Unstable Container [TRADE PAPER ]

InAn Unstable Container, John LaPine explores the provocative dangers and tantalizing pleasures of corporeality across five deeply personal essays. Resonating with a distinct, lyrical Midwestern sensibility, LaPine’ s work examines with tenderness the intersections of language, society, and the body in our ongoing construction of the self. As he interrogates blackness, queerness, gender roles, and masculinity, what emerges challenges notions of identity and the self.An Unstable Containerestablishes John LaPine as an emerging voice vital to contemporary creative nonfiction. John LaPine is a Black biracial queer poet living & teaching in the Twin Cities. He earned his MA from Northern Michigan University in 2017, and his MFA from University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 2024. His work has appeared inThe Rising Phoenix Review,Hot Metal Bridge,The /Temz/ Review,Glass: A Journal of Poetry,Under the Gum Tree,Rhythm & Bones,Midwestern Gothic,Underblong, & elsewhere. He lives in Minneapolis, MN.NSVsClassicsOn AlcoholM—An Unstable ContainerThis book will appeal to a generation of readers interested in intersectionality: race, queerness, masculinity, body dysmorphia, and Midwestern identity are all prominent themes.