Garth, Kristin. Daddy: Stories. N.p.: Anxiety Press, 2023.

I enjoy the poetry of Garth’s that I’ve read, so when I saw she had a new collection of fiction out I decided to buy it.

Torres, Justin. Blackouts. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Torres’s long-awaited second novel was finally just released, eleven years after his first. I bought it immediately and read it this past week. It’s excellent.

Plett, Casey. On Community. Windsor, ON: Biblioasis, 2023.

Casey Plett is one of my favorite authors, so I had pre-ordered this book of nonfiction, which arrived yesterday.

Zhou, Emily. Girlfriends. Brooklyn: LittlePuss Press, 2023.

I ordered this short story collection because it is published by LittlePuss, which Plett cofounded. I read it this week and it is fantastic!

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 our times, 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 Latinx writer 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.

3. Submitted three poems to an anthology on the body.

4. Worked on my novella and submitted it to a press’s chapbook open reading period.

5. Received a rejection for a personal essay that I sent out about a year ago and had honestly forgotten about submitting because it wasn’t through Submittable.

6. Got booked to do an interview with Casey Plett at McNally Jackson Books’s Seaport location in November.

7. Agreed to serve as an associate editor for a new haiku journal.

8. Received a Best of the Net nomination for my poem “winter sky     smell of leather in the dungeon” from the Autumn 2022 issue of Heterodox Haiku.

9. Received the full cover design for my forthcoming book Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature.

Komurki, John Z. Stationery Fever: From Paper Clips to Pencils and Everything in Between. Munich: Prestel, 2016.

I’m obsessed with stationery, and recently heard about this book. It sounded intriguing, and I was able to find a used copy for a low price.

Steckel, Jan. Ghosts and Oceans. Las Vegas: Zeitgeist Press, 2023.

I heard about this short story collection with lots of bisexual characters from the author, who I’ve communicated with on social media. I had a chance to read it this week and really appreciate its depictions of queer joy.

Cerrone, Matthew. The New York Mets Fans’ Bucket List. Chicago: Triumph Books, 2017.

I received this and Green’s book as gifts from my grandmother-in-law, who knows that I am a huge Mets fan.

Chen, Angela. Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Boston: Beacon Press, 2020.

I’ve read very little about asexuality in comparison to other queer identities, so I bought this book as a move toward correcting that.

Dawson, Juno. This Book is Gay. Rev. ed. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Fire, 2021.

I’ve been buying and reading queer banned books lately partly to support the authors and partly as research for my job.

Green, David. 101 Reasons to Love the Mets. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2008.

Hahn, Kimiko. Foreign Bodies: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton, 2020.

I’ve enjoyed Hahn’s work since I began getting into poetry two decades ago, but have never acquired one of her books. One of my colleagues is getting rid of a bunch of her books because she is moving, so I got this book and Khatibi’s from her.

Khatibi, Abdelkébir. Class Warrior—Taoist Style. 1976. Trans. Matt Reeck. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2017.

Moss, Jeremiah. Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York. New York: W.W. Norton, 2022.

I encountered a reference to this book in McKenzie Wark’s book Raving, which I’ve been reading this week, and which is fantastic. I decided to buy Moss’s book right away because it sounds amazing.