August 2020

10 posts in August 2020

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“I can’t just be hopeful for the sake of it” – Jenny Offill on Weather

I can’t just be hopeful for the sake of it. I find that I have to figure out actions that feel like they create a less precarious life for the future. So for me that has meant that I wrote this novel, which I was never intending to write about the climate when I first began it. And also that — I’m a pretty introverted person, as most writers are — but I’ve pushed myself a little bit to do more activism. That, for me, has been an antidote to the dread and a hopeful thing.

Jenny Offill talks about her novel Weather with NPR’s A Word on Words, here.

Out now: Wiving by Caitlin Myer

Wiving is a wonder, a hypnotic account of the dangers of desire–specifically female desire–when it dares to run counter to all the barriers that were created to keep such passions in their place. Myer’s self-examination and honesty go way past brave and into a dizzying kind of free-fall confession. When I finished this, I felt heart-broken to know what finally ‘shook her free.’ Highly recommended.”–Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil and I Will Be Complete

Alum Caitlin Myer’s memoir Wiving: A Memoir of Loving Then Leaving the Partiarchy is out now! Buy it from our friends at Point Reyes Books, or read a review in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Everything’s Fine” by Bea Chang

2. Two months ago, Broad Street Magazine invited past contributors to add to its pandemic blog. I dismissed the invitation almost right away; I am a slow, painfully meticulous writer. An example: I am currently working on an essay about 9/11. So I figured that by the time I was “done” with my coronavirus ramblings, some semblance of normalcy would have resumed.

3. Yet, here we are.

Thirty-one paragraphs about quarantine and sports by Bea Chang, at Broad Street.

Maaza Mengiste this Sunday at Edinburgh International Book Festival

If you’re online this Sunday, August 16, you can catch Maaza Mengiste in conversation with John Williams, Douglas Stuart, and Paul Mendez for an Edinburgh International Book Festival event sponsored by The New York Times Book Review. They’ll be “coming together to discuss their work, and how they’re trying to make sense of the mess we’re in. They talk about what they’re reading and recommending, from books for comfort to works that have made them change their minds.” The event is free, starting at 12:30 PM EST (5:30 PM BST) and you can find out more about it here.

Shayla Lawson in The Cut

You are here because you are cool. You have arrived. You’ve finally landed a career in some transparent millennial advertising agency with the pinball machine and the snacks and the sliding-glass office spaces. After three to six interviews and a probation period that amounted to an extended six-month half-paid internship — so you could shadow the girl whose new position comes with a pay bump meaning she will earn four times more than you — you have made it: a job with health care and vision and dental and sick pay and the opportunity to quit at least two of your four to six side jobs.

If you haven’t seen it yet, head over to The Cut for an excerpt from Shayla Lawson’s new book This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope.

 

 

New Nonfiction from Poupeh Missaghi

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised not only practical questions with regard to our public health, environment, education, and sociopolitical systems, but also concerns about our ability to cope psychologically. Many experts have been warning about the mental health impacts of the disaster. They have discussed how the pandemic has been a trigger for a lot of old suppressed emotions, causing them to rise to the surface. It has also raised many philosophical questions about what it means to be a human being in this world.

Read alum Poupeh Missaghi’s essay, “A Persian New Year Beginning with COVID-19” in the June 2020 issue of Words Without Borders.