It's a Jumble

  Beauty and pain are entwined in this gorgeous book by Lee Murray, winner of the 2023 NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize. This is a book that weaves together myth and history, the real and the unreal, poetry and prose. It describes the tragic stories of nine Chinese diaspora women in New Zealand from the early 1900s to the present day. Connecting these nine stories is the figure of the fox spirit—a liminal creature of Chinese mythology. In some tellings, a fox spirit can take on human form through wearing a human skull that perfectly fits its head. A fox spirit can also cultivate to immortality through arduous trials. In Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, the story-framing device is that of a nine-tailed fox spirit who must find nine skulls to wear, nine human lives to live, before she can reach celestial heaven.   The nine lives the fox spirit lives through in this book are harrowing. Here are brides brought reluctantly from China to New Zealand, Aotearoa--“the land of the ...

  The year is drawing to its close, and it’s that time when writers make posts about their award eligibilities for the year. I had four stories published in 2022, and my first poetry publication as well. I would be honored if you took a look at any of them.   Eligible Stories “An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words” in Lightspeed Magazine, January 2022 (3357 words).   A story about a magical language that can say all things. About the power and limits of words. And it’s also almost all I want to say about writing. Stefan Rudnicki gives a marvelous narration (his voice is an exact match for my character’s!) on the accompanying podcast, so give that a listen if you can.   “Before We Drown” in The Future Fire, January 2022 (flash fiction, ~1000 words). A little flash piece about memory and the light between storms.  “Once on a Midsummer’s Night” In GigaNotoSaurus, February 2022 (~7500 words). An epic fairy tale fantasy about a dead ...

  “Within this temporal body composed of a hundred bones and nine holes there resides a spirit which, for lack of an adequate name, I think of as windblown. Like delicate drapery, it may be torn away and blown off by the least breeze. It brought me to writing poetry many years ago, initially for its own gratification, but eventually as a way of life. True, frustration and rejection were almost enough to bring this spirit to silence, and sometimes pride brought it to the brink of vanity. From the writing of the very first line, it has found no contentment as it was torn by one doubt after another. This windblown spirit considered the security of court life at one point; at another, it considered risking a display of tis ignorance by becoming a scholar. But its passion for poetry would not permit either. Since it knows no other way than the way of poetry, it has clung to it tenaciously.”         --Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) from his travelogue, T he Knapsack No...

  Time has been strange for some time now. There’s a joke I’ve seen online, the gist of which is:  “How can it be 2022? I still haven’t finished processing 2020!” Which, well, yes. Very much yes. Nevertheless, we’re already almost in the middle of the first month of the new year. 2021 was strange and hard, but there were spots of light, too, and among those spots of light were books and stories. Here are some books that I loved.     Novels and Collections The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu This was the first book I finished in 2021. If you don’t know Ken Liu’s work yet, you should fix that immediately; I think he is one of the most important writers working today, both in and out of speculative fiction. The Hidden Girls is his second collection of short stories, and a worthy follow-up to his first. Here are mind-bending far-future science fiction stories, equally mind-bending fantasy (with elements of sci-fi), and tender stories of family. The...

  "Like the single stroke of a temple-bell, the perfect short poem should set murmuring and undulating, in the mind of the reader, many a ghostly afternote of long duration."  --Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) on Japanese short poetry, from his eccentric collection of essays and stories, In Ghostly Japan

  The Bram Stoker Award and Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthology, Black Cranes: Tale s of Unquiet Women , was one of my favorite reads of 2020, and one of my favorite reads of all time (you can see my full review here ). So when editor Lee Murray reached out to me to ask if I’d like a digital review copy of  T ortured Willows: Bent, Bowed, Unbroken , a book of poems which serves as a thematic companion to Black Cranes , I jumped at the chance.   Black Cranes is an anthology of dark fantasy and horror stories, written by Asian writers and centered on the experiences and voices of Asian women. With inspirations rooted in a variety of mythologies and stories from across East and Southeast Asia, the tales of Black Cranes address themes of otherness, oppression, obligation, diaspora, and rage. Tortured Willows takes up these themes again, but through the form of poetry. Four of the authors featured in Black Cranes return in this new volume to again explore the expe...

  What a strange, surreal year 2020 was. Like many people I know, I found my attention span shot to pieces, and there was a period of time when books (normally my most beloved and trusted refuge) failed me utterly. I simply didn’t have the concentration to read them. 2020 was a year that other forms of media and art stepped in for me. It was a year that found me listening to music again, when I hadn’t really. . . in years. It was a year that found me falling into the rabbit hole of Chinese historical fantasy dramas (I may never come out). And while my mind was too scattered to focus on long fiction, it found comfort in poetry. I read a lot of poetry. I still managed to read some short fiction. And eventually, I found my way back to the long form as well. Here are some of the books and art that got me through 2020. BOOKS As I said above, I read embarrassingly few novels this year. I would start, and my mind would often skid right off the page. But these are the ones that I f...