Many thanks to Jen Michalski for our interview at jmww Journal. Jen posed excellent questions and I appreciated the opportunity to sit with them, especially regarding my lifelong struggle to feel accepted, and acceptable. “I’ve never felt like I belong, for a myriad of reasons, but largely because I’m invariably in a state of hiding. You can’t belong if you’re not present.”
My 19-year-old body ink captures the home that’s never failed me: writing.
For The Rumpus, I wrote about the subversive reworking of traditional fairy tales and the twisting of patriarchal, heterosexual prescriptions in great reads from Roxane Gay, Matthew Salesses, Timothy Snyder, Louise O’Neill, Jennifer Berney, Tommy Orange, Amber Sparks, Carmem Maria Machado, and Darien Hsu Gee.
This free webinar chat on Partings in Storytelling & Beyond is tomorrow, Friday, May 7th, at 9am PDT/Noon EST/5pm GMT. Registration link is here, if you’d like to join us: bit.ly/2RxfhNm This will be my first event around the themes of my next book, In the Event of Contact (out May 18), and I’m very much looking forward to it.
Look at these beauties! Thanks so much to The Millions. These lists giddily feed my already out of control book buying habit. Nothing for it but to build an enormous tower of read books in the woods and live inside it for the rest of my days with my to be read books. And guests. I’ll take house guests. Who’s in? Congrats to Joan Silber, Rachel Cusk, Anjali Enjeti, Grace M. Cho, Nick Ripatrazone, and everyone else here.
After a five-month hiatus BITCHREADS from bitch media and EIC Evette Dionne is back! They included IN THE EVENT OF CONTACT, selecting it as one of 17 books feminists should read in May and I’m breathless to be included, and among these 16 fierce titles, including POP SONG: Adventures in Art and Intimacy by Larissa Pham from Catapult Books.
I’m fascinated by numerology. In that vein, wild wonderful things have been happening of late. Moments that make me feel supported and invite me to re-print negative associations, a lot of which goes back to my childhood. I grew up in 32 Munster Street, a mixed, messy bag. Today my book is #32 at Bustle‘s ‘Best of’ List. I’m feeling a sense of synchronicity and full circle. I’m also deeply grateful to the Bustle editors, in particular Samantha Leach and K.W. Colyard, for their tireless dedication to books and authors. This means more than even words can convey.
to be an early reader for IN THE EVENT OF CONTACT. The short story collection is out in the US on May 18, and beyond on June 3. To those who enter, thank you and good luck!
Giveaway ends April 12, 2021.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway
I’m grateful to have participated in yesterday’s Art of the Short Story virtual panel offered by Lit Camp and moderated by its founder Janis Cooke Newman. It was a lively and invigorating chat with my fellow writers Vanessa Hua, Jane Ciabattari, Yalitza Ferreras, and Laurie Ann Doyle, and one which connected us with a large and wonderful audience. I didn’t realize how much I miss these opportunities to be in community and conversation, sharing whatever informative tips, tricks, experiences, and inspiration we can. Here’s a link to the recording of the free event. Use passcode: Z0a+Gj++
Keeping with short stories, 10 advance reader copies (ARCs) of In the Event of Contact are currently on Goodreads Giveaway until March 1st. I’m really touched and excited by the keen interest in my next book and I hope hard readers will find the story collection a worthy read. I turned in the final edits on the book to my publisher, Dzanc Books, this past Saturday. It’s strange to have the ARCs in the world, which pale now next to the finished stories, but such is the nature of the business and I have to believe that there’s enough in the ARCs to gather support and momentum for the final book when it publishes on May 18. I gave these stories everything I have.
