Unsex Me Here
“A fairy tale, in the classic, sparkling, and powerful ways." —Michelle Tea
If Aurora Mattia is a switchboard operator, then Unsex Me Here is her call log. Please hold. There’s someone on the other line. A spider, a sibyl, an angel, a mermaid, a goddess, or an ex-girlfriend.
Unsex Me Here is a prayer book tied together by the strings of a corset. Glamorous ramblers, haunted by the sense of another world drawing near, wander in and out of its inexplicable twilight. From a West Texas town with a supernatural past to a stalactite cavern in the birthplace of Aphrodite, from hotel rooms to gardens to the far horizon of a thought, they seek the source of the disturbance in their minds. Heartbreak is not so far from rapture; holy babble is another kind of gossip. Every pilgrimage is as dense with symbolism as it is refined by desire.
Aurora Mattia was born in Hong Kong and lives in Texas. Her first book, The Fifth Wound, was published by Nightboat Books. Her stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Prairie Schooner, SPASM, Joyland, and elsewhere; and also in exhibitions at the RISD Museum and the Renaissance society, accompanying portraits by Elle Pérez. She’s working on a new novel called Seven Come Eleven, and writing some country songs. She believes in a free Palestine and an end to ICE, from the Rio Grande to the Jordan River, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mediterranean Sea.
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