A literary series dedicated to different ways of languaging
Multiverse
The Multiverse series
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In this remarkable debut, which marks the beginning of Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—Hannah Emerson’s poems keep, dream, bring, please, grownd, sing, kiss, and listen.
- An intimate and kaleidoscopic entry in the Multiverse series that excavates survival, storytelling, and coming to terms with an unruly mind.
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A polyphonic new entry in Multiverse, JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies beautifully rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their…
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In The Wanting Way, the second book in Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—Adam Wolfond proves more than willing to “extend the choreography.”
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The newest entry in the Multiverse series Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes is a debut collection activated by sampling, troubling, and trespassing.
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A ground-breaking collection of poems exploring disability, syntax, and rhythm from a Brooklyn-based Senegalese American writer with cerebral palsy.
Latif Askia Ba—an acclaimed poet with Choreic Cerebral Palsy—honors all the things that arise from our…
About the series
Multiverse is a literary series devoted to different ways of languaging, curated by neurodivergent poet Chris Martin, and featuring a chorus of editorial voices. Multiverse primarily emerges from the practices and creativity of neurodivergent, autistic, neuroqueer, mad, nonspeaking, and disabled cultures. The desire of Multiverse is to serially surface multiple universes of underheard language that might intersect, resonate, and aggregate toward liberatory futures. In other words, each book in the Multiverse series gestures toward a correspondence—human and more-than-human—that lovingly exceeds what is normal and normative in our society, questioning and augmenting what literary culture is, has been, and can be.
Praise for the series
“When neurodivergent poets eschew the conventions of neuronormative writing and instead take the liberty of creating whatever neuroqueer languagings most effectively express their own lived realities, their words can act upon the reader like mind-expanding drugs. By providing a venue for such work, Multiverse is in the business not merely of publishing books, but also of unveiling hidden potentials of human consciousness.”
—Nick Walker, neurodiversity scholar, co-founder of Autonomous Press, psychology professor at California Institute of Integral Studies
“Queer poet Allen Ginsberg once wrote, ‘The message is: Widen the area of consciousness.’ The ambitious mission of Milkweed’s Multiverse series is to do precisely that by highlighting not just new and innovative kinds of writing, but ways of being in the world that have traditionally been exiled to the margins of human experience by the gatekeepers of the canon. To immerse yourself in the lively, passionate, fresh and always surprising voices of Multiverse is to restore your faith in the redemptive potential of language itself.”
—Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
- Blog Post
Announcing Multiverse and Hannah Emerson’s The Kissing of Kissing
We are excited and humbled to announce a new literary series, Multiverse, and the first book in the series, Hannah Emerson’s The Kissing of Kissing, out April 2022.
MULTIVERSE
Multiverse is a literary series devoted to different ways of languaging, curated by neurodivergent poet Chris Martin, and featuring a chorus of editorial voices. Multiverse primarily emerges from the practices and creativity of neurodivergent, autistic, neuroqueer, mad, nonspeaking, and disabled cultures. The desire of Multiverse is to serially surface multiple universes of underheard language that might intersect…
- Blog Post
The power of music and verse with stuttering poet JJJJJerome Ellis
“A stutter is an heirloom—something precious, that should be cherished.”
JJJJJerome Ellis inherited his stutter from his mother, who also stutters. They don’t speak often of their shared inheritance but she is supportive of his work. He sees his stutter as an heirloom and his teacher—both in language and in music. He has learned to gracefully accept and even anticipate how it informs his artistic processes of speaking and performing. In his new book, Aster of Ceremonies, he creates a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to…
- Blog Post
Celebrating the polyvocal launch of Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes
On February 22, Milkweed Editions hosted a virtual launch event to celebrate the publication of Imane Boukaila’s Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes: Poems. The book is the fourth addition to Multiverse, a literary series curated by—and devoted to—neurodiverse voices. Boukaila was joined by Multiverse editor, Chris Martin, who moderated the event, and four poets selected by Boukaila to “give voice” to their favorite poems from her book. The launch concluded with a dazzling “homing rally,” a collaborative poetry exercise open to all.
Among the many feats Multiverse has accomplished in the…
- Blog Post
Introducing our Editors-at-Large and the Multiverse series
We are excited to welcome three Editors-at-Large to Milkweed Editions, and along with one of these editors, a new literary series.
A LETTER FROM OUR PUBLISHER & CEO, DANIEL SLAGER
Over the years, I have often asked writers we are publishing to recommend other writers and manuscripts. Countless new relationships and projects have come to us as a result, and so when I thought of ways to expand the range of curatorial and editorial perspectives at work in building our publishing program, the notion of adding Editors-at-Large struck me as a natural outgrowth – a formalization, perhaps more…
The newest entry in the Multiverse series Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes is a debut collection activated by sampling, troubling, and trespassing.
A polyphonic new entry in Multiverse, JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies beautifully rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their freedom.
In The Wanting Way, the second book in Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—Adam Wolfond proves more than willing to “extend the choreography.”
In this remarkable debut, which marks the beginning of Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—Hannah Emerson’s poems keep, dream, bring, please, grownd, sing, kiss, and listen.
A ground-breaking collection of poems exploring disability, syntax, and rhythm from a Brooklyn-based Senegalese American writer with cerebral palsy.
A visionary collection of poetry advocating for the excited, the rebellious, and the neuroqueer.
