Harsh Cravings

by Jason Haaf

design by Peter Collins
including 14 black and white collage artworks by the author

129x198mm

198 pages

softcover

ISBN 978-1-914237-11-9

Harsh Cravings is a diary style memoir influenced by Mary MacLane’s I Await the Devil’s Coming and confessional literature. Written over the course of ninety days, it is a first-person reflection of what it is to navigate a queer life, marriage and memories in New York City. Taking place during the summer and fall months of 2020, it is an unfiltered look into the life of its author and a commentary on the events and people who surround him.

Harsh Cravings is a smart meditative study in pacing our days. The intensity of Jason Haaf’s truths steady us through the strange months of 2020: from erotic pangs—and whether to embrace or challenge them—to the election, to his overarching “need to expose”. Haaf’s writing reads like a flashlight illuminating the murky middle-ground of being a queer of a certain age in this most uncertain Age. Zach Grear, artist and founder of Boy Division/Queer Theory

With Harsh Cravings Jason Haaf beautifully delivers a poignant piece of work capturing the many moods and fluctuations of a queer writer living in New York City in 2020, amidst the burgeoning Covid-19 pandemic. At once intimate and revealing, Haaf works his magic to impart not only his own internal and interpersonal experiences but also to more broadly comment on the rupturing and evolving socio-political landscape. A real slice of life seen through the eyes of a man who allows himself to express his vulnerability and in so doing provides the reader with a resonance, strength and beauty that is as moving as it is difficult to impart Dr Vanessa Sinclair, author of Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation

Jason Haaf takes us on a journey as he looks inside the mental file cabinets of the chambers of his mind.  He reflects on the quiet solitude of his youth, the intimacy of losing his virginity, and adjusting to who he is today. He leaves us with our own questions of who we are in this moment we all find ourselves, searching for meaning and how to move forward in the chaos surrounding us John Hanning, author of Unfortunate Male

In the queer tradition of oversharing, Harsh Cravings is a raw, resonant, and sexually explicit exploration of self. Jason Haaf’s pandemic journal reverberates with erotic tension while navigating the interior spaces of mid-life’s onslaught of maturity and reflexivity. Highly enjoyable and insightful, the book takes the reader on a journey back to some of the most challenging days of 2020 as a means of finding pathways forward in a tumultuous world Ryan A. White, filmmaker Raw! Uncut! Video!

£11.99

In stock