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Kate Zambreno
Kate Zambreno is the author most recently of Drifts (Riverhead) and To Write As If Already Dead, a study of Hervé Guibert (Columbia University Press). Forthcoming in Summer 2023 from Riverhead is The Light Room, a meditation on art and care, as well as Tone, a collaboration with Sofia Samatar, from Columbia University Press in early 2024. ‘Insekt’ is part of an in-progress work of fiction, Realisms. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.

Articles Available Online


Insekt or large verminous thing

Fiction

September 2022

Kate Zambreno

Fiction

September 2022

Around dusk one evening in March, I went out back to the small garage, and switched on my small square of artificial light at...

Feature

January 2018

Accumulations (Appendix F)

Kate Zambreno

Feature

January 2018

I’ve been keeping a mental list of all the pieces of art that I’ve nursed Leo in front of...

I disowned my real pain & engaged with its subordinates:   despicable neediness, heroic guilt and undeterrable envy Each day I woke trussed up with this hernia of failure, bleat bleat There was inevitable blood; I slept on a pyre of bottles Stalked by motherhood, unable to summon my latent powers Leaves blew into the hallway and did their ageing there, the eager wind fussed with them like the beaded fringe of a shawl at war with itself Powerful identification with the leaves In the garden, splendour made its entrance while I wasn’t looking I was quaking all this time, my whole body a throat stoppered by tears I tried to will dreams of romantic redemption, but my brain swatted them away, like flies gunning for something you really want to eat     No one should be frightened of pleats (Coco Chanel)   My life has been merely a prolonged childhood Bored, with a squalid boredness that idleness and riches bring about (I would make a very bad dead person) Money is not attractive, it’s convenient The only thing I really like spending is my strength Every time I’ve done something reasonable, it’s brought me bad luck: that sweet smile of gratitude, tinged with a longing to kill me I am ready to start all over again The first people to whom I opened my heart were the dead I hate people touching me, rather as cats do I merely observe that I have grown up, lived, and am growing old alone I loathe people putting order into my disorder Let them skip the pages Sometimes I lose myself in the maze of my legendary fame What an abomination, a ghastly disease! That handsome parasite that is the imagination, lapped up in secret, in the so-called attic I imposed black; it’s still going strong today I don’t have to explain my creations; they have explained themselves I knew how to express my times I used to tolerate colour Changing one’s mind appalls me Do you see what a foul temper I have? I cannot take orders from anyone, except in love, madly, with a man who loathes me Everything is lovely and empty I only care for trivial things, else nothing at all If I built aeroplanes, I would begin by making one that was

Contributor

August 2014

Kate Zambreno

Contributor

August 2014

Kate Zambreno is the author most recently of Drifts (Riverhead) and To Write As If Already Dead, a study...

Heroines

feature

March 2013

Kate Zambreno

feature

March 2013

I am beginning to realise that taking the self out of our essays is a form of repression. Taking the self out feels like...

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poetry

September 2011

The Moon over Timna

Rikudah Potash

TR. Michael Casper

poetry

September 2011

In a copper house Lived the new moon, The new moon Of Timna. In a copper coat With a...

fiction

June 2011

Arthur Miller

Michael Amherst

fiction

June 2011

The last time I saw Vin and Jackie we were killing slugs. The three of us had been smoking...

fiction

January 2016

Dimples

Eka Kurniawan

TR. Annie Tucker

fiction

January 2016

Moments ago, the woman with the lovely dimples had been shivering, utterly ravaged by the evening, but now her...

 

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