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This is a Dance Movie!
“Tim Jones-Yelvington doesn’t push the envelope. He kicks the shit out of it. If ever there was a writer who could garner a rock star following, it would be this man.”
—Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State
“This is the short story collection as playful dance party among serious things—a remix of pop culture, gay sex and celebrity, ranging from the confectionary to the visionary. A collection of sparks for various fires, from a bold young talent finding his way forward.”
—Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night
“Beautifully written in perfectly realized sentences, with dead- on moments of recognition that require the reader to pause and savor the pleasure of rereading, these stories are brilliantly original, sexually frank, even a bit frightening perhaps, but very funny. Surreally, subversively, wonderfully funny.”
—Susan Nussbaum, author of Good Kings, Bad Kings
“Tim Jones-Yelvington’s This is a Dance Movie! feels like a wound your dear childhood friend begged you to look at, and when you peered in it oozed glitter. This collection leans in, familiar, knowable, and then it dazzles you, leaving you blinking, waiting impatiently for when you can see again to read more.”
—Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls
—Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State
“This is the short story collection as playful dance party among serious things—a remix of pop culture, gay sex and celebrity, ranging from the confectionary to the visionary. A collection of sparks for various fires, from a bold young talent finding his way forward.”
—Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night
“Beautifully written in perfectly realized sentences, with dead- on moments of recognition that require the reader to pause and savor the pleasure of rereading, these stories are brilliantly original, sexually frank, even a bit frightening perhaps, but very funny. Surreally, subversively, wonderfully funny.”
—Susan Nussbaum, author of Good Kings, Bad Kings
“Tim Jones-Yelvington’s This is a Dance Movie! feels like a wound your dear childhood friend begged you to look at, and when you peered in it oozed glitter. This collection leans in, familiar, knowable, and then it dazzles you, leaving you blinking, waiting impatiently for when you can see again to read more.”
—Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls
- GenresShort Stories
184 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1797
163 people want to read
About the author
Téa Jones-Yelvington
11 books73 followersTéa Jones-Yelvington (they/she) is a transfemme social justice worker with more than 15 years of experience supporting social change initiatives within and outside the nonprofit sector, and publishing, performing and curating my own and others' poetry and prose.
Active in small press and university publishing since 2008, she is the author of four fiction and two poetry chapbooks and full lengths. Their full-length fiction debut, This is a Dance Movie!, (2017) was one of the first books solicited by Roxane Gay for her micropress, Tiny Hardcore, and was included in Electric Literature's 15 Best Story Collections of 2017. The title story was performed by writer and actor Ryan O'Connell on Selected Shorts: Too Hot for Radio, a podcast from Symphony Space and NPR. Her short fiction chapbook, Evan's House and the Other Boys who Live There (in They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, 2011) was a finalist for the fourth annual Rose Metal Press chapbook contest. My Their debut poetry volume, Become On Yr Face (2016) was the winner of DIAGRAM's chapbook contest, and its followup, Colton Behavioral Therapy (2020), Gazing Grain Press's. She has been a finalist for the Noemi Press Book Award, Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, New Delta Review Annual Chapbook Contest, 1913 Prize for First Books, and appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50 short fictions.
Their previous work has concerned itself with queer camp, excess, new narrative, literary "fan fiction," transgression, pop culture, queer evil, queer shame, white privilege and fragility, and glamour, amongst other subjects. Current projects are more explicitly shaped by her long-time commitment to radical, intersectional social movements —including the pilot script for a "social justice soap opera," a collaborative screenplay (with Brandon and Janice Will) focused on caretaker issues and medical industrial complex exploitation/commodification of the sick and disabled, and The Strawberry Fanta Book, a new narrative hero's journey into mental health, family trauma, gender awakening, police and prison abolition, and dominant narrative conventions amidst the pandemic and 2020 uprising.
