Expat 4

by Sierra Armor (Contributor), Cory Bennet (Contributor), bibles (Contributor)

2021 the work which will become a new genre itself will be called expat 4.0, it was said in 2020, to tear the very fabric of the universe to shreds in an egotistical abattoir, to sew us back together vital organs to organs stitching constellations for a few dollars more four on the floor make your heart explode. March 2020, one year later we captured a cultural moment in a plague year. Fear was in the broadband, socially atomized they told us to stay inside and fear we did, isolated we turned on each other weaponizing culture wars because art is the living, breathing. Art is the soul, the lifestyle we chose. Curated by we, who’s we? We are indoctrinated, we brook no nonsense, receptive only to noise, only the raw, inchoate germ of the new noise bleeding edge avant garde, the vanguard of dissent, the je ne sais quoi. It is living, breathing in your house. More than an anthology, expat IV begs to be reckoned with, blazes a trail of verbal shock troops, infantry, ground game no we don’t fall in line, no we’re not easy to control. You’ll be screaming for more — ExPat Four is 34 pieces of live writing by some familiar luminaries and household names, e-celebs and enfants terribles, cyber writers and dilettantes, misfits and disreputable deviants, ruminating on the times which are aghast, waxing romantic, dishing c/o the status quo, challenging the old norms and forms, leaving it all behind in the hopes of finding a new way. Are we post-writing yet? How much time do we have? Is this thing on? See us on the streets, dance dance dance to the radio read ’em and weep. Read ’em and move on. We’re dreaming baby dreaming in fiberoptic, this is hell forever, this will end in lurid violence, this will be so much fun, glorious fun, plague still raging permutations, a double A-sider written in gold b/w we’re all going to perish and in heaven everything is fine. In your glass house you are unwell and we’re the cure. Assimilate or die. This is your last chance. We’re doubling down, sticking to our guns, come at us while the parasocial reigns, the hive-minded are ensconced, and we are pure as inbred wolves in our interiority headhunting down externalities one by one rolling heads when this ink dries. The stakes have never been higher, the only literary mixtape that matters, a songbook of dense humanity in the throes of capital’s unraveling. The sensory acme of our vicious species, expat 4 contains everything from lovelorn confessionals to design-heavy hypergraphics to speculative life of the mindfucks to tortured macabre and heavy hitting gritty realism. Theory-addled hybrids collide, much genre-straddling, autofictions and eerie, unclassifiable things. It is the intersection of defiantly indulgent, performative, sharp as fangs and everything you’ve come to expect from our storytelling cloth. It is infrangible from real life, a denaturing and rewilding of print media’s druggy aesthetic and temporal dimensions. Never before and never again happening until next time, our energy resurgent. Join the fanatical insurgency and be rapturously elated.

Genres: Fiction

456 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2021

Reviews

[Cavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A cultural phenomenon. We waited, and waited -- geez -- oh, OH HOW WE WAITED. And it was worth it. A beautiful thematic consistency while maintaining the personalization of each contributor. It feels like holding a weapon. It feels like holding a bunch of people who are simultaneously snarling and grinning and ready to pounce -- their intentions vague and unknown.

Are you going to get bit? Are you going to get hugged.

Fuck around and found out. Don't be left behind.

[Bob Comparda · Rating 5 out of 5]

An anthology of experimental fiction and essays from Expat press, featuring 34 writers, only 2 of which, Nash & Nulick, had I read before. I was hoping to find some new authors to read and I definitely did. This anthology was all over the place topic and genre wise, which I liked because most longer anthologies get boring after awhile when every story seems the same. I would recommend this to anybody looking for some young, modern writers to follow. Standouts for me included Christopher Zeischegg, Maggie Siebert, Fawzy Zablah, SG Phillips, Jane DIESEL and Paul Curran.

plasticbagger - Real Love ⭐⭐⭐
Jessi Gaston - They Laid In a Bed In a Room ⭐⭐
Elle Nash - Ideation ⭐⭐⭐
MIKA - Forward Demonic Reconnaissance Operations ⭐⭐
Christopher Zeischegg - The Artist ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
G.P. DeSalvo - The Book of Earth ⭐
Sarah Esper Sosalla - Take the Exit ⭐⭐⭐
Bett Williams - Crevasse Worthy of an Octopus ⭐⭐⭐
New York Team - Even In Your Sleep ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jane Judith - Sixteen Scraps of Footage ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jonathan Lethem - The Afterlife ⭐⭐
bibles - Context Creator ⭐
Lindsay Lerman - Feel It Through Me ⭐⭐
Maggie Siebert - Oral History of Ammon ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Alexandrine J. Ogundimu - The Thin White Duke ⭐⭐
Cavin Bryce Gonzalez - Standing on the Edge of a Cruise Ship ⭐⭐⭐
Mike Kleine - drruKQ.s. ⭐
Sierra Armor - Wrong ⭐⭐⭐
Cory Bennet - On the Street Corner of My Mind ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sean Kilpatrick - From Henchmen, a Novella on the Millennial Dilemma ⭐
Fawzy Zablah - Why Are You Afraid of Growing Old With Me? ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
O F Cieri - Maenad Apocalypse ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Germán Sierra - Et In Arcadia Ego ⭐⭐
SG Phillips - Do Please Shut the Door ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jane DIESEL - In the Bowels ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Paul Curran - Bad Detective ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Calvin Westra - Stravinsky's Firebird ⭐⭐⭐
Dawson Wohler - Martian Child ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Mike Corrao - Xeno-Morphologies in the Regime of Lucid Art ⭐
Kai Edward Warmoth - Ave Maria, Nimuë, Viviane ⭐⭐
Theresa Smith - The Tears of Caravaggio ⭐
James Nulick - Dark Web ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Anthony Dragonetti - I Heard It on the Radio ⭐⭐⭐
Manuel Marrero - Dove Country ⭐⭐