Books Acquired Recently

Gundy, Jeff. Wind Farm: Landscape with Stories and Towers. Loveland, OH: Dos Madres Press, 2021.

Gundy has long been one of my favorite authors. His new book arrived in the mail yesterday!

Hendrix, Raye. Every Journal is a Plague Journal. Morongo Valley, CA: Bottlecap Press, 2021.

I recently heard about this chapbook about having OCD in the pandemic (which is my situation), and ordered it immediately.

—. Fire Sermons. Syracuse, NY: Ghost City Press, 2021.

Hendrix sent me a copy of this micro chapbook along with my copy of Every Journal is a Plague Journal. An exciting surprise!

Books Acquired Recently

Forché, Carolyn, ed. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.

A professor of mine mentioned this anthology in class last week. I had never heard of it, but am very much interested in poetry as activism, so I decided to check it out. I was able to find an inexpensive used copy online.

Knippen, James Henry. Would We Still Be. Kalamazoo, MI: New Issues Press, 2021.

Knippen is a close friend of mine, and I just received my pre-ordered copy of his new poetry collection!

Zambreno, Kate. To Write As If Already Dead. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021.

I love Zambreno’s book Heroines, and while I was doing some holiday shopping at the Strand yesterday I noticed that they had some autographed copies of her latest book, so I bought one.

Writing Activity, November 2021

Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself–to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of the pandemic (Which is still going on! Keep wearing masks!)–and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I will include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a queer disabled writer of color because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of a marginalized group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies website.

3. Worked on various assignments for my MFA coursework and had my writing workshopped for the second time, which was helpful.

4. Submitted 14 poems to Modern Haiku and had one accepted for their next issue.

5. Submitted 10 poems to Frogpond–still waiting to hear back.

6. Had a haiku published in the October 2021 issue of Kingfisher, which arrived in November: “brownout weather / the bodega / out of milk”

7. Had an essay that was written pre-pandemic and then delayed because of the pandemic finally come out: “‘We change–and the whole world changes’: Samuel R. Delany’s Heavenly Breakfast in Context.” In Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, 64-69. Oakland: PM Press, 2021.

9. Submitted a chapbook of haiku and senryu to a contest.

Books Acquired Recently

de la Cretaz, Britni, and Lyndsey D’Arcangelo. Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League. New York: Bold Type Books, 2021.

de la Cretaz is one of my favorite sports writers, so when this book became available for pre-order I ordered it immediately. My copy came this week.

Nette, Andrew, and Iain McIntyre, eds. Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985. Oakland: PM Press, 2021.

This lavish, full-color volume is a collection of essays on radical science fiction. I have an essay in it about Samuel R. Delany’s memoir, Heavenly Breakfast. My author’s copy just arrived–always an exciting event!

Books Acquired Recently

Harbach, Chad, ed. MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. New York: n+1/Faber and Faber, 2014.

This book is already somewhat dated (e.g., in the list of authors Harbach mentions in the title essay and also the rather un-diverse list of contributors), but I decided to buy it and read it anyway because, as someone doing an MFA in NYC, it still has some relevance to my situation (including Harbach’s assertion that MFA programs in the city are more oriented toward the New York writing scene rather than the broader MFA scene).

Winston, Jen. Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much. New York: Atria, 2021.

A friend of mine posted lauditorily about this book on Facebook, and I decided to buy it right away. I bought it at the Strand, which had some signed copies. The inscription reads “If you’re holding this book you’re bisexual now!!! (I don’t make the rules <3) xoxo Jen Winston.” How delightful!

Books Acquired Recently

Abdurraqib, Hanif. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. New York: Random House, 2021.

A classmate recommended this book to me, and its blurb was enticing enough that I decided to buy it.

Davis, Lennard J. Obsession: A History. 2008. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Jordan Kisner cites this book in her essay on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Thin Places. It’s one of the best essays I’ve ever read, partly because of the information she shares from Davis’s book, so I decided to buy it and read it for myself.

Reimer, Nikki. Behind the Drywall. Illustrated by Andrea Mackenzie Engele. Calgary: Gytha Press, 2021.

Reimer has become one of my favorite poets, so I was very excited to hear that she’s just come out with a new chapbook. I bought it right away.

Books Acquired Recently

Castaldi, Erin C., ed. Visiting the Wind: Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthology 2021. Haiku Society of America, 2021.

The HSA’s annual members’ anthology arrived a few days ago. Here is my poem from it: “Super Bowl Sunday / scrimmage / at the grocery store” (41).

Khakpour, Porochista. The Last Illusion. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.

I love Khakpour’s memoirs, so I have decided to begin exploring her novels.

Kisner, Jordan. Thin Places: Essays from In Between. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

I was recently assigned one of Kisner’s essays in class, and it was good enough that I decided to buy her book. I read it this weekend and it is fantastic, immediately one of my favorite books.

Ortiz, Wendy C. Excavation: A Memoir. Portland: Future Tense Books, 2014.

A friend has been urging me to read this memoir for years, and I finally got around to buying it.

Writing Activity, October 2021

One of my 2021 goals is to keep a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself–to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of the pandemic (Which is still going on! Keep wearing masks!)–and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I will include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a queer disabled writer of color because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of a marginalized group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies website.

3. Attended two meetings with my haiku mentorship group.

4. Emailed another round of acceptance emails for the Dungeons & Dragons anthology that I am co-editing, and had several meetings with my co-editor about it.

5. Submitted a review of Casey Plett’s new book of short stories, A Dream of a Woman, to the Journal of Mennonite Studies.

6. Had an AWP panel that I am on accepted for the 2022 conference, and registered for the conference.

Also relevant to this month’s list: every month I handwrite the list in a page in my journal, and then type it up at the beginning of the next month as I am doing today. Yesterday, the pen I use for the list ran out of ink. This upset me more than I expected it to. R.I.P., pen.

Books Acquired Recently

di Prima, Diane. Spring and Autumn Annals: A Celebration of the Seasons for Freddie. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2021.

I love di Prima’s Memoirs of a Beatnik, so I was intrigued when I heard that a new memoir had just been published posthumously. LitHub published an excerpt of it that I enjoyed, so I decided to buy it. I tore through it last week; it’s definitely worth reading. It has a wonderful New York City vibe.

Frangello, Gina. Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 2021.

Considering its subtitle, how can one not buy this book? As someone who is divorced but who has not written about it, I am intrigued to see how other authors approach the subject.

Gay, Roxane. Bad Feminist: Essays. New York: HarperPerennial, 2014.

We’ve been reading electronic copies of a few essays from this book in one of my MFA classes, so I decided to go ahead and buy the entire collection.

Smith, Patti. M Train. New York: Vintage Books, 2016.

I went to the Strand for the first time since moving back to the area this summer to buy Gay’s book, and they had a stack of Smith’s book next to it. I love Smith’s memoir Just Kids, and was coming off the NYC high from di Prima’s book, so I impulsively bought M Train as well.

Book Acquired Recently: Miriam Toews’s Fight Night

Toews, Miriam. Fight Night. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021.

I just received Miriam Toews’s new novel in the mail. Thankfully it got published in the U.S. at almost the same time as the Canadian edition, unlike her previous book, Women Talking, which was delayed by almost a year. I was able to order Women Talking from Canada, but it’s much more difficult and more expensive now to get books from Canada as a result of the pandemic.