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"""Jaydra Johnson's LOW: NOTES ON ART AND TRASH is part instruction manual, part genealogy, part art criticism, and part memoir - all of it pulsing with urgency and necessity. It's written in wry, straight-ahead prose that hits no false notes, and feels honest and earned at every juncture. Johnson has a real gift for metabolizing and conveying the importance of everything from Othello to performance art to the political activist Emma Goldman. She moves fluently between such analyses and her own vivid, expertly-rendered memories of growing up ""trash."" She structures her prose artfully (using a ""sonnet crown"" motif here, different forms of address there), but always with a light touch, such that her experiments feel vital, buoyant, and without pretension. I especially admire how she leaps over stale binaries about elitism vs. outsider status in art, and claims a place for her artistry (and that of others) fiercely and tenderly on every page. Despite traveling under the humble (if noble) tradition of ""notes,"" LOW's provocations and attestations stayed with me long after I turned its final page. I found myself rooting hard for its narrator - while also realizing that there is no need, as she has clearly found her way, and is now our teacher. The sensibility and achievement of this book deserves widespread circulation and contemplation; I hope being chosen as the winner of this contest will provide such an opportunity.""--Maggie Nelson"

Author Information

Jaydra Johnson (b. 1988 Springfield, Oregon) is a writer, visual artist, and educator who splits her time between Portland, OR and NYC. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Epoch Review, Guernica, and Sedition magazines, among others, and she has shown her visual work in NYC, LA, Portland, and Columbus, OH. At Hunter College, she co-edited the journal Solar while earning her MFA in Creative Writing. She was also a grateful recipient of the 2022-23 Creatives Rebuild New York grant. Johnson is the author of Refuse Report, a bi-monthly newsletter exploring the tension between high and low art, currently hosted on Substack. You can find more of her wor at www.jaydrajohnson.com and on Instagram @jaydranicole.

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