OCTOBER newsletter: repost

Hi friends,

How are you all doing? I think the last time I did one of these newsletters was way back in May. This is a bi-annual newsletter now, I guess. Yikes.

Did you have a fun Halloween? Did you dress up?

I didn't go out for any Halloween parties (amateur hour) and instead practiced my yearly tradition of thinking up really cool Halloween costumes or Halloween costumes I could throw together super quickly and finished it off by staying at home and watching murder suspect body language commentary videos. I've watched a pretty sizeable chunk of the true crime content on Youtube and this is where I'm at right now.

I got dressed up for a work happy hour thing in my Twin Peaks waitress uniform which was a very low effort costume but people generally liked it and I didn’t have to explain what I was supposed to be too much, even though we all know the best Halloween costumes usually require an explanation and an insider knowledge of whatever subculture character or element you're emulating.

Let me know what you've got going on. I like hearing from you, so please feel free to leave me a comment. Or don't. But you can if you want to.

Anyway. Here's some updates!

We're having a reading on Thursday, Nov 14 at Wolfman Books in Oakland to celebrate the release of Ivanna Baranova's new book Confirmation Bias out by Metatron Press. I'll be reading alongside Jesse Prado, Brent Reichenberger, Ren Cook, and (of course) Ivanna Baranova. Thanks to Jesse for setting it all up. This event is not to be missed.

I wrote a piece for Queen Mobs Teahouse. My piece is about writing and waiting for the bus. I read this piece for the first time out loud for Cassandra Dallett's book re-release party for Bad Sandy and it's actually fun to read out loud. Take a look.

Interview with Joanna Valente for #survivor series. In this interview I respond to questions about trauma, and I want to say thank you to Joanna Valente for including me in her series and providing some really good questions that made me think and helped me figure out some things. It took me almost two months to answer these questions, because they were tough to think about and also I really wanted to take my time and be thoughtful in my responses. I wrote my responses in an email on my phone over the course of several weeks while on the bus and thus there are many typos and weird autocorrects that I didn't catch, but..

I have been busy (not) working on Hate Train, a really difficult-to-write collection about trauma. It's taking a lot of time to work on because I have a lot of thinking I need to do about it and settling down to spend a good amount of time working on it requires a lot of my energy but I'm hoping to finish it up this weekend. Stay tuned, because it's coming soon from Spooky Girlfriend Press!

Buy Disaster Horse: Smol Essays by Nooks Krannie (published by Be About It Press in September, 2019) and read an essay from the collection "I Fuck Who I Want With a Mutual Understanding", with many thanks to Elle Nash for writing a great blurb and publishing the essay on Hobart!

Speaking of books, A Pretty Little Wilderness by Cassandra Dallett is coming soon from Be About It Press!

What's next on deck for Be About It zine? Well, we're cooking up a special Britney Spears zine. Send me your best work inspired by Blackout by Britney Spears, or inspired by something from that era. I've already received some really killer pieces, and I'm looking forward to reading more of your work! Due date: Nov 20 (would like to have it out by Dec 2, Britney's bday). Please send submissions to zinebeaboutitpress@gmail.com to be featured online and in a very special edition of be about it zine

As mentioned previously, I've been watching a lot of Youtube videos and I'm thinking about starting a Youtube channel. I actually really want to do this, but I want to plan it out and make it really good and I have a lot on my plate right now so I am a bit overwhelmed but I think I will do this and maybe use some time around the holidays to get it going. But before I devote too much time to making a Youtube channel I have a few other projects that I want to wrap!

Projects I want to get started include the Featuring zine: I had an idea recently to make a zine or put together a mixtape where poets are featured on other poets' poems. Musicians do this all the time, rappers are always featuring on some pop singer's track and pop singers are always featuring on some rock star's song and why don't poets do this more commonly? I'm sure it has been done before, but I think it would be really fun to get some poets to feature on other poets poems to make something really special and deliberate and maybe make a mixtape out of it all. I am still figuring out how this idea will work in reality but if you'd like to know more, send me an email or a note somehow and I will ping you when I know more.
I've got a lot of ideas and not enough energy to get them all happening in the time that I would like but I'm working on it.

