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Fucking Magic
Clementine is a queer punk with a crazy hard past. A sober alcoholic and survivor living with complex ptsd, she is not content to settle for survival. She wants it all: a big, fucked up beautiful life, full of love, sex, and pleasure. Fucking Magic follows Clementine in her adventures as she falls apart and puts herself back together. It grapples with the frustrations of dating while crazy and revels in the hot gay sex of hard-earned survivor sexuality. Fucking Magic has it all: heartbreak, loss, and expansive, stubborn hope. A collection of twelve issues of the popular perzine of the same name, Fucking Magic lays bare the life of a polyamorous bisexual, hopeless romantic, and tenacious dreamer. This is writing for anyone who has suffered and still wants to feel everything.
“Reading Clementine Morrigan's Fucking Magic is like reading the diary of your best friend who just happens to be the coolest queer punk witch. One part memoir, one part prose poetry, one part gorgeous fabulism, and powerful, trauma-informed sexy enchantment all the way through, this collected edition of Morrigan's signature zine series is bound to first capture – and then liberate – the heart of anyone who has lived, loved, and grieved. Queer runaways, survivors, and social justice diehards seeking tenderness and nuance in particular will resonate with the magic of this book. Open it and fall under Morrigan's spell.” – Kai Cheng Thom, author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars and I Hope We Choose Love.
“Clementine Morrigan is fearless. She writes with the real-life authority of someone who’s been through the hell of cancellation and back. This book will challenge your assumptions of what a person is to make of their trauma, and spur us all to think and love harder.” – Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White.
“A veteran of the beloved underground publishing tradition of zines, Clementine Morrigan is the sober alcoholic love child of William S. Burroughs and Carrie Bradshaw. Self-published for most of her career, she has built a life on grit, library photocopy machine toner, and the sheer strength of her words. In this triumphant collection of personal essays – her runaway best-selling perzine sensation Fucking Magic in one place for the first time – Morrigan gives an account of her life starting from the first real treacherous disappointments of early sobriety and through a brutal, transcendent, and consistently sexy journey of self-liberation. Fucking Magic is a testament to the highs and the lows of life at the margins of madness, joy, and oblivion – a life fought for by fist fighting in alleyways and dark rooms with the darkest underbellies of misery and desire, until they spit a white-hot plume of magic to splatter all over the ground." – Tara McGowan-Ross, author of Scorpio Season and Nothing Will be Different.
“Reading Clementine Morrigan's Fucking Magic is like reading the diary of your best friend who just happens to be the coolest queer punk witch. One part memoir, one part prose poetry, one part gorgeous fabulism, and powerful, trauma-informed sexy enchantment all the way through, this collected edition of Morrigan's signature zine series is bound to first capture – and then liberate – the heart of anyone who has lived, loved, and grieved. Queer runaways, survivors, and social justice diehards seeking tenderness and nuance in particular will resonate with the magic of this book. Open it and fall under Morrigan's spell.” – Kai Cheng Thom, author of Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars and I Hope We Choose Love.
“Clementine Morrigan is fearless. She writes with the real-life authority of someone who’s been through the hell of cancellation and back. This book will challenge your assumptions of what a person is to make of their trauma, and spur us all to think and love harder.” – Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of Losing My Cool and Self-Portrait in Black and White.
“A veteran of the beloved underground publishing tradition of zines, Clementine Morrigan is the sober alcoholic love child of William S. Burroughs and Carrie Bradshaw. Self-published for most of her career, she has built a life on grit, library photocopy machine toner, and the sheer strength of her words. In this triumphant collection of personal essays – her runaway best-selling perzine sensation Fucking Magic in one place for the first time – Morrigan gives an account of her life starting from the first real treacherous disappointments of early sobriety and through a brutal, transcendent, and consistently sexy journey of self-liberation. Fucking Magic is a testament to the highs and the lows of life at the margins of madness, joy, and oblivion – a life fought for by fist fighting in alleyways and dark rooms with the darkest underbellies of misery and desire, until they spit a white-hot plume of magic to splatter all over the ground." – Tara McGowan-Ross, author of Scorpio Season and Nothing Will be Different.
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2021
14 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Clementine Morrigan
39 books370 followersClementine Morrigan is a writer. She is the writer behind the zines Love Without Emergency, Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops to Each Other, Fucking Crazy, and Fucking Girls. She also wrote the books Sexting, Fucking Magic, Trauma Magic, You Can't Own the Fucking Stars, The Size of a Bird, and Rupture. She has been writing and publishing for more than 20 years and has many more projects on the way. They are also a podcaster as one half of the podcast Fucking Cancelled and they're the creator of the popular Trauma Informed Polyamory workshop. They also teach other online workshops like Bisexual Girls with Baggage and Disorganized Attachment Is a Fucking Trip. She is an ecosocialist, an anarchist, an abolitionist, an opposer of cancel culture, a trauma educator, a sex educator, a person living with complex ptsd, a sober alcoholic, a polyamorous bisexual dyke, and a proud dog mom to Clover “the dog” Morrigan.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 25, 2022
It's reading a diary by a badass queer punk anarchist who writes very poetically. Gets into topics of queerness, anarchism, incest, trauma, healing from said trauma, polyamory, alcoholism, suicide, kink, the magic of existing. Weaves some hot beautiful queer sex and love into that mix, along with some heartbreak and queer dating struggles.
