While some might argue that collaboration with fascists, turfs, and racist edge lords does not constitute endorsement of violent and anti-liberation views, we at hiding press disagree.

There can be no innocent collaboration with such people.

Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. Casual August continues.

I don't think this is a casual conversation, maybe casual adjacent. My guest is Emily Rousseau.

Emily is a writer and an artist of, I would say, a classic old school

kind. She's published several books of poetry. She's also a visual artist. She has a novel

coming out this fall. And also earlier this year, Emily joined the ranks of the canceled.

To put it in a nutshell, and she's going to talk more about this, she had a book of poetry

already to come out with an independent press called the hiding press and was informed by email

at the last minute that the book would not come out due to her collaborations with people

who were apparently alt-right or fascist-adjacent.

Now, by collaborations, they meant writing for certain journals and appearing as a guest on certain

podcasts. Apparently now, if you go on somebody's podcast as a guest, you are collaborating

with them. By alt-right or fascist adjacent,

they were talking about magazines like Compact, a publication that, as far as I can tell,

is devoted to calling out the excesses of the far left and the far right. In any case,

that famous line about university politics being so vicious because the stakes are so low

applies doubly, probably triply, to the poetry community, such as it is.

And needless to say, they employed playground-level exclusion tactics to take Emily down on social media.

It's a story we've heard countless times.

But there's something about hearing

about it in the context of poetry that's almost poetic. And that's why I brought Emily on to the

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