Did you check out my Depressed Barbie series on South Broadway Ghost Society? I made ten memes using stock photography. Check them out.

Also, please be sure to check out the Be About It Press tumblr this week for new poetry by Keith Mark Gaboury and Andrea Ramos.

That's it for now. Thank you for reading my newsletter :)

Remembering GHOSTWATCH (1992)

I was in England with my family visiting my dad's parents in 1992. I was 7 years old.

I was watching TV, sitting on a little plastic chair that my Gran had bought from the market in expectation of our visit, one each for me and my sister. I remember my sister and I were really excited about these chairs when we arrived at Gran and Grandads house in Urmston, a suburb of Manchester, in the Fall of that year.

It was Halloween-time and I was a little bummed that we were staying in a country that doesn't really do the whole Halloween thing. There's no trick or treating in England, or at least there wasn't in 1992. Perhaps the commercial lure of Halloween candy sales got English companies promoting the holiday more in subsequent years, but when we were there I remember trying to explain to a girl who lived next door to my grandparents how the holiday worked and she was like, yeah okay whatever, and we had a sort of dress up party, our own Halloween parade, at my grandparents house using things around the house to make costumes. There's a photo of us my dad took, my sister and me and Leeann, the neighbor girl, wearing shawls and hats and other random stuff found at my grandparent’s house, and for some reason I'm holding up an ashtray in the photo because I had decided that it was part of my look.

What I want to talk about here is a show I was watching that my Gran turned off while I was watching. I was annoyed. She called it “rubbish.” And maybe she was right. It was a scary program, maybe too scary for a little kid like I was at the time. I didn't watch much of the program, maybe the first 30 minutes before I got cut off, but what I did watch has stuck around with me and influenced my own beliefs about ghosts.

In the program, which is styled as a news special (and precedes the advent of reality shows in ubiquity), a woman and her two daughters talk to a TV crew about a disturbance in their household, what they think is a ghost who stays in their basement. The ghost makes its presence known by banging on pipes in the basement, and the mom has felt and smelled the ghost’s “cabbage breath” on the back of her neck while coming up the stairs.

The description of the “cabbage breath” is something I have never forgotten, and it’s something I still think about whenever I am in the basement coming up the stairs in my parents’ house. Sometimes I visualize and imagine it to the point where I think I can feel someone behind me and I end up running the rest of the way up the stairs.

A few years ago I decided to look into what ghost show I was watching at that time in 1992, to see if I could see the rest of what didn’t get to see at the time. When I did some basic searches like “ghost show 90s england” I was able to find exactly what I was looking for. Apparently the program was called Ghostwatch, and it was a one-off that was only aired once. The program was completely scripted, but made to look like a “live” investigative documentary. What resulted was pretty convincing, and with real life news anchors hosting the show, audiences all over Britain were fooled. The whole thing caused quite an uproar, and a young man was so disturbed by the show that he took his own life. You can read more about the response Ghostwatch garnered here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-41740176

After reading about the show and having my memories confirmed, I watched the program in full on youtube. I just checked and it doesn’t look like it’s on youtube anymore, but I found the video on one of those spammy streaming sites and I’m going to try to watch it again tonight. It is very well-produced and covers all kinds of ground: there’s a spiritualist expert who opines on the poltergeist and believes the children wholeheartedly, there’s a skeptic who looks for a logical explanation for all of the weird phenomena that the children and their mother report, there’s comedic relief from Craig Charles who runs around the neighborhood surrounding the haunted house and tells the viewers how much he hates Halloween, there’s even a telephone bank for viewers to call in and share their ghostly experiences or make comments about what was happening on screen. All of it scripted. And it did kind of set the tone for the future of ghost reality shows, and reality shows in general.