Aside: I was reading this at my parents house because fuck it life is short. My Mom is like, oh what's this about? Picks it up, reads some, decides she wants dibs on reading it next. My mother of the adorable hippie grandma vibes. Okay. I don't know what my life is right now but I'm curious what she'll think of it.
Aside: I was reading this at my parents house because fuck it life is short. My Mom is like, oh what's this about? Picks it up, reads some, decides she wants dibs on reading it next. My mother of the adorable hippie grandma vibes. Okay. I don't know what my life is right now but I'm curious what she'll think of it.
December 17, 2021
Clementine's generosity of heart does not disappoint in her writing. Bearing their soul in this collection of zines, they make my own soul crack open wide enough for hope to pour in and sorrow to slither out.
In this book, she brings to a close an important era of her life, opening up many paths for her journey to continue. She offers love, advice and motivation for all of her readers to heal their deepest wounds and to seek out their deepest desires.
As I say to all my loved ones, I'll say again: vulnerability is so hot. Thank you, Clementine, for being a much needed sexy spokesperson for compassion, self-growth and community care.
In this book, she brings to a close an important era of her life, opening up many paths for her journey to continue. She offers love, advice and motivation for all of her readers to heal their deepest wounds and to seek out their deepest desires.
As I say to all my loved ones, I'll say again: vulnerability is so hot. Thank you, Clementine, for being a much needed sexy spokesperson for compassion, self-growth and community care.
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December 19, 2022I am not sure how to articulate how I felt about this beautiful collection of writing except to call it a gift. I found Clementine through her podcast about cancel culture and now I know what an astounding writer she is too. While everything here tracks Clementine's own journey through healing from a variety of traumas, it also felt like an offering to anyone who is healing. It's not a roadmap and she doesn't offer any specific advice, but just the fact that she grows on the page and through the book offers hope and insight. I especially appreciated the writing where she worked through different pieces of shame she held, but also her ability to be messy (not messy writing, but messy as a person) and still find grace to give herself (something I know I struggle with personally). It's comforting to know that healing is possible and that it's a process not a destination. Clementine is an insightful, thoughtful, passionate, and inspiring writer and person and I'm eternally grateful she put all this down on the page and shared it. I know I'll return to this book again and again when I need inspiration, for my own writing and my own healing.
March 22, 2022
this book was gifted to me by my partner, who has also been reading about polyvagal theory and learning about co-regulation. I found clementine’s content through a post that a friend shared on instagram, and it has been an incredible coincidence to find in her book so much about somatic experiencing and attachment theory, themes i have been trying to incorporate in my life. i became interested in clementine’s work mostly because of feminism, but ever since, i have been fascinated by her thoughts on cancel culture, trauma, relationships, polyamory, politics… this is an inspiring book that narrates her intense process of recovery through the good and the bad and i’m obsessed with it. i think the way she exposes herself in order to help construct a better world is beautiful and brave and i wish her all the best.
December 13, 2022
This took me so long to read because I didn’t want it to end. Clementine’s writing is a raw beacon of transformation - proof from numerous middles and numerous other sides that there’s a life beyond the pain of the past (which comes all too often to the present).
Reading this collection of zines in order, it’s striking how coherently the narrative flows on Clementine’s work to build a home for and within themselves. The work spirals slowly outwards, enlarging and revisiting themes it touched on earlier.
This writing feels like sitting beside someone else within their mind - like Yumi Sakugawa’s artwork about having tea with your demons, except it’s Clementine’s tea party and they’ve also invited you to the table. It’s so real, it’s a balm. I’m thankful for Clementine’s work.
Reading this collection of zines in order, it’s striking how coherently the narrative flows on Clementine’s work to build a home for and within themselves. The work spirals slowly outwards, enlarging and revisiting themes it touched on earlier.
This writing feels like sitting beside someone else within their mind - like Yumi Sakugawa’s artwork about having tea with your demons, except it’s Clementine’s tea party and they’ve also invited you to the table. It’s so real, it’s a balm. I’m thankful for Clementine’s work.
June 20, 2022
I first started reading Clementine on Diaryland nearly two decades ago and even then I thought they were one of the best writers I’d ever read. And I still stand by that.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews