Peter Dube

Peter Dub 's Desire as Praxis: Towards a Queer Surrealism dives deeply into the intricate connections between surrealism and the cultures of same-sex attracted queer men, unraveling the complex interplay of the erotic, affect, and the occult. In his groundbreaking first non-fiction work, acclaimed author Dub -celebrated in *Quill and Quire* as a leading voice in gay surrealist fiction-invites readers on a journey that transcends traditional boundaries. This bold study illuminates the transformative potential of the subversive in literature, life, and sheer magic(k). Dub 's work offers new possibilities with profound personal, poetic, and political significance. Join him in this captivating exploration of the exciting intersections of desire, creativity, and identity. Peter Dub holds a PhD in the humanities from Concordia University's Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC), and is a multi-genre writer, translator, and independent scholar. He is the author, co-author or editor of a dozen books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. His novella, Subtle Bodies, an imagined life of French surrealist Ren Crevel was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, and his most recent work, a novel in prose poems entitled The Headless Man, was shortlisted for both the A. M. Klein Prize and the ReLit award. He was a member of the editorial committee of the contemporary art magazine Espace, art actuel for 18 years and is currently co-editor of The Philosophical Egg, an organ of living surrealism. He lives and works in his hometown of Montreal.

This whimsical, sly, and slightly crazy collection of short stories from award-winning novelist, poet, and songwriter Trebor Healey covers much ground. The range is jaw-dropping: from a Vietnamese gangster with a voracious libido and a small boy troubled by his gay dog to an 1870s hermaphrodite cowboy named Captain Jinx ... and then there's the lad who becomes a sex-inspiring satyr, an American Spanish student in Guanajuato seduced by a pair of twins during the Cervantino celebrations, and a housesitting gig that goes terribly awry. There is humor and insight delivered in lyrical, vibratory phrases, and darker more haunting tales as well, often with a thread of Catholic, as well as Mexican culture, involving young men facing untimely death, reflections on aging, family, duty, sacrifice and sibling rivalry - and the fateful and courageous choices we are forced to make in the name of love. Originally published in 2007, this new edition includes a foreword by Peter Dub (The Headless Man)."Trebor Healey's writing is suffused with the purest emotion, the bravest, funniest tone, and the perfect balance of poetics, daring and charm." - Joy Nicholson, The Tribes of Palos Verdes"Shows us men and women whose lives have been, or are about to be, forever altered by love ... sharp, empathic, and unforgettable." - Bernard Cooper, The Bill from My Father"The eleven selections take the reader on far journeys in space and time, from Ireland, the forests of Alaska, and the cobblestone streets of Guanajuato to the streets and saloons of California's post Gold Rush prosperity and San Francisco in the age of AIDS ... pulls the reader in immediately and offers a journey to the distant coasts of emotion." - Robert Ridinger, Speaking for Our Lives"Trebor Healey is all soul ... The way he stacks sentences vibrates on the page. There's an impressive, experimental range in this short story collection. Trebor Healey uses multiple narrators to bring voice to a variety of human experiences." - Kirk Read, How I Learned to Snap

The book-length prose poem The Headless Man takes up Georges Bataille's subversive image of the acéphale and turns him into an outsider "everyman" to explore the paradoxes of identity, the body, and desire. This oddly fractured tale centres the monster, both human and inhuman, recognizable yet strange, in a labyrinth of experience. The Headless Man awakens in a place that, although based on our own world, is unfamiliar to him. Moving through this strange landscape, he must make sense of it through his actions, striving to determine whether there is a place for him in a world not made in his image, or whether he must imagine something different in order to be. Having no head, he cannot speak, see, or hear in the usual ways, so he must learn to do these things using other parts of his body-which leads him to a fuller sense of himself. In this gothic, picaresque narrative, laced with horror and humour, Montreal surrealist Peter Dubé addresses his concern with queer challenges to identity and sexual boundaries, exploring questions about insider and outsider, what constitutes the "normal," and what is relegated to the realm of the "monstrous."

Will Aitken, the editor of this collection of fictions, said in his recommendation for Dube's last novel, "Hovering World", that it is "queer in all the best senses of the word non-conformist, eccentric, dissenting, crazed, aberrant, and, of course, invaluable". What was true of that debut, is more so of Dube's second major work. Again, the reader finds himself in a Big City world of late night neon, narrow streets, lurid bohemian warrens. Roaming and dwelling herein are strange, almost gothic characters with memorable fixations and obsessions. Thom, the protagonist, muses over the artist Terrence who torches his life's work, over Adrian who seals himself in his flat and persuasively writes his friends that he is presently off hunting Vampires in Eastern Europe, and Zack who braves homophobic thugs in the littered, dawn streets in order to slip provocative supplements into the daily newspaper. In a sense, this collection is about individuals whose zany imaginations have finally run away with them somewhat like the bus Thom takes at the end of the book and whose driver announces he's hijacking the vehicle and driving from of the city. On another level, all these characters with their obsessions are the embodiments of Greek mythic archetypes...