The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide is a guide to the emerging subculture of literary tattoos — a collection of 100 full-color photographs of human skin indelibly adorned with quotations and images from Pynchon to Dickinson to Shakespeare to Plath. Packed with beloved lines of verse, literary portraits, and illustrations — and statements from the bearers on their tattoos’ history and the personal significance of the chosen literary work — The Word Made Flesh is part photo collection, part literary anthology written on skin.
Special features include a reprint of a short story by Donald Barthelme (along with the tattoo it inspired on the author's daughter), an interview with Brian Evenson about seeing his own work tattooed on someone else, Shelley Jackson's SKIN Project and Rick Moody's Shelley Jackson tattoo, Jonathan Lethem's homage to Philip K. Dick, Tao Lin's Tao Lin tattoo, and more.
Eva Talmadge's fiction has appeared in Subtropics, The New York Tyrant, The Agriculture Reader, The New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. She's the sole editor of this blog; comments or complaints should be directed to her at evatalmadge.net.
Got a literary tattoo? Click here to submit it to the blog. But first, please make sure your pic is in focus, and, please, please, please do not send pictures with blood in them. Thanks.