⭐ We have a different website for our Ohio bookstore + cafe! Visit it here. ⭐

Products - - Items tagged as "Essays"

  • 808s & Otherworlds QUICK VIEW 808s & Otherworlds a collection of essays and poetry by
    Sean Avery Medlin

    "Most Anticipated"
    Lambda Literary, Paperback Paris

    "Don’t sleep on the unpredictable 808s & Otherworlds… an elegant mash of memoir, poetry, tales of appropriation, thoughts on Black masculinity, Hulk, Kanye.
    —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune


    From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.

    808s & Otherworlds

    a collection of essays and poetry by
    Sean Avery Medlin


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    * "September’s Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature" —Lambda Literary
    * "Most-Anticipated New LGBTQIA+ Books of 2021" —Paperback Paris

    “Like the light of an event horizon, this work races toward and struggles against the gravity of Blackness. Lovechild of Sun Ra and Sailor Moon, Sean Avery Medlin sings into the narrow space between hope and rage, bridging political and pop culture galaxies. If our suburbs have become burnt-out satellites circling a world long lost to racism, this book is our S.O.S., transmitting radio waves for searchers and survivors. What an expansive and timely poetic voice!”
    —Amaud Jamaul Johnson, author of Imperial Liquor, Red Summer, and Darktown Follies

    808s & Otherworlds: Memories, Remixes, & Mythologies announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.

    From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.

  • A History of My Brief Body QUICK VIEW A History of My Brief Body a collection of essays by
    Billy-Ray Belcourt

    A Best Book of 2020
    Lambda Literary Award Finalist

    "[Belcourt] ably balances poetic, philosophical, and political insights throughout this unique book... An urgently needed, unyielding book of theoretical and intimate strength."
    Kirkus Reviews, starred


    For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

    A History of My Brief Body

    a collection of essays by
    Billy-Ray Belcourt


    $ 9.99 $ 15.99
    View full product details →

    * A Best Book of 2020 —Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, CBC, Globe and Mail, Largehearted Boy.

    "In sharp pieces infused with a yearning for decolonized love and freedom, Belcourt, of the Driftpile Cree Nation, ably balances poetic, philosophical, and political insights throughout this unique book... An urgently needed, unyielding book of theoretical and intimate strength."
    Kirkus Reviews, starred review

    The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.

    For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

    Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray’s writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place.

    Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.

  • Frequencies Vol 1-4 sale QUICK VIEW Frequencies Vol 1-4 sale a collection of essays by

    "Though the lit mag be but little, it is fierce."
    Off The Beaten Shelf

    "Chock full of the most intense, out of the box writers around... It's like The Believer just up and said 'fuck it.'" —Brooklyn Based

    Frequencies Vol 1-4 sale

    a collection of essays by

    $ 20.00 $ 40.00
    Format:  Paperback
    View full product details →
  • Frequencies Volume 1 QUICK VIEW Frequencies Volume 1 a collection of essays by
    Blake Butler, Joshua Cohen, Tracy Rose Keaton, & more!

    "Heavy with literary weight."
    New Pages

    The first installment of our journal of artful essays.

    Frequencies Volume 1

    a collection of essays by
    Blake Butler, Joshua Cohen, Tracy Rose Keaton, & more!


    $ 7.50 $ 10.00
    View full product details →
  • Frequencies Volume 2 QUICK VIEW Frequencies Volume 2 a collection of essays by
    Sara Finnerty, Roxane Gay, Kate Zambreno, & more!

    "Some of the smartest essays." —Flavorwire
    Essays on issues of belonging in Black America, gay sex tourism in Thailand, Barbara Loden, and more!

    Frequencies Volume 2

    a collection of essays by
    Sara Finnerty, Roxane Gay, Kate Zambreno, & more!


    $ 7.50 $ 10.00
    View full product details →
  • Frequencies Volume 3 QUICK VIEW Frequencies Volume 3 a collection of essays by
    Antonia Crane, D. Foy, Lawrence Shainberg,
    & more!

    "The world needs more endeavors like this." —Flavorwire
    Find out who taught Ernest Hemingway to thumb-wrestle, and more!

    Frequencies Volume 3

    a collection of essays by
    Antonia Crane, D. Foy, Lawrence Shainberg,
    & more!


    $ 7.50 $ 10.00
    View full product details →
  • Frequencies Volume 4 QUICK VIEW Frequencies Volume 4 a collection of essays by
    Colin Asher, Nathan Knapp, Joshua Mohr, & more!

    "It's like The Believer just up and said 'fuck it.'" —Brooklyn Based
    Coming of age in the heady days of dial-up, family strife, plus a satirical interview with Shia LaBeouf.

    Frequencies Volume 4

    a collection of essays by
    Colin Asher, Nathan Knapp, Joshua Mohr, & more!


    $ 7.50 $ 10.00
    View full product details →
  • I Sing to Use the Waiting QUICK VIEW I Sing to Use the Waiting a collection of essays by
    Zachary Pace

    January 2024!

    "These essays span much more than women singers... How beautiful for a book’s form to echo what’s at the heart of this collection: The intersection of pop culture, social issues, and personal experience make up Pace’s claiming of their voice."
    —Rachel León, Split Lip Magazine


    With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers — from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna — who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.

    I Sing to Use the Waiting

    a collection of essays by
    Zachary Pace


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers — from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna — who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.

    With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear for prose, Zachary Pace recounts the women singers — from Cat Power to Madonna, Kim Gordon to Rihanna — who shaped them as a young person coming-of-age in rural New York, first discovering their own queer voice.

