We Had No Rules

-A debut story collection by Corinne Manning that had received literally over 100 rejections before Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore introduced them to us. We were captivated by the bracing immediacy of their prose and the provocative subjects of their stories, which depict the complications of what it means to be queer in modern America. Their characters (primarily lesbian but also trans and gay men) are at times lonely, troubled and flawed, in the midst of extracting themselves from failed relationships or embracing new chosen family; as a whole they represent modern America at a crossroads: lost, contradictory, yet full of hope. -Arsenal's reputation as a publisher of LGBTQ+ literary titles has grown in the last year in light of winning 3 of the 4 fiction categories at the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards (gay, lesbian, and transgender fiction for Joshua Whitehead's Jonny Appleseed, Larissa Lai's The Tiger Flu, and Casey Plett's Little Fish). -Corinne is the founder of The James Franco Review, which received a ton of publicity when it started in 2014: Los Angeles Times: https: //www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-get-ready-for-the-james-franco-review-20141112-story.html Entertainment Weekly: https: //ew.com/article/2014/11/13/james-franco-literary-journal/ The Stranger: https: //www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/11/07/every-author-is-a-celebrity-in-the-james-franco-review The journal was Corinne's attempt to address the issue of visibility of women and LGBTQ writers whose work was not construed as "mainstream" by magazine and book editors. Its mandate was to publish works of prose and poetry as if we were all James Franco, as if our work was already worthy of an editor's attention. -The collection began in 2007 when they wrote a novel filled with queer and trans characters, but was repeatedly told that the book was not be "mainstream" enough to be taken seriously. In their own words: "I realized that I had been working hard to write a mainstream book, and to not end up on the LGBT shelf and that I had apparently failed. But that failure was the most freeing feeling in the world. I sat down and started writing one story after the other with queer people as the protagonists. I was finally open to the queer voices around me and allowing myself to write the way I truly wanted to write and explore the issues that concerned me most. I wanted to answer the question: What does it mean for these characters to even have community?" -Corinne's inspirations include James Baldwin, Mary Gaitskill, and Rebecca Brown. -Blurbs forthcoming from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Rebecca Brown. -Publicity by Alyson Sinclair, Nectar Publicity.

About the Author :
Corinne Manning is a prose writer and literary organizer. Their stories and essays have been published widely, including in Toward an Ethics of Activism and Shadow Map: An Anthology of Survivors of Sexual Assault. Corinne founded The James Franco Review, a project that sought to address implicit bias in the publishing industry.

Review :
"With elegant precision and understated glee, We Had No Rules opens up the ache between heartbreak and self-actualization -- between theory and practice, intimacy and belonging, community and loss. By confronting the regimentation in queer lives and loves, Manning explores the push and pull of intergenerational yearning in surprising ways. Tidy in structure yet emotionally unresolved, We Had No Rules rejects false closure, daring us to come up with our own answers." --Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Sketchtasy "Corinne Manning's smart, funny debut collection is a necessary reminder that individuals are more than any one single identity. These characters are the best mix of surprising and recognizable that any reader of good short stories could ever hope to find. Brava!" --Rebecca Brown, author of The Gifts of the Body "These stories are exquisite portals into the weird, scary, hilarious, hot, and revelatory moments that make up a queer life. I recognized Manning's characters immediately: they are me, my friends, my guides, my mistakes. What an act of humanity to have written them." -Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me "From its first sentence Corinne Manning's We Had No Rules feels essential, every word charged with meaning and feeling. This book is nothing less than a record of survival, a nervous system on the page, a sequence of stories in which characters attempt to make better, truer relationships that want to defy the structures of language that constrict us. Expansive, soulful, vulnerable, sexy, funny, and broken, We Had No Rules is queer all the way down to its bones." --Paul Lisicky, author of Later and The Narrow Door