“Like writing, fisting is both a replicable skill and a rarefied art form.” This brachioproctic line begins writer Tausif Noor’s “Hand In Glove” (Artforum, 12 April 2019), a joyfully loaded review of William E. Jones’s novel I’m Open to Anything, released in 2019 by Los Angeles independent publisher We Heard You Like Books. In this searching conversation, Lauren and Tausif discuss Jones’s oeuvre, the importance of independent publishing, and celebrate sexual transgression while lamenting that writing can often feel, like Jones’s description of fisting, “a cork popping in reverse.”
Tausif Noor on “Hand in Glove” – Season 4, Episode 3
Momus is an international online art publication and podcast that stresses “a return to art criticism.” In our first six years, Momus has been committed to reading our cultural text more deeply, and working with writers responding to a discordant, sped-up moment with slow looking and brave positioning. We regularly publish emerging writers and editors, and find our shifting mandate turning around the future criterion of art criticism, and its multiplicity. Momus has attracted a wide readership over its first six years, and was shortlisted twice for the International Award for Art Criticism in 2016. Momus produces a podcast, named one of the top-ten art podcasts by The New York Times in March 2020, now in its fourth season. We also published a first print anthology, "Momus: A Return to Art Criticism Vol. 1 (2014-17)," in 2017. The Momus Emerging Critics Residency began in August 2019, in collaboration with Concordia University, and with the support of former US Ambassador to Canada Bruce and Vicki Heyman. Residencies are now held twice annually with various institutional partners, including OCAD University and University of Chicago. Check for scheduled 2021 residencies and application deadlines in early spring 2021.