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| photo: Doug Birkenheuer | |
Mario Elías is a multidisciplinary artist of Cuban and Syrian descent based in Chicago. Spanning fiction, nonfiction, and visual art, his work explores identity, memory, and cultural inheritance through a queer lens. He is the founder of The KindaSuper Project, a philanthropic initiative providing free photography and video services to underserved communities. In 2020, he self-published Queering the Male Gaze, a collection of portraits and art historical essays that reimagined masterpieces of the classical and modern canon, spotlighting the often-overlooked queer and female figures who shaped them. His debut novel, Beloved Disciples (Amble Press), captures the majesty of a first love, from the soaring heights of adoration to the hollowed-out depths of bereavement.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
After losing the love of his life, Simón discovers the line between devotion and obsession blurs when grieving becomes its own form of worship.
On your nightstand now:
I'm currently juggling three books: Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima, Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, and Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima. They all fill such different holes in my brain! Monstrilio is very much my style of writing that easily wriggles its way into the heart--demented and full of aching love. Ananda Lima is so funny and intelligent in a way that really makes me consider how I write. And Mishima is a must read for anyone exploring queer literary history.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales! Written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. I would roll on the floor laughing when this freak of a book would be chosen. It is ridiculous postmodern metafiction with the sole purpose of making a mockery of beloved characters and tropes to remind you that nothing is set in stone and we can all just make things up as we go.
Your top five authors:
This is so hard! Reinaldo Arenas, James Baldwin, Ali Smith, Clarice Lispector, Michael Cunningham. And honorable mentions to Christopher Isherwood, Virginia Woolf, and Patricia Highsmith. These are all writers that I have and will continue to reread over and over again just to live in their version of reality.
Book you've faked reading:
Flowers in the Attic. To be honest, I refused to read it because I thought it was some sort of relation to Flowers for Algernon, and I just couldn't deal with the emotional trauma again. When I got to class, ready to fake my way through the lesson, I had never been more grateful for skipping a read.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Okay, I get that this will seem sort of off-brand, but I cannot tell you how many people I've tried to convince to read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. It's such a cozy read and makes you really stop and consider all of the magic that is swirling around us every second of every day. The message is to feel everything, name everything, bottle up summer and store it for a cold and gloomy day. I think about this book and the magic of being a kid all the time.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The New Life by Tom Crewe. The cover caught my eye and the title was intriguing in its ambiguity. This blind faith in vanity was immediately reinforced because the book is brilliant. On the very first page, you are thrust into a claustrophobic sex dream, and then taken on a cinematic tour of 1890s London and the fight for the acceptance of homosexuality.
Book you hid from your parents:
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. I had just finished eighth grade and was getting ready to start high school when this book came out. I folded paper and created a book cover to conceal the very gay title and cover.
Book that changed your life:
Guapa by Saleem Haddad. I read this book for the first time before the Covid-19 pandemic, when I was still living in San Francisco. I finished it and instantly started reading it again. The prose was beautiful, the aching longing, the weight of family and cultural expectations--it all just really hit me on a personal level. I posted something on Instagram about the novel and tagged Saleem, and he followed me back. Fast forward a couple of years, and he ended up being my mentor for the first draft of my debut novel, Beloved Disciples.
Favorite line from a book:
Quite often, I think of this line from Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz (as translated by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff):
"She lived in her body as though it were an infested house, as if she had to tiptoe through it trying not to touch the floor."
It's so unnerving and eerie, yet it's a distinct feeling I have felt before but never tried to find the words to describe. Beautiful writing throughout this book.
Five books you'll never part with:
Singing from the Well by Reinaldo Arenas, How to Be Both by Ali Smith, A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, and Guapa, of course!
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I read this in one sitting the day after Christmas in 2020 when the walls seemed to be closing in around us. The water was practically splashing through the pages. What a magical little book.