The Greatest Experimentalist You’ve Never Heard Of

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She felt that this approach illuminated a fundamental truth about language: The very act of using language, she once told an interviewer, involves a ‘castration. The moment we utter a sentence, we’re leaving out a lot.’

A “nanopress” has begun reissuing the work of novelist, poet, and essayist Christine Brooke-Rose, who died in 2012. The author of metafictional, experimental sci-fi believed she should be remembered alongside the likes of George Perec. If you don’t know Perec’s name, you’ve probably heard of at least one of his works—La Disparition, which was written without a single “e.” Similarly, one of Brooke-Rose’s novels, Between, omitted the verb “to be.” Another, Next, omitted “to have.”

Kelly Lynn Thomas reads, writes, and sometimes sews in Pittsburgh, PA. Her creative work has appeared in Sou’wester, Thin Air Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, metazen, and others, and she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. She is hopelessly obsessed with Star Wars and can always be found with a large mug of tea. She also runs the very small Wild Age Press. Read more at kellylynnthomas.com. More from this author →