A blogging dog sitter cringes out on celebrity, Slinkys, and self-promotion. A poet experiences the clownyvulnerability of falling in love. Drunk Muppets ponder the uselessness of art. A transitioning drag queenmuses on being “the crazy one, the one who doesn’t give a fuck.”

In this anthology of poetry, fiction, screenplay, and more, writers explore and explode the archetype of theCLOWN in all of its humiliating, earnest, magical, subversive glory. From fiction that reveals the humanitybeneath the smeared greasepaint to psychedelic autofiction to poetry that exposes normal folk for thesickening anomalies they are, CLOWNS will get under your skin until it liberates your own inner clown, be ita smart-ass or trickster, sad sack or buffoon.

With work from Maz Murray, Sophie Robinson, Grace Byron, Andrea Lawlor, Megan Milks, Nicole J.Georges, Jake Hall, Vivek Shraya, and other holy fools.

Michelle Tea is the author of over twenty books of fiction, memoir, poetry and children's literature. Her autofiction, Valencia, a cult classic, won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Fiction. Her essay collection Against Memoir was awarded the PEN/America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for The Art ofthe Essay. Tea is also the recipient of awards from The Rona Jaffe Foundation, as well as the GuggenheimFoundation. The founder of Drag Queen Story Hour, she has received honors from the American Library Association and Logo Television. Tea curated the Sister Spit Books series at City Lights Publisher, and founded the ongoing imprint Amethyst Edition at The Feminist Press. She is publisher at DOPAMINE Books, an imprint of Semiotext(e).