I feel lucky that I was able to witness Ghostwatch, the show that shocked a nation and changed television forever, firsthand. Even though I was annoyed at the time, I also feel lucky that I was one of the kids who had a sensible adult around who decided it was too scary for a little kid to watch.

UPDATE: The program is funnier and quirkier than I remembered. I found the whole show streaming on Internet Archive and watched it last night. Definitely worth a watch.

Interview for #Survivor series

Joanna Valente interviewed me for their #Survivor series on their website. Check it out, and please excuse my typos.

You're not stupid. You're not alone. You didn't do this to yourself and you didn't ask for it to happen. You're not a bad person for having it happen to you, you're not a bad person for talking about it, and you're not a bad person for trying to take control of your own narrative. Healing is a process and it can take a long time and you should only do what you feel is best for you in your in time.

buy Be About It #16: EXPERIMENT (and read back-issues online free)

We have a new issue of Be About It zine out!

Check out Be About It #16: EXPERIMENT. 

Cover art by @gremlins_3_official, work inside by M; Margo, Kimberly Kim, June Gehringer, Jennifer Blowdryer, Sam Albala, Nancy Patrice Davenport, Paul Murufas, Abe Becker, Tim Xonnelly, Lauren Suchenski, Tom Snarky, J de Salvo, D.S. Black, and me, Alexandra Naughton. Check out the second edition printing with puke green cover. Get one for $5 today and I'll mail it to you!

Be sure to check out some Be About It zine back-issues, available for free download or you can just read online.

Check out Be About It zine #14 the INTERNET issue, featuring work by: Alexandra Naughton, Adam “A.j.” Binash, Andrea Coates, anna avery, catch business, Cassandra, Colin Kelly Sumption aka EmoDad666, Luis Neer, Joe Carrow, Nooks Krannie, Perry Davis, Rachel Olson, Shannon Runka, and Vincenzo Balistreri. Published July 2017. Short poetry, short fiction, and art, all inspired by the internet. Originally published October 2017.

The 15th edition of Be About It zine: WATER, with work by: Bianca Niño, Brice Maiurro, Chad Redden, Christine Hall, Cordelia Morgan, Donnie Martino, Is Sullivan, Joanna Anabo, Jonathan Aprea, Kevin Ridgeway, Kristina Ten, Maggie Grabmeier, M; Margo, Rhea Smith, Seth Berg, Sierra Ventura, Ted Tarnovski, Theo Konrad Auer, and Thomas L. Winters. Short poetry, short fiction, and art all inspired by water.
Originally published March 2018.

a film adaptation of one of my POSEY TASTE LIKE poems

In 2017 My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition was published as a greatly expanded full-length edition of my 2015 Bottlecap Press chapbook, My Posey Taste Like.

My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition is a concept album inspired by Lana Del Rey composed of surreal landscapes and insincerity masked as sincerity and vice versa and limbo is always a place on earth with you with you with you.

I was recently contacted via instagram by filmmaker, Hunter Way, who had read a poem I had published in Lumen Magazine (which was later published in My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition) and wanted to make a video inspired by the poem. Here is Hunter Way’s artistic statement:

“To me, this poem gave insight into how relationships play out in today’s world. There’s no contact, and everything is represented by something else. Everything’s communicated through different texts, and moods, and everything’s somewhat vague. I attempted to visually isolate these characters’ identities, and use modern technology/communication as a way to accent the barriers between people’s everyday lives.”

Just for the record, I love getting these types of requests! I love that fact that anyone would want to interact with my work at all, and then to make something inspired by it is really quite complimentary.

Hunter Way submitted the short video for a film class, and received a good grade on it. Please check the video out here:

CTRL ALT DEL write-up in Phindie!

So I guess this is kind of an online press tour, and I'm pretty excited that our movie premier in Philly at the Trocadero is coming up so quick-- in just over a week I'll be flying into my hometown for this very special event. I hope people show up! I know if they do they will like the movie and also the poetry. 

I want to share this write-up by Christopher Munden on Phindie, a site which covers independent theater and film in the Philadelphia area, titled Poetry and Film: Alexandra Naughton combines literary and cinematic talents at a film premier.

