(ANNOUNCEMENT) New pamphlet! Sick Story: a remix by Maria Hardin
We've been simmering away on something beautiful over summer. A new pamphlet! This is a very special publication from Maria Hardin (the eagle-eyed will find her poems in previous issues of SPAM Magazine), forthcoming in November 2025.
If linear healing narratives are meaningless in the face of chronic illness, then what is the shape of a sick story? To explore this question, Maria Hardin borrows from Bernadette Mayer’s Story (1968) and Ursula Le Guin's carrier bag theory of fiction, which posits that the shape of a narrative is not an arrow, or the masculine climax, but a bag. Mayer tossed all that she was interested into the bag of her story and then gave it form. In this book is Hardin's bag—her sick remix.
A word from our editor-in-chief, Kirsty Dunlop:
As long term fans of Maria’s writing, it was a joy when Sick Story came our way. Here is a hybrid carrier bag of prose poetics, dancing with shape shifting selves navigating sick time in our accelerated everyday. A post-internet remix, a whirlwind of Marias, here is the tender sized book you will want to carry around and read in one go on the bus and remix again and again.
++Read Maria Sledmere's extended review of Hardin's previous pamphlet, Weep Hole, here. 🌹🩹
About the author
Maria Hardin is a Swedish-American artist and bilingual poet based in Stockholm. She is the author of Cute Girls Watch When I Eat Aether (Action Books) and several chapbooks.
Praise for Sick Story
Hardin creates a privileged altar to an uncooperative, mortal body—piled with infusion tubing, medical charts, and a creeping sense of dread. Sick Story: A Remix explores the psychic hurt that chronic illness festers, leaking lurid, anguished pus as vile as any infected wound. Both prosaic and baroque, Hardin's aesthetic extremes mutate into a new breed of leukocyte: cloying, omnivorous, deathly. I’m shook, shivering, ready to burn all my art alongside a squadron of Marias.
– M. Forajter, Interrogating the Eye (Schism Neuronics, 2022)
Sick Story asks what happens when one's illness refuses resolution. Inspired by Bernadette Mayer’s Story and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Maria Hardin reimagines the illness narrative in the form of a collage. Comprised of cinematic vignettes, pithy one-liners, current reading, Victorian poets, and much, much more, this is a sad, sweet, funny book that manages to do a huge amount in 48 short pages. Salve!
– Susan Finlay, The Jacques Lacan Foundation (MOIST, 2022)
PREORDER the book for just £6 from our webstore here.
PRESS: If you would like a review copy, please email spamzine.editors@gmail.com.
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Launch details
We are launching Sick Story in person at MF Books, Glasgow on 1st November 2025, 7pm (arrive promptly). Maria will be joined by special guest readers.
This event is free but ticketed. You can get a ticket and preorder the book here.
Accessibility: Mount Florida Books is wheelchair accessible. Unfortunately our toilet is not. If you have any access requirements, please email info@mountfloridabooks.com and we will do our best to meet them.
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Published: 20/10/25
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Interesting idea for a pamphlet, especially with a remix angle. The “Sick Story” concept sounds like a creative way to present Maria Hardin’s work. For readers exploring Minecraft mods and related resources, Minecraft Optifines may also be worth checking out.
The new pamphlet sounds like an interesting way to introduce Maria Hardin’s remix and give readers more context around the project. I always appreciate creative work that presents a familiar story from a fresh perspective. The announcement also makes it easier for readers to discover something they may not have encountered before قطار الحرمين السريع.
I really like the creative approach behind Sick Story: A Remix, especially the decision to move away from a straightforward, linear illness narrative. The combination of prose poetry, cinematic fragments, one-liners, reading references, and Victorian poets sounds like a fascinating way to explore a story that refuses to fit into a conventional beginning-to-end structure. I also found the connection to Bernadette Mayer’s Story and Ursula K. Le Guin’s carrier bag theory particularly interesting, since it gives the work an experimental framework while still leaving room for personal expression. The idea of a short, collage-like book that can be read in one sitting and revisited from different angles sounds very appealing. Wishing Maria Hardin and SPAM a successful launch and plenty of…
Congratulations on the release of Sick Story: A Remix. I really appreciate how this project challenges traditional ideas of illness narratives by blending poetry, collage, and experimental storytelling into something deeply personal of muqeem.