Conjunctions: 61, A Menagerie

Conjunctions #61

by Bradford Morrow (Editor), Benjamin Hale (Editor)

61, A Menagerie is a collection of previously unpublished essays, fiction and poetry that seek to imagine the world of our fellow beings--animals. From Adam naming the animals in Genesis to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Melville’s Moby-Dick , writers, philosophers and scientists have long been fascinated by our interplay with the rest of the animal kingdom. Our mythologies and pantheons are populated with snakes, monkeys, cats, jackals and whales. Our species’ relationship with other animals is complex, difficult and wildly contradictory--they are friends, enemies, tools, food. Descartes decided they didn’t have souls; Linnaeus cataloged them; Darwin connected us to them. A Menagerie embraces the world of beasts, from parasite tongues to octopi art, from elephants singing in harmony with trucks on the highway to psychic pets and pet psychics. Contributors include Temple Grandin, Joyce Carol Oates, T. Geronimo Johnson, Luis Alberto Urrea, Jonathan Ames, Susan Daitch and others.

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Bradford Morrow has lived for the past thirty years in New York City and rural upstate New York, though he grew up in Colorado and lived and worked in a variety of places in between. While in his mid-teens, he traveled through rural Honduras as a member of the Amigos de las Americas program, serving as a medical volunteer in the summer of 1967. The following year he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his last year of high school as a foreign exchange student at a Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1973, he took time off from studying at the University of Colorado to live in Paris for a year. After doing graduate work on a Danforth Fellowship at Yale University, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, to work as a rare book dealer. In 1981 he relocated to New York City to the literary journal Conjunctions, which he founded with the poet Kenneth Rexroth, and to write novels. He and his two cats divide their time between NYC and upstate New York.

Visit his website at www.bradfordmorrow.com.