Natalie Zina Walschots

A smart, imaginative, and evocative novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower--for good or ill--is a properly executed spreadsheet. Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. Working for a monster lurking beneath the surface of the world isn't glamorous. But is it really worse than working for an oil conglomerate or an insurance company? In this economy? As a temp, she's just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called "hero" leaves her badly injured. And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she's the lucky one. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing. And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance. It's not too long before she's employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world. A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

Hench

A Novel

Villain

The 2007 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry Winner Thumbscrews is a poetic engagement with the aesthetics of sadomasochism and consensual pain. It employs the techniques of mannerist poetry to constrain language as ropes, cuffs, or shackles that might be used to constrain the body. Each poem can be taken as a miniature sadomasochistic encounter where language is tied up, beaten, and twisted into submission. This book abuses language; language begs for it. Thumbscrews engages with the sexual subculture of BDSM in content as well as in form. It explores the erotic 'scene' and the prevalence of role-playing in the kinky bedroom, examines various settings as 'pervertable' locations, and chronicles a series of embarrassing trips to the emergency room. Poems are shaped from the hobbled language of email, visual representations of pain, and odes to various implements. Thumbscrews is a dirty-minded, sticky-fingered book.

Thumbscrews

"Espirituoso e inventivo.... o prazer deste livro está no desenrolar lento das regras. Criar um universo envolve inventar muitos pequenos problemas, e as soluções aqui não decepcionam." – New York Times "Walschots brinca com a política do escritório e o absurdo dos quadrinhos, ao mesmo tempo que oferece ação emocionante e horror corporal angustiante. A premissa inventiva, a heroína acessível e o humor mordaz deixarão os leitores ansiosos por mais desta talentosa autora." – Publishers Weekly Anna faz coisas chatas para pessoas terríveis, porque até os vilões precisam de ajuda com as burocracias de escritório, e ela, mais do que nunca, de um emprego. Trabalhar para essa classe à margem da sociedade não é nada glamoroso. Mas será que é realmente pior do que prestar serviços para um conglomerado de petróleo ou uma empresa de seguros? Como freelancer, ela é apenas uma engrenagem na máquina. Mas, quando é contratada para analisar dados para um vilão bem conhecido – e excêntrico –, Anna enxerga nesse trabalho a oportunidade de ser efetivada e finalmente ter alguns benefícios. Só que, ao ser chamada para participar de uma missão em campo, a situação sai do controle e ela acaba gravemente ferida por um dos maiores heróis da atualidade: Superimpacto. Os graves ferimentos a impedem de trabalhar, e Anna usa seu tempo livre para estudar as consequências negativas da atuação dos heróis. Quantas pessoas morrem durante um confronto entre heróis e vilões? Quantas ficam, como ela, incapacitadas de realizar suas atividades? Essas vidas estão sendo perdidas em troca de quê? Os heróis estão fazendo um bem maior ou apenas usando seu poder destruidor sem sofrer nenhuma punição? Com o passar do tempo, Anna vai descobrir que o maior ativo de um super-herói é saber comparar, manipular e transformar os dados a seu favor. E de dados ela entende muito bem, então tem muito a oferecer a seu próximo empregador. Uma estreia afiada, espirituosa e moderna, Hench explora o custo individual da justiça por meio de uma fascinante mistura de política de escritório, heroísmo medido por meio da ciência de dados, horror corporal e uma profunda incompreensão da mecânica quântica.

Trabalho sujo

DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains is an edgy and erotic investigation of comic book bad boys. These poems employ a language that is highly technical and dense, but it becomes witty, intimate and even tender in its specificity. These poems address the results of abuses of power and taken together present a case study in the pathology of villainy. Praise for Thumbscrews: "Natalie Zina Walschots [is] a writer who engages with the aesthetics of sadomasochism in order to generate elegant, sensual poetry that writhes inside the shackles of its own linguistic constraint... [she] treats each poem as a miniature, theatrical tableau--a 'passion play, ' in which she forces language to submit to her will, beating its grammar into a stupor of ecstatic nonsense."--Christian Bok, The Poetry Foundation

Natalie Zina Walschots

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