The write-up contains wonderful moments such as:

“Alexandra is such an amazing writer and performer,” he gushes. “That’s one of the other reasons for having poetry with the film. I really want to showcase all these incredible artists that are creating alongside the film and bring all of us together.”

“I think viewers will enjoy the story being told in the film and the way that we tell the story,” says Naughton. “I love the film. Every time I see Pirooz, we end up watching CTRL ALT DEL at least twice. There’s a lot going on in the movie, there’s a lot to follow."

Pirooz also got a shout-out on a site called Technically Delaware, which is where he went to high-school, in a piece titled From Hockessin to Hollywood: Pirooz Kalayeh returns with film ‘CTRL ALT DEL’.

Get stoked for our film premier on Sunday, April 29 at the Trocadero! Did you get your tickets yet? You should get them now! Buy them here for $8.00 (poetry, a movie, and live music? talk about a GREAT VALUE) <3

Ctrl Alt Del at Philadelphia's Trocadero (raffle tickets!)

Do you care about indie film? Do you care about people making movies because they have stories to tell that aren't being told in traditional cinema? Do you care about people making movies because they love making movies? If you answered "yes" to any or all of those questions, then that's awesome. You're at the right place right now.

I had the pleasure of working with Pirooz Kalayeh and his film crew, ILIKENIRVANA PRODUCTIONS for a movie that I helped conceive called Ctrl Alt Del. I'm stoked because we're premiering the film in Philly on Sunday, April 29 and I want you to be there. I have eight (8) tickets to raffle off!! If you want to enter the raffle, just share a link to this post on your social media-- and leave me a comment here so I can check it!! 

We will be showing the movie at the Balcony at the Trocadero, and there will be a poetry reading before the film, and a Q&A and live music/dancing after the film. I would like to have a good showing for this event! Confirmed poets are myself, Amy Saul-Zerby, and P.E. Garcia, but I will likely add one or two others to the lineup.

CTRL ALT DEL details four relationships intertwining on a single day in Los Angeles, and how each moves through various issues regarding gender inequality, the misuse of power, and familial pressure, until they shift into something different and unexpected.

Trailer Press Kit

Theater Screening Highlight Reel

Event Poster

Buy Tickets

See CTRL ALT DEL The Trocadero | April 29, 2018 @ 7:00pm $10

i miss this phone so much

Alexandra Naughton Podcast 001 & 002 featuring Cassandra Dallett

I love rap. I love listening to rap. I love reading about rap. I love researching rap. I love talking about rap. If you know me irl, you probably know this, and you might have also suggested that I start my own rap podcast.

Well, I did. I got the wonderful and super knowledgeable Cassandra Dallett to join me for the first two short intro episodes of the Alexandra Naughton Podcast (we had some technical difficulties about 30 minutes in and had to pause the live stream and reset the router, which is why there are two videos). 

Uploaded by Alexandra Naughton on 2018-04-10.

We talked about new releases from Cardi B, the Weeknd, and Drake, I asked Cassandra what her beef with Nicki Minaj is about, and we talked about poetry stuff and dealing with people who rip you off.

I hope you like the Podcast. We had a good time, and I'm glad we got the kinks somewhat worked out. This is a low budget podcast, we have no sound engineers or anything like that, but as long as we have a strong internet connection we will be good. 

Uploaded by Alexandra Naughton on 2018-04-10.

We will do this again. With more notes and talking points, maybe. Or at least we will do it again on a day where we both didn't wake up hella early and worked all day. I was exhausted by the time I got to Cassandra's house with my laptop. I need to make more money while somehow working less. If anyone has any tips on how to do that, I would be very grateful. Thank you.

Stay tuned for the next episode! You should probably subscribe to my channel so that you will always know when I'm about to go live <3

alexandra naughton podcast: 001 & 002 feat. cassandra dallett

in this moment we were talking about swaggerjackers

be about it zine #15 now available!

