Contributor
Fiona Duncan
Fiona Duncan is a Canadian-American author and organizer and the founder of the social literary practice Hard to Read. Duncan’s debut novel, Exquisite Mariposa (Soft Skull Press), won a 2020 Lambda Award. She is currently developing a narrative biography and critical study of the transdisciplinary American artist Pippa Garner.
Lisa Lyon
Fiona Duncan pays homage to the unprecedented, and underappreciated, life and work of Lisa Lyon.
Personal Best
Fiona Duncan tracks the development and reception of Robert Towne’s 1982 film.
The African Desperate
Artist and filmmaker Martine Syms teamed up with writer and poet Rocket Caleshu to create the 2022 film The African Desperate. Starring the artist Diamond Stingily as Palace, the film received rave reviews for its honest and unflinching portrayal—and parody—of the art world. Mixing genres and proceeding according to Syms’s singular aesthetic vision, The African Desperate leads audiences through a twenty-four-hour period in Palace’s life and into questions about education, romance, race, and more. Syms, Caleshu, and Stingily met with Fiona Duncan to discuss the film’s creation.
The Future of the Internet
In an effort to better understand the recent past, present, and future of the Internet, Fiona Duncan joins professors Tiziana Terranova and Mindy Seu to discuss their practices and their latest publishing projects.
Story of the Editor
Fiona Alison Duncan profiles six literary editors who are changing the standards of publishing.
Cecilia Pavón
Poet, writer, and translator Cecilia Pavón’s Little Joy, a collection of short stories written between 1999 and 2020, marks the first publication of the celebrated Argentine’s prose in English translation. Here, Pavón speaks with Fiona Alison Duncan, author of Exquisite Mariposa: A Novel (2019), about the art of translation, the costs of consumerism, and the importance of writing beyond the self.