It's a Jumble

Bangkok Wakes to Rain  by Pitchaya Sudbanthad is a gorgeous, immersive novel, ambitious and epic in scope while also intimate in its focus on individual character lives. This is a story that spins through time--from the tale of an American missionary in old Siam to the story of political upheaval and the massacre of student activists at Thammasat University in 1976; from the present-day where a middle-class college student considers plastic surgery to get ahead in the job market to a future where most of old Bangkok has been drowned by flood waters but the rich can upload their minds into a virtual paradise. Above all, this novel of many stories is about the city of Bangkok itself—"Krungthep” as it’s called in Thai, and as it is referred to throughout the novel. The organizing structure of this novel only slowly becomes clear. Each chapter opens with a different viewpoint character, and there are many (including a chapter told from the perspective of stray dogs and one told ...

It was a literary pilgrimage, of sorts. It had been over twenty years since I last set foot in Great Britain. I was a college student back then, in Cambridge for six weeks on a summer study-abroad program. I was taking courses in poetry. I was in love with the English Romantics, and I was in England for the first time. Twenty-five years later, I was back with my husband and children. Our daughters’ first time in Europe. We wanted to do touristy things—the Tower of London, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey (we never did get to that last, but it’s another story). We took a boat ride on the River Thames. Became familiar with the  Tube. Walked through Piccadilly Circus, Soho, Chinatown, and all over until our feet hurt. We saw the great contrasts of London, the startling juxtapositions of history: the ancient walls of the Tower of London, over a thousand years old, on one side of the Thames; the glittering Shard, that thrusting skyscraper of glass, on the other side. We ...

Very happy to say that I have a new story out this week! “Wings ” is something of a variation on the Tam Lin myth; it’s a story of shape-shifting lovers. It’s also a story about the gift of stories and language, and of what transcends words. “Wings” appears in the debut issue of a wonderful new magazine,  Translunar Travelers Lounge.   This first issue contains the work of a number of writers I admire, and of writers I don’t yet know but whom I’m looking forward to reading. Check it out if you can!

It’s been busy—hosting family from out of town, little cousins running shrieking through the house while their big cousins (my daughters) try to keep up. Fights and tears and laughter. Bubbles and water gun fights and Fourth of July sparklers in the driveway. A beach trip and dim sum and cakes and talking talking talking around the dining table. In the midst of it all, this book came out: Neil Clarke’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 4. My story, “Traces of Us,” first published in the online magazine GigaNotoSaurus, is reprinted in this anthology. It’s an honor I never would have dreamed of. Jeff Somers at the Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog listed this anthology as one of the best science fiction and fantasy books of July 2019. He had this to say: “ If you’re going to trust one editor to pick the best science fiction and fantasy stories of the year, Neil Clarke is a good bet—in addition to his shepherding of award-winning magazine Clarkesworld,...

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...