Wow, I can’t believe we’ve already done 15 editions of Be About It zine!!! We’ve been making zines for 8 years now, and I think that’s something to be proud of. 

Buy Be About It zine #15 now (on sale) for only 4 dollars! 

Chock full of wonderful writing from:

Bianca Niño, Brice Maiurro, Chad Redden, Christine Hall, Cordelia Morgan, Donnie Martino, Is Sullivan, Joanna Anabo, Jonathan Aprea, Kevin Ridgeway, Kristina Ten, Maggie Grabmeier, M; Margo, Rhea Smith, Seth Berg, Sierra Ventura, Ted Tarnovski, Theo Konrad Auer, Thomas L. Winters

It’s kind of amazing to think that Be About It was born out of my lil ol quarterlife crisis back in 2010. I didn’t know what I was doing with my life at the time but I knew I wanted to write and create art and share it with people. I got inspired, and I put my all into something that people still care about. I had an epiphany last night that starting Be About It was the beginning of me figuring out my identity. Praises to DIY publishing and poetry!

Also, check out Be About It #15 at Everyday Skate Shop's "Zine Bazaar" on April 5th in San Francisco, as a part of the Tenderloin's First Thursday Artwalk. I'll be there, hope to see you! 936 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94109, at Everyday Skate Shop from 7-11pm.

new rewards posted on Patreon

Social media is a mess these days. People are leaving facebook because they just figured out that the website has been selling our content for strategic marketing purposes forever. I want to be cool off facebook because it's an incredible waste of my time, for the most part, but I'm not going to delete it.

I want to stay connected with people and I want to be better at engaging with the literary community in a meaningful way. I want to stay in touch with people who make things, people who are doing shit. So I'll keep it and check it every so often but I'm no longer going to spend hours just scrolling. My time is better spent focusing on writing and making shit and keeping up with people who are doing the same.

So that's why I checked up on my Patreon page today. Go ahead, take a look, have a little laugh. I don't really know how to best use the site at the moment, but I'll figure it out. It seems like there is a lot of potential in the platform to keep myself creatively motivated while possibly earning a little extra dough to help pay some bills.

I hadn't checked my Patreon page since last July, but I went in today and edited the copy and added some new rewards. Do you think anyone will pay me $20 a month to get a personalized voicemail message? Or pay me $20 to receive a video of me rapping a verse by Nicki Minaj? I sure hope so.

I will rap to you

$20 or more per month

I love to rap (mostly Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj, but I also write my own raps sometimes) and if you choose this reward I will make a video of myself rapping a hot 16 and will send it directly to you. Just send me your email address first, or maybe your phone number.

I will call you and leave a poem on your voicemail

$20 or more per month

You have to give me your phone number, though. Don't worry, I will only call once a month, and I promise I won't sell your phone number to some shady umbrella corporation if you promise to do the same for me.

This is a pretty cool reward if you never get phone calls and you enjoy listening to voicemails. 

Back to Philly (and some shows)

I will be moving back to Philadelphia at the end of January. I am looking forward to the move and I believe it is a positive and healthy choice. 

The San Francisco Bay Area has been a second home for me these past nine years and I will miss it. I became an adult here. I realized and actualized my dreams of writing and publishing here. I've made some very important friendships here. On top of everything, it is the people I will miss the most, those who have supported and encouraged my work and made some room for me. I am grateful and forever thankful for them.

Right now I am packing and trying to get rid of things. I have a lot of books and a lot of clothes. I also bought two big boxes of American Mary right before I got laid off and I'd like to sell as many copies as possible so that I don't have to pack them up to ship to Philly, so I'm offering them up at a great price: $8.00, which is actually half price. If you already own a copy, maybe you know someone who would appreciate the book as a gift. Buy one here.

