Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real (story chapbook & audiobook)

A picture of the cover of Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real by Sandra Alland. Baby blue and hand-drawn, the cover is spread open to show the back and front. On the left is the back cover, with the hand-written quote "Water is water is not water" and the name PROPER TALES PRESS. On the right: the title is contained in a line drawing of a glass or tank or water. Below it are the words "Stories by Sandra Alland", with a small sailboat in motion drawn next to the author's name. Cover by Stuart Ross.

Order Info Audiobook Download

Order Info Print Chapbook

Description Audiobook

  • San’s first audiobook
  • six short stories, plus visual description of cover and acknowledgements track
  • recipient of Canada Council for the Arts Digital Originals grant

Description Print Chapbook

  • San’s first chapbook of short stories in Canada
  • Published by Proper Tales Press as part of 40th Anniversary season
  • edited by Stuart Ross
  • six short stories; 32 pages

Check out “Measurable”, including free streamable ‘film-stories’ and audiobook, funded by Digital Originals (Canada Council for the Arts).

Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real is a collection of six short stories by Sandra Alland. San launched the chapbook in September 2019, at Bi+ Arts Festival’s Bodies In Resistance in Tkaronto/Toronto and at Taps & Corks on King in Cobourg. Edited by Stuart Ross and published by Proper Tales Press as part of their 40th Anniversary Season.

In genres ranging from historical to weird fiction, Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real centres precarious queer and disabled lives – in the past, present, and alternate realities. Themes of class, race, gender and migration weave through worlds that are intimate, political, and often disturbingly funny. Formally playful and character-driven, Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real examines what we do in the aftermath of terrible decisions: our lovers’, our employers’, our countries’, our own. Especially our own.

Cover art by Stuart Ross.

Content Notes

Overall there’s nothing graphic. Throughout, there are examinations of white supremacy and ableism, plus mostly-brief mentions of the following:
-Water,logged (incarceration; capitalist violence including water contamination, forced migration, response to hurricanes)
-Prologue to Trauma (violence based on racism and queermisia; colonial capitalism; alcohol/drinking; death)
-Sliced (self-harm including drug use)
-Air (charity industrial complex; smoking; scorpions)
-Tomorrow Is, After All (climate change; pot smoking)
-Equivalence (incarceration; freak shows and the word “crip” (positively); pain, joint dislocation; classism; transmisia; heights, falling; alcohol)