From 2010-12, their literary readings incorporated elaborate, glam rock and club kid-influenced costumes, songs, and other multimedia, and from 2012-15, as her drag alter ego TinTim, they performed in Chicago nightlife, and maintained a presence as a cultural critic on her popular Youtube channel. They have given performances and appeared in panel conversations at University of Louisiana Lafayette, Sam Houston State University, the University of Colorado Boulder, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, the &Now Festival of Innovative Writing and Art, the Chicago nonprofit Homeroom Chicago, and other venues, on topics that include the Aesthetics of Activism, Coming of Age Queer, The Slumber Party: Ritual, Magic and Girl Cultures, and the politics of "political correctness," and Barbie.
Her editing, curating, and event hosting experiences include serving as guest editor for [PANK]'s queer issue for three years during Roxane Gay's tenure as editor, guest editing for Smokelong Quarterly, hosting an AWP drag brunch reading featuring Lambda Literary fellows, and for two years, organizing a popular drag-themed off-site reading during AWP.
Active in small press and university publishing since 2008, she is the author of four fiction and two poetry chapbooks and full lengths. Their full-length fiction debut, This is a Dance Movie!, (2017) was one of the first books solicited by Roxane Gay for her micropress, Tiny Hardcore, and was included in Electric Literature's 15 Best Story Collections of 2017. The title story was performed by writer and actor Ryan O'Connell on Selected Shorts: Too Hot for Radio, a podcast from Symphony Space and NPR. Her short fiction chapbook, Evan's House and the Other Boys who Live There (in They Could No Longer Contain Themselves, 2011) was a finalist for the fourth annual Rose Metal Press chapbook contest. My Their debut poetry volume, Become On Yr Face (2016) was the winner of DIAGRAM's chapbook contest, and its followup, Colton Behavioral Therapy (2020), Gazing Grain Press's. She has been a finalist for the Noemi Press Book Award, Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, New Delta Review Annual Chapbook Contest, 1913 Prize for First Books, and appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50 short fictions.
Their previous work has concerned itself with queer camp, excess, new narrative, literary "fan fiction," transgression, pop culture, queer evil, queer shame, white privilege and fragility, and glamour, amongst other subjects. Current projects are more explicitly shaped by her long-time commitment to radical, intersectional social movements —including the pilot script for a "social justice soap opera," a collaborative screenplay (with Brandon and Janice Will) focused on caretaker issues and medical industrial complex exploitation/commodification of the sick and disabled, and The Strawberry Fanta Book, a new narrative hero's journey into mental health, family trauma, gender awakening, police and prison abolition, and dominant narrative conventions amidst the pandemic and 2020 uprising.
From 2010-12, their literary readings incorporated elaborate, glam rock and club kid-influenced costumes, songs, and other multimedia, and from 2012-15, as her drag alter ego TinTim, they performed in Chicago nightlife, and maintained a presence as a cultural critic on her popular Youtube channel. They have given performances and appeared in panel conversations at University of Louisiana Lafayette, Sam Houston State University, the University of Colorado Boulder, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, the &Now Festival of Innovative Writing and Art, the Chicago nonprofit Homeroom Chicago, and other venues, on topics that include the Aesthetics of Activism, Coming of Age Queer, The Slumber Party: Ritual, Magic and Girl Cultures, and the politics of "political correctness," and Barbie.
Her editing, curating, and event hosting experiences include serving as guest editor for [PANK]'s queer issue for three years during Roxane Gay's tenure as editor, guest editing for Smokelong Quarterly, hosting an AWP drag brunch reading featuring Lambda Literary fellows, and for two years, organizing a popular drag-themed off-site reading during AWP.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 26, 2016
At long last it is here! One of my very favorite writers, Tim Jones-Yelvington, with his debut story collection. ft. Taylor Lautner, Matt Mitcham, Adam Lambert, the Brawny Man, Law & Order, and slime.
