The Sexuality of Care by M.K. Thekkumkattil

About the book:

A unique, conversation-starting essay collection about critical care work, kink practices, and how one might transform the other.

M. K. Thekkumkattil is an ICU nurse looking for ways to show real care for their patients in the age of COVID. When not working in critical care, they struggle with chronic illness, endure controlling partners, and write letters to former patients that wrestle with the violence of professional nursing. At the same time, their slow gender awakening and the new, kink-informed relationships that accompany it begin to shape a way out of the brutalities the hospital system requires.

In essays that blend memoir and manifesto, The Sexuality of Care builds a convincing new argument for how the present-day medical system fails both its patients and its laboring nurses, as well as how the vision of radical consent found in queer kink practices lets us imagine a future where hospitals are abolished, yet care thrives.

About the author:

M. K. Thekkumkattil is a trans, disabled, kinky writer and nurse whose liberation is bound up with Palestinian liberation. They have received support from SmokeLong Quarterly, Tin House, Queer Art Mentorship, Lambda Literary, VONA, and Writing by Writers. Their work can be found in the chapbook Weaving Liberation as well as in Black Warrior Review, smoke and mold, ___figuration, Year Round Queer, and In the Future There Are No Hospitals.

The conversation will be moderated by Luke Sutherland.

Luke Sutherland is a writer, librarian, and publisher on Piscataway lands, so-called Washington D.C. His chapbook Distance Sequence won the 2023 OutWrite Chapbook Contest, published by Neon Hemlock Press. He is an editor at smoke + mold and co-founder of the small press Lilac Peril. Find him online as @lukejsuth.

Accessibility notes: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Out of respect and care for our disabled/immunocompromised peers, masks will be provided and required at this event. Please contact events@lostcitybookstore.com with questions.

Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar events@lostcitybookstore.com con cualquiera duda.