Anything That Moves Book

RELEASE DATE - 23 MAY 2023

From being caught having their first orgasm by their mum’s best friend to being stalked and propositioned by a fundamentalist pastor; from soliciting spanking dates over the Internet to scoring a coveted invitation to a threesome with some elf fetishist neighbours, art rock darling (Xiu Xiu) Jamie Stewart’s journey of fleshy self-discovery and queer awakening makes for an extraordinary, cringy, unputdownable epic in miniature, burning always with radical and often shocking self-criticism.

A one-of-a-kind exploration of abasement, depravity, joy, and embarrassment (and even joy in embarrassment), Anything That Moves is a series of comic, tragic X-rays of sex. It is funny, erotic, anti-erotic, honest, brave, icky, and hauntingly sad by turns. It demonstrates too how love and forgiveness can percolate around the edges of even the most traumatic relationships.

Stewart's band Xiu Xiu has been called ‘self-flagellating’, ‘brutal’, ‘shocking’ and ‘perverse’, but also ‘genius’, ‘brilliant’, ‘unique’, ‘imaginative’ and ‘luminous’. Readers can expect nothing less from Anything That Moves.

'Jamie Stewart smears himself across every page like a sexorcism on bad acid. Deviant. Down and dirty. Get your freak on. Then wash your hands.'
Lydia Lunch

'On its surface, Anything That Moves would appear to be a book about Jamie Stewart’s sexual history, but I found – as is the case in Jamie’s work with Xiu Xiu – that it is more of a delineation of the most hidden and forbidden parts of our subconscious, and the complicated and insane ways we relate to ourselves and each other.’
Owen Pallett

‘Jamie Stewart has become my favourite literary figurine with their tasty memoir Anything That Moves. Move over Denton Welch and Monique Wittig there’s a new lovesexy kid on the block.’
Vaginal Davis