Sex Is Not the End: A Rail Reading Curated by Claire Donato

Poet Jeff Alessandrelli is most recently the author of the poetry collection Fur Not Light (2019), which The Kenyon Review called an “example of radical humility…its poems enact a quiet but persistent empathy in the world of creative writing.” Just out from the press [PANK], Jeff’s latest book is And Yet. In addition to his writing Jeff also directs the nonprofit book press/record label Fonograf Editions.

Psychoanalyst and writer Orna Guralnik serves on the faculty of NYU PostDoc, National Institute for the Psychotherapies, the Stephen Mitchel Center, and the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender & Sexuality.  Her writing centers on the intersection of psychoanalysis, dissociation, and cultural studies. She has completed the filming of four seasons of the Docu-series Couples Therapy, airing on Showtime.

Anna Moschovakis works with poetry and prose as a writer, editor, translator, publisher, teacher, and designer. Her most recent books are the English translation of David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black (Frère d’âme), the Belladonna* chaplet from ‘Preliminary Notes on Risk,’ and the novel Participation (November 2022). She was raised mostly in California and lives mostly in New York.

In 2002 Jamie Stewart began the group Xiu Xiu. Over the last two decades Xiu Xiu released 20 studio albums, collaborated with Merzbow, Dahn Vo, Eugene Robinson, Haitian drumming master Daniel Brevil. Mantra Percussion, and Lawrence English and recorded reinterpretations of the music of Nina Simone (NINA), American religious songs (Unclouded Sky), Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and the music of Twin Peaks (Plays The Music of Twin Peaks). Stewart is also a frequent contributor to the Berlin based art collective CHEAP. Stewart has created museum installations for the Berlin and Venice biennales, The Guggenheim, LACMA, the Getty Museum, Walker Museum and Laguna Art Museum. In spring 2023 Stewart will be publishing their first novel Anything That Moves through And Other Stories Publishing.

A psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, Jamieson Webster is the author most recently of Disorganization and Sex (2022) and Conversion Disorder (2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (2013). She teaches at the New School for Social Research.

Poet, prose writer and teacher Claire Donato’s book Woebegone is forthcoming in 2023 from Theaphora Editions. She is also the author of Burial, a novella, and The Second Body, a collection of poems. She is at work on her first ~New York Times Best Seller~!!! :D Currently, she is the Assistant Chairperson of Writing at Pratt Institute, where she received the 2020-21 Distinguished Teacher Award.