Before I leave, I am doing a few events:

• on Thursday December 14 I will be performing in San Francisco for a holiday-themed storytelling event presented by The Establishment, a news and culture outlet run by women and dedicated to highlighting marginalized voices. Carol Hood, July Westhale, Andrea Grimes, and Ingrid Rojas Contreras are also performing. You can buy a ticket here.
• and then the very next day I will be performing in Los Angeles at a show that I have put together with Yesenia Padilla and Grant Leuning called Now That's What I Call Poetry/Be About It: Reading in LA at the Poetic Research Bureau. Also performing in addition to myself, Yesi, and Grant are Paige Elizabeth Gretsky, Megan Lent, Viva Padilla, Miranda Tsang, Rachel Olson, and Jeremy Hight. Please don't miss this if you're in the LA area!

Funding for Ctrl Alt Del

In 2015 I made a movie with Pirooz Kalayeh called Ctrl Alt Del. The story actually starts in 2014 when Kalayeh approached me about writing a story for him to make a movie into. I agreed and sent him something over which he developed into the script for Ctrl Alt Del. Several months later, around Christmas 2014, I took a week off work and flew down to Los Angeles to work on one of the most exciting projects I've ever been involved in. I wrote about the filming process in two posts on Enclave here and here, please give them a read.

Not only did I help write the film and star in it, I was also involved in the editing process and got to see the footage we shot become a real film. I love film and I love making movies and I really want to share this movie with people and keep on making movies.

Right now we are trying to raise funds in order to screen Ctrl Alt Del in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We only have a few more weeks on our IndieGoGo and we need to make them count. If you want to help support independent filmmaking we definitely need your help! We are trying to bring community together to share the experience of this film in theaters in these three cities.

Buy your ticket now, and please contribute what you can! Tickets are on sale now on the indiegogo: please reserve yours now so that we know it's real.

3 pieces up in Sporklet 8

I am so proud to have 3 pieces published in Sporklet #8. Many thanks to Sally Roundhouse and Nichole Goff for working so hard to get this issue together. It really looks amazing.

Please read them and let me know what you think.

October Performances

This is my favorite time of year not just because my birthday is coming up or because I love haunted things and pumpkins and apple cider donuts. It's just my favorite time of year. I love the changing of the season, the chilliness, the darkness, how things feel quieter. Being out at night-- going to parties or just walking around city streets on the way to or from a party, which is usually my favorite part of the party besides the dressing up-- feels more exciting in the fall.

So maybe that's why I'm ready to do some things. Libra season is in full swing, scales swaying in the fading October sun, and I'm ready to do some readings. Please join me. 

Saturday, October 14 at 6:30pm, SF Lit Crawl: An Evening With The Rumpus at Laundry Gallery and Cafe (3359 26th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110). Readings by Randa Jarrar, Jen Palmares Meadows, Alexandra Naughton, Christine No, and Shanthi Sekaran! Comedy from Nato Green! The event will be emceed by writer and Rumpus Features Editor Christine Hyung-Oak Lee.

Saturday, October 14 at 8:30pm, UNOFFICIAL SF Lit Crawl Pop-up reading at Mission Playground (3555 19th St, San Francisco, California 94110). Featuring readings by Anna Avery, Zoe Blair, Alexandra Naughton, and Shy Watson. We will have donuts and candles at this very special outdoor reading.

Monday, October 16 at 6pm, Celebrate the Labor of Literary Curators at Nomadic Press (2301 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, California 94612). Hosted by Anna Avery, featuring performances by Alexandra Naughton, Paul Corman-Roberts, and JK Fowler, with special guests Ashley Ray and Shy Watson.

Wednesday, October 18 is my birthday (turning 32, holy shit), and Saturday, October 28 is the 3rd Annual Libra Birthday party hosted by Cassandra Dallett and Alexandra Naughton. Truly looking forward to all of this.

Sweet release day! MY POSEY TASTE LIKE PARADISE LOST EDITION is here!

I am very very excited that My Posey Taste Like: The Paradise Lost Edition is out and available for sale from Bottlecap Press. This is essentially a brand new book, even though an earlier version came out two years ago. I've reworked and remastered the original poems and I wrote a slew of new ones after visiting the East coast this summer. I really hope you like the book. It is a completed thought now.