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Operating as usual
Oh this looks excellent. Megan Giddings discusses The Women Who Could Fly next week with Jamie Figueroa, hosted by Duende District Bookstore and The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary.
Megan Giddings in conversation with Jamie Figueroa to celebrate The Women Could Fly! Hosted by Duende District in partnership with The Word.
"I felt about New York the way I felt about Mapplethorpe: When we were together, the part of me that howled all night was temporarily still." New fiction by C. R. Foster:
The bills were too thick to conceal in my pocket, so I reached inside my briefs and hid them there.
Sofia Samatar's THE WHITE MOSQUE arrives this October!
“This is a perfect memoir: a mosaic (or as Samatar calls it, 'a shattering') of self that elevates the genre of nonfiction to new heights."
—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
https://buff.ly/3xKxMQz
"When the two of you first met, Craiglist casual encounters still existed and she only started to dress. Her name wasn’t Melody yet, and the name you used wasn’t Sam." New fiction from Meredith Talusan about an encounter that changes everything:
Neither of you knew that your night together would smash everything.
"This is what I ended up learning from my pickles. Our keepsakes will sustain us through the seasons, but they will never be perfectly preserved." Read Ash Huang essay on the lessons she learned from her pandemic pickling phase:
I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control.
Read this poem by Tarene Thomas: "self-portrait as prairie sky / kokenewapikineyak horizon blush"
a steadfast soul-birth, tried and true / this is where you sing creation into being
Read this poem by Tarene Thomas, which incorporates the Cree language: "wâsêtahkwakâ kistikân / self-portrait as my mourning breath"
a steadfast soul-birth, tried and true / this is where you sing creation into being
"I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control." Ash Huang on the lessons she learned from her pandemic pickling phase:
I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control.
"If I showed too much emotion, I was hysterical; not enough, then whatever happened was probably not as bad as I claimed. Either way, I was not to be believed." Jen Corrigan on paranormal activity and the question of belief:
Like most women, I’ve been trained from birth to mistrust my perceptions. Then I spent the night in a haunted house.
Aditi Malhotra tells us about how handwriting has been a through line in her friendships, shows how handwriting can be incorporated into a generative practice, and offers some tried-and-tested stress-relief postures for happy handwriters:
Aditi Malhotra tells us about how handwriting has been a through line in her friendships, shows how handwriting can be incorporated into a generative practice, and offers some tried-and-tested…
"I felt tied to Hong Kong. I knew I couldn’t make up for lost time, but I had to grab hold of what is a quickly disappearing place." A new comic from Kaitlin Chan on Cantonese, culture, and grief:
A comic by Kaitlin Chan on grief, Cantonese culture, language, and how our relationship to culture, language and ourselves can shift
"This is what I ended up learning from my pickles. Our keepsakes will sustain us through the seasons, but they will never be perfectly preserved." Ash Huang on the lessons she learned from her pandemic pickling phase:
I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control.
Read this poem by Tarene Thomas, which incorporates the Cree language: "self-portrait as prairie sky / kokenewapikineyak horizon blush"
a steadfast soul-birth, tried and true / this is where you sing creation into being
"From the moment I knew myself as q***r—and later, nonbinary trans—I knew a simple truth: Every q***r person should learn how to fight." C. R. Foster on conflict, self-defense, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu:
On its surface, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was not a sport that I belonged in. To say that it is macho is an understatement.
"On its surface, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was not a sport that I belonged in. To say that it is macho is an understatement." C. R. Foster on conflict, self-defense, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu:
On its surface, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was not a sport that I belonged in. To say that it is macho is an understatement.
"You’re family until the going gets tough. Suddenly, it’s not personal; it’s business." Josh Greenblatt on the failed promise of the cool, chummy workplace:
Years spent in cultlike workplaces under cartoonishly incapable bosses has spooked me from going back to the office.
Just under two weeks until WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON by Ryan Lee Wong is in stores!
"A must-read: a story of Asian American relationships—familial, intergenerational, and otherwise—through the lens of Black-Asian histories, community organizing, and radical politics." —Lisa Ko
Preorder here!
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710739/which-side-are-you-on-by-ryan-lee-wong/
TONIGHT, 6pm CT, hear Meghan Gilliss discuss her celebrated debut novel LUNGFISH, in a virtual event hosted by Columbia's Skylark Bookshop!
