Zefyr Lisowski’s GIRL WORK
Wednesday, July 3
Doors: 7pm
Reading: 7:30pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
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ZEFYR LISOWSKI
JOHANNA HEDVA
MURIEL LEUNG
SLOANE HOLZER
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Join us for celebrating Zefyr Lisowski’s debut poetry collection, GIRL WORK, out from Noemi Books, with readings from Johanna Hedva, Muriel Leung, Sloane Holzer and Zefyr Lisowski.
GIRL WORK, a book-length meditation on sexual violence and feminized labor, centers hybrid-form and prose poems exploring haunting, labor, sexual trauma, and the assertion of a gender- nonconforming self in our current political moment. Written in injunctions to the self, to past assailants, and to friends, GIRL WORK challenges canonical representations of pain as punitive, redemptive, or separable from the environmental conditions it springs from. Throughout GIRL WORK, a self is restored from the detritus of memory—flashes of sexual violence, pop cultural touchstones like the movie The Ring, the music of Ke$ha, the sudden death of a father, the paintings of Henry Darger, and more. Winner of the 2022 Book Award from Noemi Press.
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Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches and now lives in LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of the novel Your Love Is Not Good, which Kirkus called a “hellraising, resplendent must read,” and the novel On Hell, which was named one of Dennis Cooper’s favorites of 2018. They are also the author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, which collects a decade of work in poetry, plays, performances, and essays. Their artwork has been shown internationally, and their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and The Moon. Their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, Topical Cream, Spike, and is anthologized in Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages. Their essay collection How To Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom will be published in September 2024 by Hillman Grad Books.
Sloane Holzer is a writer and artist. Interested in the intersections of narrative, desire, and technology, her work considers how these forces shape our lives. She incorporates transness, as well as somatic practices like sadomasochism and ritualized movement, as lenses through which to ideate and archive experiences. Her creative output includes critical essays, narrative fiction, and performance-centric video work. Her writing has previously been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Leste Magazine, and Them. Her artwork has been featured in Baest Journal. She lives on colonized, unceded Huichin Ohlone land, also called Oakland, California. She is currently an MFA Creative Writing and MA Visual & Critical Studies dual degree candidate at the California College of the Arts. You can find her on Instagram and Tiktok at @s7oane or irl near a large body of water.
Muriel Leung is the author of the forthcoming How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnamable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company) in addition to Imagine Us, the Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) with Kristine Thompson. She received her PhD in creative writing and literature from USC and serves on the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. She is a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop, and Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, among others. She lives in Southern California.
Zefyr Lisowski is a poet and essayist from the Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina. She’s the author of two poetry collections, Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and Girl Work (Noemi Press, 2024). A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Nonfiction and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, Zefyr has received further support from Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, Blue Mountain Center, the Center for the Humanities, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Her essay collection about horror movies, exes, and love is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in Fall 2025. She lives online at zeflisowski.com and has seen grave robbers twice.