It’s been a fruitful few months for yours truly, in terms of publications and other stuff, so here’s a li’l update! In the summer, I published my first personal essay, “My Great Hunger,” in the Cincinnati Review. The editors at the CR were wonderful to work with, especially the Nonfiction Editor, Kristen Iversen, who helped […]
I am proud to announce that my story, Clarinet Lessons, was selected by judge Charlotte Watson Sherman as the winner of the 2021 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. The story is now on CALYX’s website and will be coming out in the summer/fall 2022 print edition. I’ve also done an audio recording to accompany […]
More good news in the realm of my writing career: this July I’ll be attending the One Story Summer Writers’ Conference in Brooklyn. When I decided I wanted to attend fiction workshops this summer, I wasn’t sure how many programs I’d get accepted to, which ones would work with my family’s schedule, etc., and I would have been […]
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a good ol’ fashioned book round-up on the blog. To be precise: it’s been eight months. Oops. As usual, I’ve read more books in eight months than can fairly be reviewed in one sitting, so I will sort them into my handy categories of Great Reads, Good Reads, […]
Since May, which was the last time I posted a book review round-up, I’ve read (or started to read and gave up on — more on that below) almost thirty books. THIRTY. The experience of reading approximately six books a month for the past five months has had some sharp peaks and deep valleys, as you might imagine. […]
I’ve been doing a lot of reading ever since my lovely mother got me a Kindle Paperwhite in April. Its lit-up screen allows me to read in the dark while I’m feeding Lucia at night (or early in the morning) and want to keep her room dark so as not to wake her fully. With my […]
It’s almost the end of the year and the internet is bursting with comprehensive end-of-year book round-ups. This post, I must warn you, will not be one of those. If you want a great list of recent books to check out, the NPR Book Concierge is a fun, interactive collection of book recommendations that I used […]
I’ve been a book-reading machine lately, largely thanks to our New Zealand sojourn. For one thing, flying for twenty hours with, like, two movies to choose from (thanks for nothing, Fiji Air) is a situation that lends itself nicely to devouring a lot of books. Plus, being in a camper van for three weeks with not […]
I picked up Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs after seeing it at a beachside bookstore near my parents’ condo in Delaware. Despite where I purchased it, this book is definitely not what one could fairly label a “beach read.” It’s not light, or frothy, or inconsequential. It’s a book that makes you think, and makes […]
Many people had mentioned Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, to me before I read it. I had planning on reading it for what felt like a long time. And when I finally did get around to it, I wondered what had taken me so long to start. Once I picked up Americanah, I found that I […]