I haven't made a proper post in a while—I do think that my need to broadcast random thoughts has significantly plummeted in the time I've spent off X, which is exciting. But some updates:
Alison and I have organised an evening of literary readings and arts and crafts stalls, taking place Friday 29 August from 6:30-9:30pm at The People's Letters bookshop in Bethnal Green, London. Our Instagram post is here and you can buy tickets on Humanitix here. There are limited tickets available so get yours fast!!
Graphic design by Mackenzie Duan and promotional support by Joanne Zou <3
I've been shortlisted for the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize. My story, 'The Overpass', will be published in the shortlist anthology which will drop sometime in November at an in-person event where the winners will also be announced. With thanks to Lorna Scott Fox for copyediting.
Speaking of November literary events, my dear friend Kwan Ann Tan's THE WAITER (Emma Press) is launching in Birmingham on 27 November! Buy tickets now here.
THE WAITER is such an incredible, formally experimental, heartwrenching story—I can't wait for everyone to experience it as well.
From Madeleine Thien's THE BOOK OF RECORDS, which I read two months ago and which hasn't left me since:
“Then Du Fu and I are side by side in his boat, which is a couplet floating on the page. His clothes are painstakingly mended, his face is haggard and sad, yet mischief lurks in his whole being. The wind makes a terrible mess of his thin grey hair. We are inside an old poem where no one can find us. I tell him that I am fourteen years old and that what I yearn for is something eternal, which I have named education, but what does education really mean? Du Fu says that education is a doorway that leads into things and through them, and through which others, too, will one day pass as if through a building of ten thousand rooms.”
“Heinrich said their problem was not that they overvalued books but that they valued almost nothing else as highly.”
I also reread DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING (my third read) while I was visiting home the other week and I can still say that it's one of my favourite novels, if not the favourite. It's interesting what I notice when I try to pay more attention to craft upon rereads. I think what's always important to remember is that writing a novel is fundamentally about letting go of control. This was further clarified to me by the fact that I was simultaneously reading SAVAGE COAST by Muriel Rukeyser, the lost novel that has been edited and published posthumously based on her manuscript and notes. I've also been thinking a lot about counterpoint / the contrapuntal, via Thien, Bach, and Edward Said's MUSICAL ELABORATIONS.
That's all, bye!