We’re very excited to bring you, in a virtual event, the author of one of the most buzzed-about fiction titles of the Fall. Meghan Gilliss will be online and in conversation with Alex to talk about her stunning debut novel, Lungfish . The book has received rave reviews everywhere and we can’t wa...
Happy pub week to Christopher Sorrentino! His masterful memoir NOW BEACON, NOW SEA is in stores in paperback now!
~A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR~
Now Beacon Now Sea is a wrenching debut memoir of familial grief by a National Book Award finalist—and a defining account of what it means to love and lose a difficult parent, for readers of Joan Didion, Vivian Gornick and Dani Shapiro.
Don't miss it!
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/676219/now-beacon-now-sea-by-christopher-sorrentino/
"If we start with a serious metaphor, we can exaggerate and specify our way toward absurdity." Ben Sandman on the craft of the comic metaphor:
Ben Sandman elaborates on two strategies for crafting the comic metaphor—and shows us that the recipe for inducing laughter is different from what we might whip up for more serious writing.
"I told myself I would be back because I had to believe that I would be; because it was the only way to keep my anxious mind in the moment instead of spinning ahead." Tabitha Blankenbiller on class, impermanence, and planning the trip of a lifetime:
I have never felt further from a former version of myself as I do now, here, today.
"From the moment I knew myself as q***r—and later, nonbinary trans—I knew a simple truth: Every q***r person should learn how to fight." C. R. Foster on conflict, self-defense, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu:
On its surface, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was not a sport that I belonged in. To say that it is macho is an understatement.
"I started hormone replacement therapy when I was fifteen. I wasn’t an out intersex person then, nor did I even understand that I was intersex or have a real grasp of what that even meant." Matt Mitchell on how the beloved sitcom failed the intersex community:
Like any sitcom created before the mid-aughts—around the time Hollywood started doing the bare minimum to give space to marginalized people—‘Friends’ has not aged well.
"Though my body outwardly presents as male, inside, my DNA unravels with codes of biological womanhood." @matt_mitchell48 on how the beloved sitcom failed the intersex community:
Like any sitcom created before the mid-aughts—around the time Hollywood started doing the bare minimum to give space to marginalized people—‘Friends’ has not aged well.
Happy pub day to the editors and contributors of BEST DEBUT SHORT STORIES 2022!
This anthology celebrates the most recent winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, which recognizes twelve writers who have made outstanding fiction debuts in literary magazines. This year’s selections were made by Sabrina Orah Mark, Emily Nemens, and Deesha Philyaw, with Yuka Igarashi and Sarah Lyn Rogers as series editors.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710801/best-debut-short-stories-2022-by-yuka-igarashi/
The stories in Best Debut Short Stories 2022 explore the dangers and possibilities of protest in Multan, Pakistan, in 1978; in the well-to-do neighborhoods of Melbourne, Australia, at the end of the millennium; and in the outskirts of Ramallah, Palestine, in the present day. They describe toxic homes and precarious lives and refuge sought in unlikely places: a bowling alley, a work affair, a noisy club, a neoclassical sanatorium, a school-turned-hostel near a flooded brownfield. They feature a pork bun made with a perfect spiral of dough, a bucket of eggs swarmed by crows, a drink made of chilled chicken blood and rose water, and a pale pink worm with five hearts who lives at the edge of the universe.
Each story is accompanied by a letter from the editor who first published it, providing insight about what's new and exciting in fiction today and recognizing the vital work of literary journals in nurturing new voices in literature.
These stories are a great read, a snapshot of the future of short stories, and a great resource to learn about exciting markets for your own writing!
"Each ingredient needs to be carefully considered alongside my needs and limitations, meaning I have to be honest with myself about what I’m capable of—and, more importantly, what I’m not." Read Gabrielle Drolet's newest column on cooking and accessibility:
When it comes to food prep, I have to be honest with myself about what I’m capable of—and, more importantly, what I’m not.
Don't miss this roundtable with the 2022 PEN America Best Debut Short Stories Judges Sabrina Orah Mark, Emily Nemens, and Deesha Philyaw:
Many of the stories felt written on the edge of an edge of an edge of a world.
My grandmother’s ashes had been in the wall for a week when he brought it up.
What about your job? I said. Our lease?
----
In Literary Hub an excerpt of LUNGFISH by Meghan Gilliss!
