Introducing BEAUTIFUL MALADY by Ennis Rook Bashe

AnnouncementsPoetry of Disability, Fairy Tales, and Love

“The poems in Bashe’s collection are surprising in a visceral way, delicate and sharp like a finely crafted blade flaying apathy from our observations to leave a raw, vulnerable relief in the silken textures of syllables that invite us beyond the ordinary rush of senses. “Beautiful Malady” is brutal, beatific, and irresistibly beckoning; give in to the sweet melody of its pages and listen for the fairytale of your own heart’s uncertain delight.” — Saba Syed Razvi, author of In the Crocodile Gardens

A siren song of queerness, disability, and myth, these poems reinvent love, life, and death. BEAUTIFUL MALADY is an exploration of pain, weaving speculative poems about fairy tales, folklore, fantasy, and the supernatural with the reality of chronic illness and disability. Ennis Rook Bashe deftly creates a world where the broken body is beautiful.

About the Author

Ennis Bashe is a queer romance novelist and poet whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Cricket, and Liminality Magazine. Their debut chapbook, Glitter Blood, was an Elgin Award nominee. If you enjoyed the disability-related themes in this chapbook, you may also enjoy their fantasy romance series Hunters of the Cairn, set in a world where only disabled and chronically ill people can become monster hunters. Find more Ennis at https://linktr.ee/ennisrookbashe.

About the Cover Artist

MICHIUMS is a Ringo Award Nominated nonbinary trans comic artist and illustrator whose work focuses on carving out homes in familiar places, connecting to old tales, and making comics focusing on queer narratives. Their work has appeared in various publications from Arledge Comics, DC Comics, King Features Publishing, Andrews McMeels and other indie/self-published publications. When not creating comics and designing merchandise, you can find them drinking far too much coffee and thinking about stories. You can find them on twitter at @requiempluie, on instagram at @michiums, and view their portfolio at michiums.carbonmade.com.

“With Beautiful Malady, Ennis Rook Bashe brings us into a brief but compelling visit into a world of ghosts and machines, cybernetics, mobility and accessibility and the queer edges of the undiscovered country. These verses draw you into questions with few certain answers, histories and vantage points that need to be heard and read repeatedly. ‘If I transcribed a pantheon I’d say: the god of magic is the god of death,’ we’re informed, and each poem moves with an assured voice and a striking imagination. This chapbook will linger with me for quite some time.” — Bryan Thao Worra, former Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association President (2016–2022)

Available for review on Netgalley

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Introducing BEAUTIFUL MALADY by Ennis Rook Bashe was originally published in Interstellar Flight Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.