It's a Jumble

Bracken Magazine is one of my favorite magazines. The editors there select absolutely beautiful, lyrical fiction, poetry, and artwork, all “inspired by the wood and what lies in its shadows.” This is work that often breathes in the liminal space between “literary” and “speculative,” work that slips between genres. I’m absolutely thrilled that my short story, “Wild Ones, ” (first published in Bracken in 2018) now appears in Bracken: An Anthology of the First Five Issues. This is a paperback collection of selected art, poetry, and fiction that embodies the Bracken aesthetic. My short story appears alongside gorgeous work from Gwendolyn Kiste, K.T. Bryski, Emily Stoddard, and more. The lovely cover art is from Jana Heidersdorf. If you can’t buy the collection, I hope you still check out the magazine! ( issues are free to read online).

Midway through June and I’m behind on my fiction reading (and writing!) as usual. Still, here is some of what I’ve read in the past few months. SHORT STORIES Necessary Reading “ Riverbed” by Omar El Akkad at Terraform (reprinted from the anthology, A People’s Future of the United States ”) In a future America ravaged by climate change and decline, Dr. Khadija Singh has returned to Riverbed, an internment camp in Billings, MO where Muslim-Americans were interned purely for their religion. Singh and her family were Sikh, not Muslim—yet that matter was overlooked in light of their complexion and appearance, and they were rounded up and held there as well. Now it’s decades later; Dr. Singh has Canadian citizenship and America is ashamed of what it did—the old internment facility now houses a museum, tours are given, and events planned for the 50 th anniversary of the facility. But Dr. Singh has not come back to participate in commemoration events. She’s not in a...

Some things I’ve read: The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad Nadia Murad is a survivor, a writer and public speaker, a human rights activist, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I read her memoir for a meeting of my local mothers’ group book club, and it is without doubt the toughest book I have ever read. There were many times that I just had to stop, overwhelmed. I cannot overstate the horrors of this book, a personal narrative of the Islamic State’s campaign of genocide, torture, and sexual enslavement of the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq. I cannot overstate the absolute sadism of Nadia Murad’s captors. The evil of this regime. And I cannot overstate Nadia Murad’s heroism, the heroism of the Sunni Muslim family who helped her to escape, the heroism of her family members who survived, and the heroism of every single Yazidi who survived.     Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, in the foreword to this book, wri...

Hmm, I meant to start publishing these short fiction round-ups monthly, but time got away from me (as it often does), and it seems I’m on a bimonthly schedule again. As always, there was way too much good fiction published for any one person to read, and I know that I missed a lot. But here’s a selection of some of what I did read, and love, in February and March. Stories of Magic, Stories of Horror “Dustdaughter” by Inda Lauryn in Uncanny Moonless midnight. She had never heard it described that way, usually her father making the declaration “At least they won’t see the dirt on her too good.” A teacher using her as an example of what you would look like coming out of the Le Brea Tar Pits—when she became the official playground monster. Her mother not going to the school to raise hell against a teacher becoming her child’s bully. “That’s the way it is for girls like us, Dust. Might as well get used to people treating you this way.” But moonless midnight felt like part...

All her life, Lee Lien has heard the story: her grandfather once ran a café in Saigon, and one day an American journalist named Rose walked in. Rose was a surprisingly old woman, covering the Vietnam War at a time when few American women were in the country. She and Lee’s grandfather became friends, and Rose left behind a small gold pin. . . Years later, Lee is an adult who was raised in the American Midwest and now has a Ph.D. in English Literature. She’s also jobless, so has returned to her mother’s house in the Chicago suburbs to work at the family’s Vietnamese café. Restless and wilting under family tensions, Lee one day remembers the gold pin left behind by the mysterious Rose. And Lee remembers that the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder was a journalist named Rose, who covered the Vietnam War in her old age. . . This novel is part literary mystery, part family drama; it’s a look at the second-generation Asian-American immigrant experience through a fresh and surprising l...

I’ve heard this analogy many times: that books are both windows and mirrors. But I didn’t know the originator of this analogy until now.  “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.” --Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, 1990. From Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Class room, 6(3), ix-xi.is.

Last week I sat down for my first podcast interview. And now it’s live! You can click here , in order to hear me on Hampus Jakobsson’s podcast, Full Worlds.  Hampus and I discuss the science behind the “mind-uploading” scenario in my science fiction story, “Traces of Us”  (first published in GigaNotoSaurus in 2018, and soon to be reprinted in Best Science Fiction of the Year-Volume 4, edited by Neil Clarke). I had a lot of fun discussing the science and ethical implications of this story! And as a bonus for listening--if you click on the link to the podcast, you’ll also see a link to a Gumroad discount for my fantasy novelette, The Lilies of Dawn (a very different type of story. And thanks to my publisher Annorlunda Books for providing the promotional discount!) P.S. The sound of my own voice makes me cringe, so I haven’t been able to listen to this recording yet. But hopefully the rest of you won’t have that problem!