It was Paul’s idea to come here. He knew I would. And not just to get away from whatever was wrong in Pittsburgh—the gaps in his presence I couldn’t make sense of, more and more of them since the b…
"I’m scared my vulnerability / makes me responsible for what / people do with us." From "Complicit Poem" by Sara Borjas, author of HEART LIKE A WINDOW, MOUTH LIKE A CLIFF:
When was the last time you chose / a glass of pinot over fair pay?
"I am always on the clock. I have come to associate the clock with guilt—mom guilt and climate guilt." A stunning essay by Kaitlyn Teer on eco-anxiety, geologic time, and mothering in the climate crisis:
I practice thinking about time like a geologist, but, mostly, I can manage only to think about it like a mother.
"I grew up in a family that had been declining economically for generations. Culturally, I was taught to have the concerns of a wealthier class. But practically, I had the concerns of someone living paycheck to paycheck for my entire adult life."
Meghan Gilliss talks to The Millions about her new LUNGFISH.
"I think that there are people writers and there are nature writers."
"Me quitting beef is a drop in the bucket in the bigger scheme, but as a parent, I need to model responsible climate behavior to my daughter." Aaron Gilbreath on giving up burgers. Read here:
Yes, burgers rule. They’re one of America’s truly great exports. They’re also a symbol of ecological tone deafness.
"Motherhood has fundamentally altered my perception of time." A stunning essay by Kaitlyn Teer on eco-anxiety, geologic time, and mothering in the climate crisis:
I practice thinking about time like a geologist, but, mostly, I can manage only to think about it like a mother.
A fantastic review for Meghan Gilliss's LUNGFISH in The New York Times Books!
"Gilliss’s language is an elemental force . . .Lungfish reads with a slowly building terror . . . Reminiscent of Lydia Kiesling’s The Golden State and Stephanie Land’s Maid."
In Meghan Gilliss’s debut novel, “Lungfish,” a young family maroons itself on a deserted island where sustenance is whatever you can get your hands on.
"Gilliss imbues every page with the ache and uncertainty of trying to give a child small pockets of joy under near impossible circumstances." —Lynn Steger Strong, Los Angeles Times
Lungfish, the debut novel of isolation, addiction, parenthood and bladderwrack is out now!
https://buff.ly/3RPaGjV
"In Tom’s presence, after all, I had learned what class was: It did not announce itself. It simply was." New fiction by C. R. Foster:
The bills were too thick to conceal in my pocket, so I reached inside my briefs and hid them there.
"She told everyone she was a god, but she was just alone." Read this short story—a retelling of the myth of Houyi the archer, who shot down the suns—by K-Ming Chang:
We wanted to embellish her legend, but now we were only the witnesses of her want.
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What do you remember? Inspired by the memoir Édouard Levé put to paper shortly before his death, Autoportrait is an extraordinarily frank and intimate work from Jesse Ball, one of America's most brilliant young authors. In stores August 16th. https://buff.ly/3PB2BOl
Today we're excited to show off SCARY MONSTERS, the latest from hugely acclaimed Sri Lankan Australian novelist Michelle de Kretser. http://bit.ly/ScaryMonstersBook Scary Monsters is not only a brilliant examination in fiction of racism, misogyny, and ageism, it's not only by a two-time winner of Australia's most prestigious literary prize the Miles Franklin, it's also a tête-bêche! Even if you haven't known the phrase, you've likely seen a tête-bêche—they're books that can be read from either cover. They essentially have two beginnings. In this case de Kretser uses the form very intentionally to convey a sense of discontinuity or rupture in the middle, much like the ruptures migrants face in their lives between past and present. The narrator of one half of the book, "Lili" is a young Australian woman whose family emigrated from Asia when she was a teenager. Having earned an honors degree in French, she is teaching in Montpellier in the early 1980s. As she makes friends and strives to be "A Bold Intelligent Woman," Lili is also worrying about her creepy neighbor and observing the treatment meted out to North African immigrants. "Lyle" is set in the near future in a radically right-wing Australia. The narrator works in a sinister government department, where he maintains a low profile and lives in fear of repatriation. At home, he is preoccupied by his ambitious wife, his wayward children, and his flamboyant elderly mother. Islam has been banned in the country, the air is smoke-filled due to a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course. Is there a monstrous link between Lili and Lyle's stories? Affecting, suspenseful, often witty and always addictively readable, this novel is so exciting and we're extremely proud to give it a home. Look for it on shelves in April 2022 or preorder now! http://bit.ly/ScaryMonstersBook
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