  • Personal Score (FORTHCOMING) QUICK VIEW Personal Score (FORTHCOMING) a collection of essays by
    Ellen van Neerven

    April 2024!

    "Demonstrates a new way to write toward Indigenous freedom. Personal Score hums with the vitality and intelligence of a definitive text."
    —Billy-Ray Belcourt


    Fierce, original, and also abundantly tender, Personal Score is a ground-breaking book that demonstrates van Neerven’s unrivalled talent and courage.

    Coming Soon!

    Personal Score (FORTHCOMING)

    a collection of essays by
    Ellen van Neerven


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    Fierce, original, and also abundantly tender, Personal Score is a ground-breaking book that demonstrates van Neerven’s unrivalled talent and courage.

    Fierce, original, and also abundantly tender, Personal Score is a ground-breaking book that demonstrates van Neerven’s unrivalled talent and courage.

  • Savage Gods QUICK VIEW Savage Gods a book by
    Paul Kingsnorth

    A Best Book of 2019
    "A beautiful, intelligent, extremely poetic book about a writer dissecting his thoughts and feelings on the page without the protective layer of fiction."
    —Gabino Iglesias, NPR

    Informed by Kingsnorth's experiences interacting with indigenous peoples, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Annie Dillard, and the day-to-day travails of farming his own land, Savage Gods seeks nothing less than to dismantle modern civilization.

    Savage Gods

    a book by
    Paul Kingsnorth


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    "Savage Gods is a beautiful, intelligent, extremely poetic book about a writer dissecting his thoughts and feelings on the page without the protective layer of fiction."
    —Gabino Iglesias, NPR

    After moving with his wife and two children to a smallholding in Ireland, Paul Kingsnorth expects to find contentment. It is the goal he has sought — to nest, to find home — after years of rootlessness as an environmental activist and author. Instead he finds that his tools as a writer are failing him, calling into question his foundational beliefs about language and setting him at odds with culture itself.

    Informed by his experiences with indigenous peoples, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Annie Dillard, and the day-to-day travails of farming his own land, Savage Gods asks: what does it mean to belong? What sacrifices must be made in order to truly inhabit a life? And can words ever paint the truth of the world — or are they part of the great lie which is killing it?

  • Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now QUICK VIEW Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now a collection of essays by
    Andre Perry

    A Best Book of 2019
    "Beautiful, brilliant, bold... These are songs of identity and sexuality and expectations the world has of African American males."
    —Christopher John Stephens, PopMatters

    The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefield of a childhood schoolyard to dimly-lit late nights in Midwestern bars. The impression of Perry’s personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing the author’s arrival as a formidable American voice.

    Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now

    a collection of essays by
    Andre Perry


    $ 9.99 $ 10.99
    View full product details →

    *A Best Book of 2019 Pop Matters
    *A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 LitReactorThe A.V. Club, Big Other

    "A complete, deep, satisfying read... The variety of structures, formats, and rhythms Perry uses in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now is extraordinary... These essays shine with broken humanity and announce the arrival of a new voice in contemporary nonfiction, but they do so with heaps of melancholia and frustration instead of answers. That Perry can hurt us and keep us asking for more is a testament to his talent as a storyteller."
    —Gabino Iglesias, NPR

    With luminous insight and fervent prose, Andre Perry’s debut collection of personal essays travels from Washington DC to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming honesty, Perry catalogues racial degradations committed on the campuses of elite universities to liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming of age in America.

    The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefield of a childhood schoolyard to dimly-lit late nights in Midwestern bars. The impression of Perry’s personal journey is arresting and beguiling, while announcing the author’s arrival as a formidable and ferocious American voice.

  • They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us QUICK VIEW They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us a collection of essays by
    Hanif Abdurraqib

    Hardcover: Nov 2022!

    A Best Book of 2017
    "Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him."
    —Greil Marcus, Village Voice


    In this collection of essays, Hanif Abdurraqib, acclaimed poet and cultural critic, grapples with a storm cloud of confounding emotions with prose that is immediate, personal, poetic, sometimes funny and always deeply touching.

    They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

    a collection of essays by
    Hanif Abdurraqib


    $ 8.99 $ 9.99
    View full product details →

    *Best Books of 2017 —NPR, BuzzfeedPaste MagazineEsquireChicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of BooksThe Los Angeles ReviewMichigan Daily
    *American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'
    *Midwest Indie Bestseller

    In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—along with original, previously unreleased essays—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

Hi there!

Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore. Check out the ABOUT US section to read more...

Radio Waves daily blog by Two Dollar Radio indie book publisher

Latest posts

  • Q+A with Zachary Pace about I Sing to Use the Waiting

    On January 23, 2024, we're thrilled to release Zachary Pace's debut book, I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays About the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am. With remarkable grace, candor, and a poet’s ear... Read more →

  • Q+A with Christine Lai about Landscapes

    We're tremendously excited to share the news that on September 12, 2023, we will be publishing Landscapes, a debut novel by Christine Lai that brilliantly explores memory, empathy, preservation, and art as an instrument for recollection and renewal.In the English... Read more →

  • Q+A with Bennett Sims about Other Minds and Other Stories

    Bennett Sims' writing has won the Rome Prize for Literature and the Bard Fiction Prize. For Bookforum, Tony Tulathimutte called Sims “possibly the smartest and most inventive writer of his... generation,” while for LitHub Carmen Maria Machado says Sims is... Read more →