The Fabulous Ekphrastic Fantastic!
The Fabulous Ekphrastic Fantastic
“A river’s edge, if approached too close, can sweep a body beyond itself.” In The Fabulous Ekphrastic Fantastic!, Miah Jeffra perfects apostrophe as canticle, a host of heroes beckoning the reader deeper into the waters of selfhood, Madonna, Mary Shelley, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Plato, and Jeffra’s mother among them. Jeffra explores the nature of gender, sexuality, aesthetics, and love, taking a tiny hammer to the stability of the limits of perception, troubling the tether between perception and memory. At once memoir and cultural criticism, this collection discovers itself as a book about forgiveness, family, and the truths we find in “the lightness of a door,” “the probability of a radio,” the long line between one story and another.
"Reminiscent of Michelle Tea in subject and humor, and of T. Fleischmann’s poeticism in style, this collection continues the work of modern queer essayists. The memories it contains, whether false or true, rose-colored or traumatic, are all written with stunning honesty."—San Francisco Book Review
"Miah Jeffra’s book of essays provides a journey as split—and splitting—as the human experience. The person snaps off the page. And there is unbelievable freedom in that."—Ruminate Magazine
"I read The Fabulous Fantastic Ekphrastic! with multiple browser tabs open at all times—perhaps the perfect response to modern life that a book has ever evoked in me."—Empty Mirror
"Miah Jeffra is that rare writer who’s as committed to the individual sentence as much as he is to developing a bold, animated vision. These short pieces are nothing less than an ongoing art of survival, and they’re irresistible in their force, innovation, and vulnerability."—Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World