Sincerity is my Kryptonite. It strips off my fabulous cape and leaves me feeling stunned and human. Too bad I can’t resist it. In spite of myself, I crave the literal-minded. All my life, I have wanted to marry someone prosaic, and the people I have yearned for most have been the ones who don’t really get me. They never know when I’m kidding and so they keep their distance.
— John Weir’s story “Katherine Mansfield,” in his 2022 collection your nostalgia is killing me
Tag: literary awards
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According to the night gardener, the Mapuche Indians would crush the skeletons of their vanquished enemies and spread that dust on their farms as fertilizer, always working in the dead of night, when the trees are fast asleep, for they believed that some of them — the canelo and the araucaria, the monkey puzzle — could see into a warrior’s soul, steal his deepest secrets and spread them through the shared roots of the forest, where plush tendrils whispered to pale mushroom mycelium, ruining his standing before the community.
When We Cease to Understand the World, p. 182In the Acknowledgments, Benjamin Labatut describes When We Cease to Understand the World as “a work of fiction based on real events. The quantity of fiction grows throughout the book; whereas Prussian Blue contains only one fictional paragraph, I have taken greater liberties in the subsequent texts, while still trying to remain faithful to the scientific concepts discussed in each of them.”
Wow, just wow.
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What a superb storyteller Elizabeth Kolbert is! To think self only heard about her books from reading the Contributors Notes for a back issue of The New Yorker. She wasn’t even aware that The Sixth Extinction won the Pulitzer in 2015.
from Chapter II:
- The first mastodon bones subjected to what might, anachronistically, be called scientific study were discovered in 1739. That year, Charles le Moyne, the second Baron de Longueuil, was traveling down the Ohio River with four hundred troops, some, like him, Frenchmen, most of the others Algonquians and Iroquois. The journey was arduous and supplies were short. On one leg, a French soldier would later recall, the troops were reduced to living off acorns.
Longueuil was leading his men on a campaign against the Chickasaw, and many of his men died in the next several months. Indian scouts discovered, at the edge of an enormous swamp near present-day Cincinnati, a quantity of gigantic bones and teeth (the roots alone were the length of a man’s hand). They turned out to belong to a creature later known as “the American elephant,” or mastodon.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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Found out today that my story made the longlist of LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction.
It was speculative fiction. I took a chance!
That is all.
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- She got her teeth from her daddy’s side and the Cambpell teeth had always been weak, they were a reason for humility in an otherwise handsome face.
Even though she’s just starting, self can see why this novel won the 2020 Booker Prize. It’s the voice.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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from Luisa A. Igloria’s collection Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Crab Orchard Review & Southern Illinois University Press, 2020)
Mother: Three Pictures (An Excerpt)
She is beautiful in that photograph where they are dancing in a
roomful of other couples. She has a beauty mole penciled on her
cheek, slightly to the right of her lip. Her eyebrows are two perfect
arches, her hair a dark beehive. I think there are dots on her dress.
Where is this photograph? I would very much like to have it.The above, Dearest Mum, when she was a young Filipina pianist in New York City, 1950s.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
She is beautiful in that photograph where they are dancing in a
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The following do not contain all the long-listed books, only the ones that self thinks she will actually get around to reading in 2021 (and one she has already read, which she highly recommends: The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, by Caroline Kim). They’re a mix of memoirs, novels, and short story collections.
- Borderland Apocrypha, by Anthony Cody (Omnidawn)
- Crooked Hallelujah, by Jo Ford (Grove Press)
- How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel, by C. Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books)
- Imaginary Museums, by Nicolette Polek (Soft Skull Press)
- Inheritors, by Asako Serizawa (Doubleday)
- Sharks in the Time of Saviors: A Novel, by Kawai Strong Washburn (MCD)
- The Butterfly Lampshade, by Aimee Bender (Doubleday)
- The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir, by E. J. Koh (Tin House)
- The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, by Caroline Kim (University of Pittsburgh Press)
- This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search for Home, by Lauren Sandler (Random House)
- You Will Never Be Forgotten: Stories, by Mary South (FSG Originals)
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Dear blog readers, are you in for a treat.
Caroline Kim, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and currently on the Long List for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, has agreed to share with self her process for writing a short story.
The story we’ll be parsing is Mr. Oh, the first story in the collection. Among other things, self will be asking her why this story came first. Or, put another way, how does she decide the order in which to put her stories?
Caroline’s answers to self’s questions will be posted next week. But read her story first. Read her collection, the entire collection. If you think of any questions, you can leave comments here, and self will pass on to Caroline.
So excited! SQUEEEE!!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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Luisa A. Igloria, dear friend, is this year’s Virginia Poet Laureate. Her newest collection, Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Crab Orchard Review & Southern Illinois University Press), is such a beauty.
Excerpt from Moving, Changing, Not Moving
In the brick-lined interior of a coffee shop, a man at the communal table closes his eyes, a pair of earphones plugged into his cell. Fanning themselves, people come in from the street; it’s the hottest summer & everyone wants iced coffees & teas, water & ice; & parents with little children fall in line outsidepeople come in from the street; it’s the hottest summer& everyone wants iced coffees & teas, water &
btw: Has anyone EVER tried to contact WordPress about their new Block Editors, and has one EVER received a response? This poem format is ALL OFF, and the code editor does not allow self to switch between single space (within a stanza) and double space (between stanzas). Literally, self has been trying to format since 10 a.m., an hour and a half ago. Even their Customer Service doesn’t work. That is all.
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These are exciting times. Self is reading The Charterhouse of Parma (Brilliant and funny and moving).
Five on her ‘To-Read’ List
- The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead
- Surrender, White People! Our Unconditional Terms for Peace, by D. L. Hughley
- Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, by Larry Tye
- In West Mills, by De’Shawn Charles Wilson
- The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, by Drue Heinz Literature Prize winner Caroline Kim
Kanlaon 