ALIEN OF EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY
POEMS
Tarfia Faizullah
Haymarket Books (27 April 2027)
Trade paper • ISBN-13: 9798888907207 • US $16.95 • 5 in x 8 in • 120 pgs
ABOUT THE BOOK:
From a writer and performer described as “fiercely hilarious” by The New Yorker, a collection of absurd and intimate attempts to accomplish twenty four daunting tasks in an era of structural overwhelm and collective awakening.
We are all confronted with daunting tasks, each urgent in their own way: Act normal at a birthday party. Assassinate a war criminal. Log onto some new patient portal. Seize state power once we decide if we want to seize state power. Get a better attachment style. Forgive people who are younger. Don’t spend eleven hours on the phone. Every day more and more things to do. No wonder we are so overwhelmed!
To-do lists are the preferred genre of all sorts of people seeking control in a chaotic world. And yet they sadly do not ensure we’ll actually get to our tasks. In To Do ASAP, activist and comedian Morgan Bassichis takes action.
As Morgan hilariously tackles twenty four of their own persistent outstanding to dos, they insist that we embrace the contradictory qualities in ourselves that we might think discount us from meaningfully engaging with politics. They invite us to grapple with the anxieties of taking action in times of perpetual emergency, and to renew our commitment to collective struggle—however imperfect and compromised.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Morgan Bassichis is a writer and performer who has been described as “fiercely hilarious” by The New Yorker and “I think an actor but hasn’t been in anything” by their father. Morgan’s one-person show, Can I Be Frank?—about the groundbreaking queer comedian Frank Maya who died of AIDS-related complications in 1995—won two 2026 Obie Awards. They have performed in museums, gay bars, parks, and many precious New York institutions that have supported artists and writers for generations, including Danspace Project, the Kitchen, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and the Poetry Project. Morgan co-edited the anti-Zionist young adult anthology Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah (Wendy’s Subway, 2023) with Jay Saper and Rachel Valinsky. They also edited and wrote the introduction to the 2019 Nightboat Books reprint of the 1977 cult classic, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, written by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Asta, which they also adapted to performance at the New Museum in 2017. Morgan has been a proud member of Jewish Voice for Peace-NYC since 2014.
RIGHTS INFORMATION:
Please contact subagents for the following languages and territories:
| Language/Territory | Subagent |
|---|---|
| China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam | Big Apple Agency |
| Dutch | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| English outside North America | David Grossman Literary Agency |
| French | Deborah Druba Agency |
| German | Paul & Peter Fritz AG Literatur Agentur |
| Greek | Read n' Right Agency |
| Hebrew | The Deborah Harris Agency |
| Italian | Berla & Griffini Rights Agency |
| Japanese | The English Agency (Japan) Ltd |
| Korean | BC Agency, or Korea Copyright Center |
| Portuguese | RIFF Agency |
| Russia/Baltics/Eastern Europe | Prava I Prevodi |
| Scandinavia | Sebes & Bisseling Literary Agency |
| Spanish in Latin America | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Spanish in Spain | MB Agencia Literaria |
| Turkish | Anatolialit Agency |
For all other languages/territories, please contact Roam Agency.