishing James
Franco is also a feminist act.
Franco is the first cisgender man the press has ever
endeavored to publish.
“It’s a bold move for us, and one we think will pay off,”
says Switchback Books Co-Founder and Editor Hanna Andrews. “While those who have
long supported our mission to challenge gender inequity in literary publishing
may have difficulty understanding our decision, we think that sidestepping our
own objectives in the interest of including this groundbreaking work will prove
a monumental moment in our press’s history.”
Poems in CUNTSTUFF
include surreal, prose entries for Franco’s useful lexicon for the
sex-positive, 21st Century feminist, including newly coined words
like cuntstuff, vagkick, and clitdick.
Other poems in the book adopt the personas of famous feminists like Judith
Butler, Ani DiFranco, bell hooks, Annie Sprinkle, and Kathy Acker, who’ve never
before allowed a man to speak for them.
“The way the book switches between cinematic depictions of
Donna Haraway fighting a cyborg, lyrics in the voices of famous feminists, and prose
poem definitions of Franco’s neologisms mimics the roles the poet plays in his
own life—as director, as actor, and as author,” says S. Whitney Holmes,
Executive Director and Editor at Switchback Books.
According to Franco’s publicist, the manuscript for CUNTSTUFF snuck up on him in a wave of
inspiration following a recent interview with Akashic Books, in which Franco initially coined the
title neologism. Franco quickly penned the book on an international flight, and
by the time he landed, the first draft was complete. And he knew exactly which
publisher to approach.
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