HEY OLDER DUDE SIB

hey all!

Hello!

Hi from Austin, Texas

beautifully said

R/B Mertz (thee/thou) is a trans and non-binary butch poet and artist. They wrote the essay, “How Whiteness Kills God & Sprinkles Crack on the Body,” the forward for John J. McNeill’s Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey for Gays, Lesbians, and Everyone Else, and poems, including "(We all end up in) the CAN" published by American Journal of Poetry. Mertz taught writing in Pittsburgh for eleven years and was honored to be a finalist for City of Asylum's 2020-21 Emerging Poet Laureate of Pittsburgh.

Rahne Alexander is an intermedia artist and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is a 2021 graduate of the Intermedia+Digital Arts MFA at UMBC, and a 2021 Baker Artist Prize Awardee. Her works in video, performance, music, and painting have been exhibited across the U.S. and around the world, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, and MIX NYC. She performs music as 50’♀ and as the front woman of the rock band Santa Librada. She is a contributor to BmoreArt, and her writing has been anthologized in OnCurating #42, Love, You (Urban Ivy, 2020), and the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica (Cleis, 2011). Her OutWrite-award-winning chapbook of collected essays Heretic to Housewife was published by Neon Hemlock in 2019. More info at rahne.com

Link to order Burning Butch: https://www.theivybookshop.com/book/9781951213503

To order Heretic to Housewife, please email info@theivybookshop.com

I have goosebumps! Thank you so much for sharing! I am excited my copy is on the way. You rock Mertz (Becca)!!!

amazing

Great reading!!

Wow!! Makes me more excited (if that's even possible) to get my copy!!! :D

Love this overlap!!

What a fantastic conversation! Please feel free to put your questions in the chat anytime

Great discussion!

That's an amazingly accurate analogy, your family turning you in to get burned at the stake. (laughs nervously and in solidarity of being raised Southern Baptist)

My apologies, I tend to type slow to make sure I can check what I'm saying. 😅

Hi, Mertz and Rahne! Thanks so much for doing this -- what an incredible conversation. My question is: how did you decide on the title of your book? I love it.

!!!!!

Hiiii! We’re all so happy for you over here in the Unnamed Press office! Loving every moment!

BP!

If you’d like to ask a final question for Mertz, please go for it now!

Mertz, if you had the chance to speak to your younger self, what would you specifically tell them?

What impact has Pittsburgh had on your development as a writer?

Hi HI~!~~

,3 <3 <3

Yes, I'm going to drop the hardball question at last minute LOL

I second that!

Yes, yes!

It’s similar to finding your way out of religion.