March 13, 2017
!!!! I love this book SO MUCH. To say that it's innovative, and funny, and smart, and brutal, and tender, is not enough, but is a beginning. "Law & Order: Viewers Like Us" sticks in my mind as one of my favorite of this book's wildly brilliant moments, but the whole thing is airtight excellent with nary a misstep.
December 21, 2016
This quirky collection defies categorization as much as it entertains and intrigues. Each story is a gem in its own way, with the author pouring so much of himself into them. They're all quite surreal though grounded in reality. Most of them are, at least in part, send ups of absurdities of pop culture as they figure into people's lives and sexualities. But while sending them up, they also show more than a little affection.
My favorite is probably Law & Order: Viewers Like Us, a story with a particularly weird premise that strangely doesn't seem too implausible. Seducing Matt Mitcham and Seducing Adam Lambert are the only two stories obviously meant to be connected, but a little imagination had me placing their narrator as the narrator of other stories where said figure was not named. Though the author probably did not intend that, it made for a character who'd had some interesting life experiences.
In Everyday Zoology, the author pulls off that most difficult of narrative forms: second person. The story is a suitably baffling cap-off to the collection.
My favorite is probably Law & Order: Viewers Like Us, a story with a particularly weird premise that strangely doesn't seem too implausible. Seducing Matt Mitcham and Seducing Adam Lambert are the only two stories obviously meant to be connected, but a little imagination had me placing their narrator as the narrator of other stories where said figure was not named. Though the author probably did not intend that, it made for a character who'd had some interesting life experiences.
In Everyday Zoology, the author pulls off that most difficult of narrative forms: second person. The story is a suitably baffling cap-off to the collection.
February 1, 2017
The Book Riot 2017 Read Harder Challenge - Read a book published by a micropress
March 16, 2017
omg just so good. so weird but also so relatable.
December 25, 2016
This book is &*%$ing killer. Tim Jones-Yelvington slips in and out of voices and worlds, obsessions and points of view, so deftly and swiftly that, really, it's hard not to use the word "whirlwind" to describe the experience of reading this book. Yet there is just enough lingering, such good pacing, that everything--these characters, their lives--sticks--and you'll pause for a while after finishing each story to let it reverberate. Funny, brutal, honest as hell, and really, really smart. I highly recommend this collection.
April 13, 2018
This is a book version of "Black Mirror", with a focus on pop culture instead of technology.
And it's absolutely hilarious.
And it's absolutely hilarious.
January 1, 2018
In a word: delightful (!)
In more: Fascinatingly revealing. Of what, I couldn't say for sure. The author? Us? Many of the stories have a hyper-real confessional feel, in the way where you never know what's based on truth, it all feels true but also like a lie that's telling reveals more about the teller than the truth ever could, but more, what the lie-listener's truth is, too. You never know if you're being played, your own mind being probed to reveal who you are instead of who the author is.
TJY lets you project your assumptions all over TJY. And then snowballs them right back.
Overtly analytical, coyly emotional, and engagingly playful, often TJY will take you by the hand and redirect you from presumptions certain types of experiences and stories have built in, and will explain exactly why this is not that. Those tropes and easy beats will be played with when it lends to the larger ideas, but will not be allowed to have their hold over us anymore.
In more: Fascinatingly revealing. Of what, I couldn't say for sure. The author? Us? Many of the stories have a hyper-real confessional feel, in the way where you never know what's based on truth, it all feels true but also like a lie that's telling reveals more about the teller than the truth ever could, but more, what the lie-listener's truth is, too. You never know if you're being played, your own mind being probed to reveal who you are instead of who the author is.
TJY lets you project your assumptions all over TJY. And then snowballs them right back.
Overtly analytical, coyly emotional, and engagingly playful, often TJY will take you by the hand and redirect you from presumptions certain types of experiences and stories have built in, and will explain exactly why this is not that. Those tropes and easy beats will be played with when it lends to the larger ideas, but will not be allowed to have their hold over us anymore.
November 20, 2016
"We are learning our moves. I am trying to reach you. We are trying to dance."
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews