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Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2024 Preview

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January Pure Wit by Francesca Peacock [NF] I first learned about the life and work of seventeenth-century writer and philosopher Margaret Cavendish in Regan Penaluna's stellar study of women thinkers, and I've been dying to read a biography of Cavendish ever since. And I'm in luck (all of us are) thanks to biographer Peacock. A proto-feminist, science-fiction pioneer, and divisive public figure, Cavendish is endlessly fascinating, and Peacock's debut gives her the rigorous, in-depth treatment that she deserves. —Sophia M. Stewart Nonfiction by Julie Myerson [F] A blurb from Rachel Cusk is just about all it takes to get me excited about a book, so when I saw that Cusk called Myerson's latest novel "glitteringly painful," "steady and clear," and "the book [Myerson] was intended to write," I was sold. A tale of art, addiction, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters, Nonfiction promises to devastate. —SMS Immediacy by Anna Kornbluh [NF] Did the pandemic kill postmodernism? And what comes after the end of history? University of Illinois–Chicago professor Kornbluh dubs our contemporary style “immediacy,” characterized by same-day delivery, bingeable multimedia, and real-time news updates that spin the economic flywheel ever faster. Kornbluh names this state of emergence and emergency, and suggests potential off-ramps in the direction of calm reflection, measured art-making, and, just maybe, collective wisdom. —Nathalie op de Beeck Slow Down by Kōhei Saitō, tr. Brian Bergstrom [NF] In this internationally-bestselling treatise, Japanese philosopher Saitō argues against "sustainable growth" in favor of degrowth—the slowing of economic activity—which he sees at the only way to address the twinned crises of inequality and climate change. Saitō's proposal is simple, salient, and adapts Marx for the modern day. —SMS Relic by Ed Simon [NF] From Millions alum Simon comes a slim study of the objects we imbue with religious (or quasi-religious) meaning, from the bone of a Catholic martyr to Jimi Hendrix's guitar pick. Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series never misses, and Relic is one of the series' most unconventional—and compelling—entries yet. —SMS Filterworld by Kyle Chayka [NF] The outline of reality has become increasingly blurry as the real world melds with the digital one, becoming what Chayka, staff writer at the New Yorker, calls “Filterworld,” a society built on a foundation of ever-evolving algorithms. In his book of the same name, Chayka calls out the all-powerful algorithm, which he argues is the driving force behind current and accelerating trends in art, consumption, and ethics. —Daniella Fishman Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte, tr. Helge Dascher and Karen Houle [NF] A gripping narrative of coming to terms with her queer identity, Canadian cartoonist Delporte's latest graphic memoir—praised by Eileen Myles and Fariha Róisín—sees Delporte learning to embrace herself in both physical and metaphysical ways. Dreamy colored pencil illustrations and gently flowing storytelling capture the beauty, trauma, and ultimate tranquility that comes with learning to exist on your own terms. —DF Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino [F] In Bertino’s latest novel, following 2020's Parakeet, the launch of Voyager 1 into space coincides with the birth of Adina Giorno, who, much like the solitary satellite, is in search of something she can't yet see. As a child, she senses that she is not of this world and struggles to make a life for herself amid the drudgery of human existence. Playing on Adina's alienness as both a metaphor and a reality, Bertino asks, “Are we really alone?” —DF The Last Fire Season by Manjula Martin [NF] Martin returns ablaze in her latest memoir, pitched as "H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene." Following an anguishing chronic pain diagnosis, Martin attempts to reconnect with her beloved Northern California wilderness in order to escape not only her deteriorating health but a deteriorating world, which has ignited around her in the worst fire season California has ever seen. Devastating and ambivalent, The Last Fire Season tries to sift through the ashes of climate change. —DF The Furies by Elizabeth Flock [NF] Violence by women—its role, its potential righteousness—is the focus of Flock's latest. Following the real-life cases of a young rape survivor in Alabama, a predator-punishing gang leader in India, and an anti-ISIS militia fighter in Syria, Flock considers how women have used lethal force as a means to power, safety, and freedom amid misogynistic threats and oppression. Is violence ever the answer? Flock looks to three parallel lives for guidance. —SMS Imagining the Method by Justin Owen Rawlins [NF] University of Tulsa professor Rawlins demystifies that most celebrated (and controversial) acting school, challenging our contemporary conceptions of screen performance. I was sold the moment I saw Rawlins received the ultimate stamp of approval from Isaac Butler, author of the definitive account of method acting: "If you care about the evolution of twentieth-century screen performance, you should read this book." —SMS We Are Free to Change the World by Lyndsey Stonebridge [NF] Famed twentieth-century philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote passionately about power, freedom, and inequality against the backdrop of fascism—a project as relevant today as it ever was. Stonebridge, a professor of humanities and human rights, revisits the lessons of Arendt's writings and applies them to the twenty-first century, creating a dialogue between past, present, and future. —DF Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea by C.D. Rose [F] In these 19 short stories, Rose meditates on philosophy, photography, and literature. Blending erudition and entertainment, Rose's fables follow writers, teachers, and artists through various situations—and in a standout story, imagines how St. Augustine would fare on Twitter. —DF Black Women Taught Us by Jenn M. Jackson [NF] Jackson's debut book foregrounds the work of Black feminist writers and leaders—from Ida B. Wells and Harriet Jacobs to Shirley Chisholm and bell hooks—throughout American history, revealing the centuries-long role that Black women have played in imagining and fighting for a more just society. Imani Perry calls Jackson "a beautiful writer and excellent scholar." —SMS The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James [F] Pitched as Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez (yeesh!), The Bullet Swallower is the second novel (after Mona at Sea) from Elizabeth Gonzalez James, who also wrote the weird and wonderful essay/play Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. Infusing the spaghetti western with magical realism, the novel follows a Mexican bandito on a cosmic journey generations in the making. —SMS Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino [F] In Sammartino's debut novel, the owner of a gun store hatches a plan to resurrect his struggling business following his son's near-death experience. George Saunders, Mary Karr, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah have all heaped on praise, and Jenny Offill finds it "hard to believe Last Acts is a first novel." —SMS I Sing to Use the Waiting by Zachary Pace [NF] Pace fuses memoir and criticism (my favorite combination) to explore the emotional and cultural impacts of women singers across time, from Cat Power and Rihanna to Kim Gordon and Whitney Houston. A queer coming-of-age story that centers the power of music and the legacies of women artists. —SMS Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn [F] Blackburn, the author of the stellar story collections Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl, delivers a debut novel about storytelling and unreality, centering on a successful novelist who gets hold of her dead brother's phone—and starts answering texts as him. Kristen Arnett calls this one "a bonafide knockout" that "rewired my brain." —SMS Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer [N] New Yorker staff writer Blitzer traces the harrowing history of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, foregrounding the stories of Central American migrants whose lives have been threatened and upended by political tumult. A nuanced, layered, and rigorously reported portrait that Patrick Radden Keefe hails as "extraordinary." —SMS The Survivors of the Clotilda by Hannah Durkin [NF] Durkin, a British historian, explores the lives of 103 Africans who were kidnapped and transported on the last slave ship to dock in the U.S., shortly before the Civil War began in 1861. Many of these captives were children, and thus lived their lives against a dramatic backdrop, from the Civil War all the way up to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. What these people experienced and how they prevailed should intrigue anybody interested in learning more about our nation’s darkest chapter. —Claire Kirch Your Utopia by Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur [F] Following her acclaimed sophomore novel The Cursed Bunny, Chung returns with more tales from the realm of the uncanny. Covering everything from unruly AI to the quest for immortality to the environmental destruction caused by capitalism, Chung’s story collection promises more of the mystifying, horror-filled goodness that has become her calling card. —DF The Rebel's Clinic by Adam Shatz [NF] Frantz Fanon—political philosopher, psychiatrist, and author of the trailblazing Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth—is one of the most important writers and thinkers of the postcolonial era, and his work continues to inform contemporary thinking on race, capitalism, and power. In this sprawling biography, Shatz affirms Fanon's place as a towering intellect and groundbreaking activist. —SMS You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, tr. Natasha Wimmer [F] Enrigue's latest novel, following Sudden Death, reimagines the fateful 1519 invasion of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. With exuberant style, and in a lively translation by Wimmer, Enrigue brings the Aztec capital and the emperor Moctezuma to vibrant life—and rewrites their destinies. —SMS February Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, tr. by Mima Simić [F] Croatian literature may lag behind its Russian, Hungarian, Polish, and Ukrainian counterparts—roughly in that order—as far as stateside recognition goes, but we all make mistakes. Just like couples do in love and under capitalism. “A war between kitchen and bedroom,” as the liner notes read, would have been enough to sell me, but that war’s combatants, “an unemployed Dante scholar” and “a passable actress,” really sealed the deal. —John H. Maher The Unforgivable by Cristina Campo, tr. Alex Andriesse [NF] This new NYRB edition, introduced by Kathryn Davis, brings together all of the essays Campo published in her lifetime, plus a selection of additional essays and autofiction. The result is a robust introduction to a stylish—but largely forgotten—Italian writer whose "creativity was a vocation in the truest sense," per Jhumpa Lahiri. —SMS Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti [NF] Last year, I was enraptured by Heti's limited-run New York Times newsletter in which she alphabetized sentences from 10 years' worth of her diary entries—and this year, we can finally enjoy the sublime results of that experiment in book form. This is my favorite work of Heti's, full stop. —SMS Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario [NF] Blending film criticism, social commentary, and personal narrative, De Rozario (most recently the author of the Lambda Literary Award–nominated And the Walls Came Crumbling Down) explores her experience growing up queer, brown, and fat in Singapore, from suffering through a "gay-exorcism" to finding solace in horror films like Carrie. —SMS Wrong Norma by Anne Carson [NF] Everyone shut up—Anne Carson is speaking! This glistening new collection of drawings and musings from Carson is her first original work since the 2016 poetry collection Float. In Carson's own words, the collection touches on such disparate topics (she stresses they are "not linked") as Joseph Conrad, Roget's Thesaurus, snow, Guantánamo, and "my Dad." —DF Self-Portraits: Stories by Osamu Dazai, tr. Ralph McCarthy [F] Japanese writer Dazai had quite the moment in 2023, and that moment looks likely to continue into the new year. Self-Portraits is a collection of short autofiction in the signature melancholic cadence which so many Anglophone readers have come to love. Meditating on themes of hypocrisy, irony, nihilism—all with a touch of self-deprecating humor—Dazai’s work will either pull you out of a deep depression or crack your rose-colored glasses; there is no in-between. —DF Imagination by Ruha Benjamin [NF] Visionary imagination is essential for justice and a sustainable future, argues Benjamin, a Princeton professor of African American studies and founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. In her treatise, she reminds readers of the human capacity for creativity, and she believes failures of imagination that lead to inequity can be remedied. In place of quasi-utopian gambles that widen wealth gaps and prop up the surveillance state, Benjamin recommends dreaming collective and anti-racist social arrangements into being—a message to galvanize readers of adrienne marie brown and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. —SMS Literary Theory for Robots by Dennis Yi Tenen [NF] Artificial intelligence and machine-generated writing are nothing new, and perhaps nothing to fear, argues Tenen, a Columbia English professor and former software engineer. Traveling through time and across the world, Tenen reveals the labor and collaboration behind AI, complicating the knee-jerk (and, frankly, well-founded!) reactions many of us have to programs like ChatGPT. —SMS A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh [F] Alexander Graham Bell is best known as the inventor of the telephone, but what he considered his life's work was the education of deaf children—specifically, the harmful practice of oralism, or the suppression of sign language. Marsh's wonderful debut novel unearths this little-known history and follows a deaf pupil of Bell's as she questions his teachings and reclaims her voice. —SMS Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker [NF] Journalist Bosker, who took readers behind the scenes with oenophiles in her 2017 Cork Dork, turns to avid artists, collectors, and curators for this sensory deep dive. Bosker relies on experiential reporting, and her quest to understand the human passion for visual art finds her apprenticing with creators, schmoozing with galleristas, and minding canonical pieces as a museum guard. —NodB Columbo by Amelie Hastie [NF] Columbo experienced something of a renaissance during the pandemic, with a new generation falling for the rugged, irresistible charms of Peter Falk. Hastie revisits the series, a staple of 70s-era TV, with refreshing rigor and appreciation, tackling questions of stardom, authorship, and the role of television in the process. —SMS Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks [F] Cheeks's debut novel sounds amazing and so au courant. A woman is elected U.S. president and promises Black Americans that they will receive reparations if they can prove they are descended from slaves. You’d think people would jump on achieving some social justice in the form of cold cash, right? Not Willie Revel’s family, who’d rather she not delve into the family history. This promises to be a provocative read on how the past really isn’t past, no matter how much you run from it. —CK The Sentence by Matthew Baker [F] I minored in Spanish linguistics in college and, as a result, came to love that most useless and rewarding of syntactic exercises, diagramming sentences. So I'm very excited to read Baker's The Sentence, a graphic novel set in an alternate America and comprising single, 6,732-word sentence, diagrammed in full. Syntax wonks, assemble! —SMS Neighbors by Diane Oliver [F] Before her untimely death in 1966 at the age of 22, Oliver wrote stories of race and racism in Jim Crow America characterized by what Dawnie Walton calls "audacity, wit, and wisdom beyond her years." Only four of the 14 stories in Neighbors were published in Oliver's lifetime, and Jamel Brinkley calls the publication of her posthumous debut collection "an important event in African American and American letters." —SMS The Weird Sister Collection by Marisa Crawford [NF] Essayist, poet, and All Our Pretty Songs podcaster Crawford founded the Weird Sister blog in 2014, covering books and pop culture from contemporary young feminists’ and queer perspectives. The now-defunct blog offered literary reviews, Q&As with indie authors, and think pieces on film and music. For this collection, whose foreword comes from Michelle Tea, Crawford gathers favorite pieces from contributors, plus original work with a Weird Sister edge. —NodB Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh [NF] As research for his Ibis trilogy, Ghosh mapped the opium trade around the world and across centuries. This global and personal history revisits the British Empire’s dependence on Indian opium as a trade good, and how the cultivation of and profits from opium shaped today’s global economy. In his nonfiction The Great Derangement, Ghosh employs personal anecdotes to make sense of larger-scale developments, and Smoke and Ashes promises to connect his own family and identity to today’s corporate, institutional, and environmental realities. —NodB Private Equity by Carrie Sun [NF] In her debut memoir, Sun recounts her time on Wall Street, where she worked as an assistant to a billionaire hedge-fund founder and was forced to rethink everything she thought she knew about work, money, sacrifice, and living a meaningful life. This one sounds like a great read for fans of Anna Wiener's Uncanny Valley (e.g. me). —SMS I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall [F] When Khaki Oliver receives a letter from her estranged former best friend, she isn’t ready for the onslaught of memories that soon cause her to unravel. A Black Bildungsroman about friendship, fandom, and sanity, I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is an unflinching look at "what it means to be young in a hard, and nonetheless beautiful, world," per Vauhini Vara. —Liv Albright Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan [NF] I know from personal experience that anything published by Graywolf Press is going to open my eyes and make me look at the world in a completely different way, so I have high expectations for Sloan’s essays. In this clever collection, a Black creative reflects upon race, art, and pedagogy, and how they relate to one’s life in this crazy country of ours during the time period between the 2016 election and the onset of the pandemic. —CK Language City by Ross Perlin [NF] Perlin travels throughout the most linguistically diverse city on the planet—New York—to chronicle the sounds and speakers of six endangered languages before they die out. A linguist and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, Perlin argues for the importance of little-known languages and celebrates the panoply of languages that exists in New York City. —SMS Monkey Grip by Helen Garner [F] A tale as old as time and/or patriarchal sociocultural constructs: a debut novel by a woman is published and the critics don't appreciate it—until later, at least. This proto-autofictional 1977 novel is now considered a classic of Australian "grunge lit," but at the time, it divided critics, probably because it had depictions of drug addiction and sex in it. But Lauren Groff liked it enough to write a foreword, so perhaps the second time really is the charm. —JHM Ours by Phillip B. Williams [F] A conjuror wreaks magical havoc across plantations in antebellum Arkansas and sets up a Brigadoon for the enslaved people she frees before finding that even a mystic haven isn't truly safe from the horrors of the world. What a concept! And a flexible one to boot: if this isn't adapted as a TV series, it would work just as well as an RPG. —JHM Violent Faculties by Charlotte Elsby [F] A philosophy professor influenced by the Marquis de Sade designs a series of experiments to prove its relevance as a discipline, specifically with regard to life and death, a.k.a. Philip Zimbardo (Chopped and Screwed Remix): The Novel. If you ever trusted a philosophy professor with your inner self before—and you probably shouldn't have?—you probably won't after reading this. —JHM American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas [F] Plagued by data harvesting, constant surveillance, mass deportation, and incarceration, the society at the heart of Cárdenas's new novel is less speculative dystopia than realist reflection. Channeling Philp K. Dick and Samuel Delaney, Cárdenas imagines a society where Latin Americans are systematically expunged. Following the lives of two Columbian-American sisters, one who was deported and one who stayed in the U.S., American Abduction tells a new kind of immigrant story, suffused with mysticism and philosophical rigor. —DF Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom by Grace Lavery [NF] I took Lavery's class on heterosexuality and sitcoms as an undergrad, and I'm thrilled to see the course's teachings collected in book form. Lavery argues that since its inception the sitcom has depicted heterosexuality as constantly on the verge of collapse, only to be reconstituted at the end of each half-hour episode. A fascinating argument about the cultural project of straightness. —SMS Whiskey Tender by Deborah Taffa [NF] Almost a decade in the making, this memoir from Taffa details generations of Southwest Native history and the legacies of assimilationist efforts. Taffa—a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, and director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts—was born on the California Yuma reservation and grew up in Navajo territory in New Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. She reflects on tribal identity and attitudes toward off-reservation education she learned from her parents’ and grandparents’ fraught formative experiences. —NodB Normal Women by Philippa Gregory [NF] This is exciting news for Anglophiles and history nerds like me: Philippa Gregory is moving from historical fiction (my guilty pleasure) about royal women and aristocrats in medieval and early modern England to focus on the lives of common women during that same time period, as gleaned from the scraps of information on them she has unearthed in various archives. I love history “from the bottom up” that puts women at the center, and Gregory is a compelling storyteller, so my expectations are high. —CK Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin, tr. Max Lawton [F] Upon its publication in 1999, Sorokin's sci-fi satire Blue Lard sparked protests across Russia. One aspect of it particularly rankled: the torrid, sexual affair it depicts between Stalin and Khruschev. All to say, the novel is bizarre, biting, and utterly irreverent. Translated into English for the first time by Lawton, Sorokin's masterwork is a must-read for anyone with an iconoclastic streak. —SMS Piglet by Lottie Hazell [F] Hazell's debut novel follows the eponymous Piglet, a successful cookbook editor identified only by her unfortunate childhood nickname, as she rethinks questions of ambition and appetite following her fiancé's betrayal. Per Marlowe Granados, Hazell writes the kind of "prose Nora Ephron would be proud of." —SMS Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley [NF] Crosley enlivens the grief memoir genre with the signature sense of humor that helped put her on the literary map. In Grief Is for People, she eulogizes the quirks and complexities of her friendship with Russell Perreault, former publicity director at Vintage Books, who died by suicide in 2019. Dani Shapiro hails Crosley’s memoir—her first full-length book of nonfiction—as “both a provocation and a balm to the soul.” —LA The Freaks Came Out to Write by Tricia Romano [NF] The freaks came out to write, and you better believe the freaks will come out in droves to read! In this history of the legendary alt-weekly the Village Voice, Romano (a former writer for the Voice) interviews some 200 members the paper’s most esteemed staff and subjects. A sweeping chronicle of the most exciting era in New York City journalism promises to galvanize burgeoning writers in the deflating age of digital media. —DF Burn Book by Kara Swisher [NF] Swisher has been reporting on the tech industry for 30 years, tracing its explosive growth from the dawn of the internet to the advent of AI. She's interviewed every tech titan alive and has chronicled their foibles and failures in excruciating detail. Her new book combines memoir and reportage to tell a comprehensive history of a troubled industry and its shortsighted leaders. —SMS Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange [F] Orange returns with a poignant multi-generational tale that follows the Bear Shield-Red Feather family as they struggle to combat racist violence. Picking up where Orange's hit debut novel, There There, left off, Wandering Stars explores memory, inheritance, and identity through the lens of Native American life and history. Per Louise Erdrich, “No one knows how to express tenderness and yearning like Tommy Orange." —LA March The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan [F] Callahan's debut novel follows a young artist as she faces sudden hearing loss, forcing to reevaluate her orientation to her senses, her art, and the world around her. Amina Cain, Moyra Davey, and Kate Zambreno are all fans (also a dream blunt rotation), with the latter recommending this one be "read alongside the novels of W.G. Sebald, Rachel Cusk, and Maria Gainza." —SMS The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft [F] When a group of translators arrive at the home of renowned novelist Irena Rey, they expect to get to work translating her latest book—instead, they get caught up in an all-consuming mystery. Irena vanishes shortly after the translators arrive, and as they search for clues to the author's disappearance, the group is swept up by isolation-fueled psychosis and obsession. A “mischievous and intellectually provocative” debut novel, per Megha Majumdar. —LA Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, tr. Heather Cleary [F] This isn’t your typical meet-cute. When two women—one grieving, the other a vampire, both of them alienated and yearning for more—cross paths in a Buenos Aires cemetery, romance blooms. Channelling Carmen Maria Machado and Anne Rice, Yuszczuk reimagines the vampire novel, with a distinctly Latin American feminist Gothic twist. —LA The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez [F] I'm a sucker for meticulously researched and well-written historical fiction, and this one—a sweeping story about the interconnected lives of the unsung people who lived and labored at the site of the Panama Canal—fits the bill. I heard Henríquez speak about this novel and her writing processes at a booksellers conference, and, like the 300 booksellers present, was impressed by her presentation and fascinated at the idea of such a sweeping tale set against a backdrop so larger-than-life and dramatic as the construction of the Panama Canal. —CK Bite Your Friends by Fernanda Eberstadt [NF] Melding memoir and history, Eberstadt's Bite Your Friends looks at the lives of saints, philosophers, and artists—including the author and her mother—whose abberant bodies became sites of subversion and rebellion. From Diogenes to Pussy Riot, Eberstadt asks what it means to put our bodies on the line, and how our bodies can liberate us. —SMS Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez [F] When Raquel Toro, an art history student, stumbles on the story of Anita de Monte, a once prominent artist from the '80s whose mysterious death cut short her meteoric rise, her world is turned upside down. Gonzalez's sophomore novel (after her hit debut Olga Dies Dreaming) toggles between the perspectives of Raquel and Anita (who is based on the late Ana Mendieta) to explore questions of power, justice, race, beauty, and art. Robert Jones, Jr. calls this one "rollicking, melodic, tender, and true—and oh so very wise." —LA My Heavenly Favorite by Lucas Rijneveld, tr. Michele Hutchison [F] Rijneveld, author of the International Booker Prize-winning novel The Discomfort of Evening, returns with a new take on the Lolita story, transpiring between a veterinarian and a farmer's daughter on the verge of adolescence. "This book unsettled me even as it made me laugh and gasp," gushes Brandon Taylor. "I'm in awe." Radiant by Brad Gooch [NF] Lauded biographer Gooch propels us through Keith Haring’s early days as an anonymous sidewalk chalk artist to his ascent as a vigilante muralist, pop-art savant, AIDS activist, and pop-culture icon. Fans of Haring's will not want to miss this definitive account of the artist's life, which Pulitzer-winner biographer Stacy Schiff calls "a keen-eyed, beautifully written biography, atmospheric, exuberant, and as radiant as they come." —DF The Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman [NF] Sometimes you encounter a book that seems to have been written specifically for you; this was the feeling I had when I first saw the deal announcement for Shechtman's debut book back in January 2022. A feminist history of the crossword puzzle? Are you kidding me? I'm as passionate a cruciverbalist as I am a feminist, so you can imagine how ravenously I read this book. The Riddles of the Sphinx is one of the best books of 2024, hands down, and I can't wait for everyone else—puzzlers and laymen alike—to fall in love with it too. —SMS The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, tr. Boris Drayluk [F] Kurkov is one of Ukraine's most celebrated novelists, and his latest book is a murder mystery set against the backdrop of WWI-era Kyiv. I'll admit what particularly excites me about The Silver Bone, though, is that it is translated by Dralyuk, who's one of the best literary translators working today (not to mention a superb writer, editor, and poet). In Drayluk's hands, Kurkov's signature humor and sparkling style come alive. —SMS Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls [NF] This multigenerational graphic memoir follows Hull, alongside her mother and grandmother, both of whom hail from China, across time and space as the delicate line between nature and nurture is strained by the forces of trauma, duty, and mental illness. Manjula Martin calls Feeding Ghosts “one of the best stories I’ve read about the tension between family, history, and self.” —DF It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken [F] Haunting prose and a pithy crow guide readers through Marcken's novel of life after death. In a realm between reality and eternity, the undead traverse westward through their end-of-life highlight reel, dissecting memories, feelings, and devotions while slowly coming to terms with what it means to have lived once all that remains is love. Alexandra Kleeman admits that she "was absolute putty in this book's hands." —DF Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi [F] When I visited Prague, a year after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the Czech capital struck me as a magical place, where anything is possible, and Oyeyemi captures the essence of Prague in Parasol Against the Axe, the story of a woman who attends her estranged friend's bachelorette weekend in the city. A tale in which reality constantly shifts for the characters and there is a thin line between the factual and the imagined in their relationships, this is definitely my kind of a read. —CK Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet [F] Crucet's latest novel centers on a failed Pitbull impersonator who embarks on a quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana—a quest that leads him to cross paths with Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquariam. Winking at both Scarface and Moby-Dick, Say Hello to My Little Friend is "a masterclass in pace and precision," per Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. —SMS But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu [F] Girl, a Malaysian-Australian who leaves home for the U.K. to study Sylvia Plath and write a postcolonial novel, finds herself unable to shake home—or to figure out what a "postcolonial novel" even is. Blurbs are untrustworthy, but anything blurbed by Brandon Taylor is almost certainly worth checking out. —JHM Wrong Is Not My Name by Erica N. Cardwell [NF] Cardwell blends memoir, criticism, and theory to place her own Künstlerroman in conversation with the work of Black visual artists like Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O'Grady, and Kara Walker. In interconnected essays, Cardwell celebrates the brilliant Black women who use art and storytelling to claim their place in the world. —SMS Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham [F] A theater critic at the New Yorker, Cunningham is one of my favorite writers working today, so I was thrilled to learn of his debut novel, which cheekily steals its title from the Dickens classic. Following a young Black man as he works on a historic presidential campaign, Great Expectations tackles questions of politics, race, religion, and family with Cunningham's characteristic poise and insight. —SMS The Future of Songwriting by Kristin Hersh [NF] In this slim volume, Throwing Muses frontwoman and singer-songwriter Hersh considers the future of her craft. Talking to friends and colleagues, visiting museums and acupuncturists, Hersh threads together eclectic perspectives on how songs get made and how the music industry can (and should) change. —SMS You Get What You Pay For by Morgan Parker [NF] Parker, a brilliant poet and author of the stellar There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, debuts as an essayist with this candid, keen-eyed collection about life as a Black woman in America. Casting her gaze both inward and onto popular culture, Parker sees everything and holds back nothing. —SMS Mother Doll by Katya Apekina [F] Following up her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, Apekina's Mother Doll follows Zhenia, an expectant mother adrift in Los Angeles whose world is rocked by a strange call from a psychic medium with a message from Zhenia's Russian Revolutionary great-grandmother. Elif Batuman calls this one "a rare achivement." —SMS Solidarity by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix [NF] What does "solidarity" mean in a stratified society and fractured world? Organizers and activists Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor look at the history of the concept—from its origins in Ancient Rome to its invocation during the Black Live Matter movement—to envision a future in which calls for solidarity can produce tangible political change. —SMS The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu [NF] After her mother, a refugee of the Vietnam war and the owner of two nail salons, dies from a botched cosmetic surgery, Lieu goes looking for answers about her mother's mysterious life and untimely death. Springing from her hit one-woman show 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother, Lieu's debut memoir explores immigration, beauty, and the American Dream. —SMS Through the Night Like a Snake ed. Sarah Coolidge [F] There's no horror quite like Latin American horror, as any revering reader of Cristina Rivera Garza—is there any other kind?—could tell you. Two Lines Press consistently puts out some of the best literature in translation that one can come by in the U.S., and this story collection looks like another banger. —JHM Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel [F] Bullwinkel's debut collection, Belly Up, was a canful of the uncanny. Her debut novel, on the other hand, sounds gritty and grounded, following the stories of eight teenage girls boxing in a tournament in Reno. Boxing stories often manage to punch above their weight (sorry) in pretty much any medium, even if you're not versed enough in the sport to know how hackneyed and clichéd that previous clause's idiomatic usage was. —JHM Choose This Now by Nicole Haroutunian [F] Haroutunian's novel-in-stories, part of Noemi Press's Prose Series, follows a pair of inseparable friends over the years as they embark on careers, make art, fall in and out of love, and become mothers. Lydia Kiesling calls this one "a sparkling, intimate look at women's lives" that makes "for a lovely reading experience." —SMS Death by Laughter by Maggie Hennefeld [NF] Hennefeld's scholarly study explores the forgotten history and politics of women's "hysterical laughter," drawing on silent films, affect theory, feminist film theory, and more. Hennefeld, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, offers a unique take on women's pleasure and repression—and how the advent of cinema allowed women to laugh as never before. —SMS James by Percival Everett [F] In James, the once-secondary character of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn narrates his version of life on the Mississippi. Jim, who escapes enslavement only to end up in adventures with white runaway Huck, gives his account of well-known events from Mark Twain’s 1880s novel (and departs from the record to say what happened next). Everett makes readers hyperaware of code-switching—his 2001 novel Erasure was about a Black novelist whose career skyrockets when he doubles down on cynical stereotypes of Blackness—and Jim, in James, will have readers talking about written vernacular, self-awareness, and autonomy. —NodB A Chance Meeting by Rachel Cohen [NF] Chronicling 36 fateful encounters among 30 writers and artists—from Henry James to Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain to Zora Neal Hurston—Cohen paints a vast and sparkling portrait of a century's worth of American culture. First published in 2004, and reissued by NYRB, A Chance Meeting captures the spark of artistic serendipity, and the revived edition features a new afterword by the author. —SMS Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler [NF] Butler has had an outsized impact on how we think and talk about gender and sexuality ever since the 1990 publication of Gender Trouble, which theorized the way gender is performed and constructed. Butler's latest is a polemic that takes on the advent of "anti-gender ideology movements," arguing that "gender" has become a bogeyman for authoritarian regimes. —SMS Green Frog by Gina Chung [F] Chung, author of the acclaimed debut novel Sea Change, returns with a story collection about daughters and ghosts, divorcees and demons, praying mantises and the titular verdant amphibians. Morgan Talty calls these 15 stories "remarkable." —SMS No Judgment by Lauren Oyler [NF] Oyler is one of our sharpest and most fearless cultural critics, and No Judgement is her first essay collection, following up her debut novel Fake Accounts. Opining on gossip and anxiety, autofiction and vulnerability, and much, much more, Oyler's caustic wit and penetrating voice shine through every essay. —SMS Memory Piece by Lisa Ko [F] Following up her National Book Award–nominated debut novel The Leavers, Ko's latest follows three lifelong friends from the 1990s to the 2040s. A meditation on the meaning of a "meaningful life" and how to adapt to an increasingly inhospitable world, Memory Piece has earned praise from Jacqueline Woodson and C Pam Zhang, who calls the novel "bright with defiance, intelligence, and stubborn love." —SMS On Giving Up by Adam Phillips [NF] Psychoanalyst Phillips—whose previous subjects include getting better, wanting to change, and missing out—takes a swing at what feels like a particularly timely impulse: giving up. Questioning our notions of sacrifice and agency, Phillips asks when giving up might be beneficial to us, and which parts of our lives might actually be worth giving up. —SMS There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib [NF] Abdurraqib returns (how lucky are we!) with a reflection on his lifelong love of basketball and how it's shaped him. While reconsidering his childhood, his relationship with his father, and the meaning of "making it," Abdurraqib delivers what Shea Serrano calls "the sharpest, most insightful, most poignant writing of his career." —SMS The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones [F] The final installment of Jones's trilogy picks up four years after Don't Fear the Reaper. Jade Daniels is back from prison, and upon her release, she encounters serial killer-worshipping cults, the devastating effects of gentrification, and—worst of all—the curse of the Lake Witch. Horror maestro Brian Keene calls Jones's grand finale "an easy contender for Best of the Year." —LA Worry by Alexandra Tanner [F] This deadpan debut novel from Tanner follows two sisters on the cusp of adulthood as they struggle to figure out what the hell to do with their lives. Heads butt, tempers flare, and existential dread creeps in as their paths diverge amid the backdrop of Brooklyn in 2019. Limning the absurdity of our internet-addled, dread-filled moment, Tanner establishes herself as a formidable novelist, with Kiley Reid calling Worry "the best thing I've read in a very long time." —DF [millions_email]

Beauty and Lightness: Gina Nutt and Ashley Farmer in Conversation

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Spring 2008, Ashley Farmer and I met at Syracuse University. Ashley was a first-year MFA candidate in an open poetry workshop that the instructor gave me permission to enroll in as a third-year undergraduate. The same semester, Ashley and I sat at drafting tables in a studio art class, sketching blue-jeans in pencil and painting grocery store cakes. Both the workshop classroom and the studio hummed with collaborative energy; the exchange existed between students, as well as students and the respective instructors, but also between the artists and the work they created. Reading Ashley’s writing that spring, and in the years that have since followed, I have felt this same synergy. Across four full-length works and a chapbook, she conjures dream-states, digital farms, off-kilter versions of the American Dream, unsettling domestic spaces, women who become the sum of our online searches; a deft hand at compressed narratives filled to emotional brims. Ashley channels her exacting clarity and poetic sensibility in her latest work, Dear Damage, an essay collection following a family tragedy, in which Ashley's grandfather shot her grandmother after a fall that left her paralyzed. This searching, lyrical exploration draws upon personal narrative, transcripts, court documents, and internet comments to reflect on family, mental health, guns, California, work, love, and the American Dream. When I reached out to Ashley to request an interview, she suggested we interview each other, given shared themes in our essay collections, Syracuse history, and both our work across form. We spoke in February from our homes in Ithaca and Salt Lake City. A Joan Didion Library of America edition floated above Ashley’s head. We discussed bringing poetic backgrounds to nonfiction, David Berman, nostalgia, and how the open-genre approach of the Syracuse program primed us to work across genre. We collaborated on editing our two-hour dialogue for clarity and length. Gina Nutt: We're all smiles to talk about our sad books. Ashley Farmer: Let's go there! GN: Your book gives us insight how to do this. There’s this moment when your husband, Ryan, says “You have to let the light in.” The first time my husband, Dave, read my galley he said, “It's so weird reading it, because it's you, but a very specific version of you.” AF: It's interesting, right? Because there's a tension: in some ways we’re writing really revealing things and yet we’re very selective. The work is curated and it’s really personal, but you don't give it all away either. GN: It’s a balancing act. So I want to start by asking about the genre switch for you. Dear Damage is your first book of essays. I remember reading your essay “Mercy” in Gay Magazine, hearing your voice and clarity, and the gorgeous lyrical momentum I admire in your work. Your earlier books often involve surreal, dreamy elements. Strange things happen in the short fiction in Beside Myself. You expand on predictive text searches in The Women in unsettling ways and elaborate on computer farm games in The Farmacist and [the chapbook] Farm Town. Did the willingness to get weird open up your exploration and offer unexpected ways to write about these experiences? AF: I think that the event within my family was so surreal that I just knew I was going to write about it. But the fact that it was surreal made it easier to enter into it: the emotional and intellectual experience of it was so strange that it made it a natural place to start writing a work of nonfiction. My project pretty much started with that essay, “Mercy.” And then among more traditional essays, I have these moments in the book of flash fiction or poetry pieces. I felt really grateful to work with Sarah Gorham at Sarabande—she offered great guidance in terms of editing in such smart ways. But she also allowed me things, like these pieces that aren't so much surreal as they are maybe more just poetry in nature, and associative. I was grateful for that. I got to balance my interests in terms of weirding out in my imagination in a prose poetry-type of way, but then working with essays grounded in reality, too. GN: It makes sense that your earlier writing primed you to write through the surreal nature of the experience. I’m also curious about how you juggle timelines from one piece to the next—moving from childhood memories to adjunct life, leaving LA, relationships and marriage, and your work in an art museum—and weave in transcripts of conversations with your grandparents, Bill and Frances. Did you have a guiding framework for writing and organizing the collection? AF: I wanted to clearly show how my grandparents’ lives and choices had influenced mine, so I tried to organize it in such a way that these juxtapositions and connections in terms of geography, jobs, womanhood, love, and aging were clear. I also knew I had an opportunity to break up the transcripts of our conversations in such a way that they’d become woven into the book and that the essays around them could reflect off of these transcribed sections. And although I didn’t plan it this way, I think the collection moves from shock to grief to what happens post-grief. GN: You also weave in cinematic, poetic flash essays, many of which feel cast in golden-hour light, but they’re also acutely aware of darker personal and cultural undercurrents. One line that stuck with me especially: “What didn’t I want climbing out the basement window at midnight?” I love the way you write about nostalgia and coming-of-age, like the essay where you write about Kurt Cobain's death and the impact of losing a celebrity—someone we feel like we know but actually don’t, which is a different experience now with social media. AF: This is a question I also want to ask you: for me, I think that in writing about something so heavy—this mercy killing that happened in my family—I wanted to give myself permission to write about other things that just felt fun for me. I wanted to make some of it sweet. Like, if I'm going into the past, I also want to write about smoking Marlboro lights with my girlfriend at the park or sneaking out. GN: There’s a charm to it. I have a lot of love for the 90s shopping mall. Seeing Titanic, going to the arcade, unwrapping a CD in the Burger King while I waited for my mom to pick me up. AF: Oh, you're conjuring this sensory memory: remember how hard it could be to open a new CD? The plastic and then the seal around the edge? That makes me curious about something I love in your work. I have a couple questions in mind here: one is, I felt really interested in how you balanced these moments of beautiful nostalgia, even the way you talk about weather in upstate New York, how you talk about the malls—there’s an ambience and a lightness to it. I was trying to figure out how to write about something so heavy and balance it with another type of energy. So how did you do that? GN: Hearing you notice balance means a lot to me. It wasn’t always there. It emerged over time with revision and reorganizing, on the level of individual essays and the entire book. I’m not sure I thought of it as light, but I enjoyed writing about watching horror movies with friends, seeing a whimsical taxidermy tableau, reading, writing, Dave. I hope these parts in the book bring a sense of lightness or hope. I also wanted to conjure stillness because being outside is one way I make sense of the heaviness, in the gorges or paths around Ithaca. AF: You conjure place really well. GN: So do you! I love how you write about place and explore the legacy of L.A. in your family. Part of the picture you paint emerges from the transcripts with your grandparents, which appear throughout the book. I love the warmth they bring to the essays. Did you initially record these conversations thinking you’d keep them as a family artifact or were they part of another project? AF: I’ve always loved recordings—I have recordings of my siblings from when we were little and also of my grandparents that I recorded when I was thirteen. I don’t even know why I was interviewing them! There's something about recordings that has always felt like a way of keeping people. But those particular interviews [the transcripts in the book], were recorded two weeks before the shooting happened. I visited my grandparents over the holidays, and on New Year's Day I just sat with them in their living room. I was trying to write about how California had changed, how Ryan and I were having a very different experience than my grandparents or my mom and dad had. So I interviewed them in their living room and, a little more than two weeks later, everything was different. It felt lucky that I captured it. I also felt like, because I had told them I was writing a book about California and they knew I wanted to use their words, I had their permission: they knew I was going to use the transcript in a written piece. It just ended up becoming a different piece. GN: It’s moving that you told them you were going to write a book about California and then you did. It reminds me of Jeannie Vanasco’s The Glass Eye, in which she promises her father she’ll write a book for him and she does. It’s a gorgeous memoir with collage and deep-dive family reported elements, which is another thing you do really well. And that you write about California has such a Didion… I see her—is that Didion behind you? AF: Yes [points to bookshelf], behind me. GN: Behind all of us who write nonfiction. Which I want to ask about because your collection calls The White Album to mind, the idea of life’s messiness and how we try and assign neat parameters to our experiences, which are often not so neat. You’re skilled at finding a throughline and branching out to complicate and deepen the work. How do you navigate the challenge in nonfiction of curating toward a specific current—cultural, familial, or emotional—and leave room for uncertainty? AF: I felt like I should be as honest as possible about the fact that I had no easy conclusions. I also wanted a recursiveness throughout the book, because I was thinking about patterns within my family: my moving to California more than once, going back to literally the same places where different generations of my family had lived (almost by happenstance). Or writing about marriage: marrying, divorcing, and then marrying someone I’d danced with at my first wedding. So that recursiveness became the best throughline. GN: I like how that first essay establishes a narrative and emotional core and gives a focal point the other essays orbit. Your exploration of uncertainty and complexity is part of what makes the book so powerful. AF: I’m also thinking about when we choose to write about other people in our lives. You said something before about telling someone else's story versus yours. You write about family—your uncle, your father-in-law, Dave. How did you make those decisions? GN: It wasn’t an easy or apparent choice. Part of figuring out the line for me was seeing the effect when I took away details. I also showed Dave an early draft, asking some version of, “Am I crossing a line? Is this unfair?” Mostly, I overwrote and cut away, rewrote, cut away again. I calibrated each piece—and what to reveal, or not—differently. How did you find this balance? AF: You said "fair" a moment ago and that's how I tried to think about it, too. I wanted to do right by everybody. I asked people for permission. I relied a lot on my mom: if my mom felt okay about it, then I felt okay about it. And then there were certain moments in writing about Ryan where I was sort of like, “Okay, I made this! What do you think?” Something about your book that I love is that it feels really timeless in terms of how you work with literature and cinema. And so many writers appear in your book: Wallace Stevens, Frank Stanford, Paul Celan, Lucie Brock-Broido, Joy Williams. Are these your influences? Or was their work resonating with you as you wrote this book? GN: Lucie Brock-Broido, Frank Stanford, and Joy Williams are a few writers I return to again and again. Some of those writers I was reading or re-reading while I was writing this book, like Muriel Leung’s Bone Confetti. I was reading a lot of writing about death because that's what I was thinking about; I felt comforted reading alongside those speakers. The way Stanford writes about death doesn't bum me out. His work has this Southern Gothic feel, but it also has a shine. AF: There is something about these events in our lives when we’re really shocked or grieving and details come into focus, things that are beautiful. Time stands still, which makes it easier to capture certain details or insights. GN: Yeah, that sense of suspended time. Earlier you described the experience in your family as surreal, which sounds accurate to me. I think pressing into details we remember, spending time with specific moments, can unfold a meditation. Descriptions can be atmospheric and emotional. One memory came up often, and unexpectedly, for me was a meal friends brought us. Our books share different versions of this moment. I hadn’t really thought of this as something I’d write about though, it came up as I worked. Did you have any breadcrumb essays? Pieces inspired by something else you wrote, like a breadcrumb trail. AF: Yes, writing about my grandparents’ marriage led to my writing about my relationship with Ryan. One thing opened up another. Then something like a song would come up in an essay and I’d think oh I just want to write this prose poem about it now, a little ditty. I’d get to something and think Oh, I want to do more with that. GN: A little ditty. I love it. The circularity and picking up earlier threads reminds me of Elissa Washuta’s White Magic. AF: Yes! Her writing is really just incredible. I’m definitely influenced by a lot of women writers. GN: So who are some writers you looked to while writing and revising? You write about David Berman, how his music and poetry backlights your friendship and marriage to Ryan, like a soundtrack to accompany your relationship. AF: Berman has been a thread throughout our  relationship, from early on when Ryan would make mix CDs with Silver Jews songs on them and send them through the mail. Then I got to know Berman’s writing. Berman also has a connection to my hometown of Louisville: he didn't actually like Louisville, but he lived there and wrote about it. But in terms of his writing: Actual Air, good lord. His turns of phrase, the humor and pathos. GN: I love Actual Air. I love how on the first snow every year, without fail, I see someone post the poem “Snow.” Or “Halloween” in the fall. Berman brought a warm, inviting spirit to art. Play the songs. Write the poems. Like, “It's just a little ditty.” It can be fun and playful, even when we’re getting at deeper stuff. A balance of levity and depth. Who else did you look to while working on your book? AF: You mentioned Didion, who can be complicated, but I really I’ve learned a lot from her. She writes about grief so well—I’d count her among influences. But there are so many writers my work doesn't bear any resemblance to but that I love. Like Samantha Irby, Roxane Gay, Chelsea Hodson. Therese Marie Mailot’s Heart Berries. Who are some of yours? GN: Chelsea Hodson, definitely, I remember reading Tonight I’m Someone Else and feeling so struck by those essays. Her writing is so poetic and meditative. I was really lucky she worked with me on Night Rooms, through the consultations she offers. I still think about her guidance and things she pointed out in my writing. And Chelsea recommended Elissa Washuta’s first book, My Body Is a Book of Rules. AF: I also love Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams. Everything of hers is like a clinic on how to infuse researched work with personal narrative. GN: Maggie Nelson. AF: Oh yes, especially in terms of form. And Eula Biss! I'm late to Biss. GN: I was late to Biss too! Oh, I also feel like my book is nothing like these, but during later revisions I read Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing and Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror and love both those books. AF: These are all so fantastic. I'd love to know how you started Night Rooms? When did you know you were writing a book? GN: I started the earliest seeds after Dave's dad passed away. I was struggling to keep up with writing because I was just writing about death but when I went with it I fell into the work and eventually had an essay I revised. Eventually, I submitted that essay and continued writing short bursts that wove in horror movies, thinking, Maybe I'll expand this. My early starts were very much all over the place. [The lit mag] Cosmonauts Avenue accepted that first essay and I just kept going. Writing is always an act of faith. I often feel like, “I’ll just go in my little office and do my writing every morning and hope.” But having the cookie along the way can feel like a sign I’m on the right track. AF: You're right about the act of faith. You're making something, and for someone else to see and recognize what you're doing, to feel like someone gets it—that gives you momentum. GN: That’s so true, because it’s really hard to keep writing. I write every day and it never gets easier. Where were you in the process when “Mercy” published in Gay Magazine? Did you have a complete manuscript when the first essay found a home? AF: I didn't really have much when I placed that piece. I'd written a little bit about adjunct teaching and leaving California. The “main event” is what I wrote first and it’s what appears first in the book before it becomes a different kind of storytelling. GN: Starting there prompts the exploration that follows, rather than building toward a big moment, and it has wide meditative reach. You say the hard thing and then delve into family, California, work, love. I keep circling back to those transcripts. I especially like the one where you’re talking about an earthquake and Frances is like, “No school.” Those conversations really speak to their personalities. And my first-year comp instructor brain is kicking in, like, primary source. Speaking of which, I’m drawn to how you write about adjunct work. You’re straightforward about the reality that “higher ed seems to work just fine.” Before we started recording you shared you’ve had a steady eight years in art museums. And in the collection, you describe the moment you went into the office and saw ordinary objects like a desk, a stapler. AF: My own shiny stapler, yes! GN: Those things can feel certain. For adjuncts, it's like, “Here's a key to the office you share with five other people for the next 15 weeks.” If you’re lucky enough to have an office and you’re not holding office hours in your car. Assuming you have a car. I know you edit for [the lit mag] Juked and still keep up with writing, in addition to holding down a job. How do you sustain your writing practice and find community beyond academia? AF: In writing about adjunct teaching, I was aware that my problems with the system are not unique. But I wanted to share my perspective as it related to my general sense of an unsteady world at that time. I also wanted to write a love letter of sorts: all of that fondness and excitement I felt for my students. I have to say that, even then, my job fed my writing and I found community with other writers and artists getting by as adjuncts in L.A. Today I still seek inspiration in my day-to-day work. It’s a puzzle piece that fits together with writing. I admire that you write every day! How do you balance things? And like me, you don't work in academia either. GN: I’ve worked as a bookseller longer than I've worked in academia. I enjoyed working with students, but I struggled with the instability. There are more sustainable ways to teach, even if not in a full-time capacity. I've taught with Catapult and that’s a meaningful way to work with writers who want to carve out time to write alongside day jobs. AF: Professors we studied with talked about possibilities for writers beyond academia. I think about George Saunders telling stories about jobs he had, like sitting in his car outside an office park and writing. GN: My first job after grad school was at the local grocery co-op. It paid the bills and I still made time to write. Sometimes the way you earn a living isn't connected to your writing in obvious ways, but it can fuel the work, or give you time away from the desk. It’s a way of being in the world, which is part of being a writer. AF: Can I ask about how your relationship with Dave, another writer, factors into your process? GN: We often share smallish pieces. I used to share earlier in the process. Now I hold off because I want to figure out as much as I can before sharing. We occasionally trade longer work, but we like to take things as far as we can on our own. Dave usually offers first eyes on work I intend to share though. Do you and Ryan trade? AF: Yes, we’ll go on walks and talk about different possibilities for characters or think out loud: “What if things are in this order instead?” We're each other's readers and we’re pretty candid and kind. It’s nice encouragement to live under the same roof with someone who's trying to finish a project—you know, someone who understands the process. GN: Who gets that you have to get your work done. And all those years when maybe there’s no publication, no book or journal publications. It’s hard to justify those stretches of time when what we have to show for our time is the work itself and that’s it. AF: That's right. I mean, this book took me five years and I have 200 pages to show for it! To some people, that's not necessarily the best use of your time. But someone who really cares about words the way that you do helps you remember why you're doing it. Helps you remember that it can become something. What are you working on these days? GN: I'm working on a novel, which is a change of pace from Night Rooms, but you can write a different book every time. It’s something I admire about your work. Each of your books feels distinct, but they all exist in the Ashley universe. AF: Thank you. I have a half-finished collection of stories and then wonder if I should try a novel or more essays. I like to work in different genres and you do, too. I wonder if that's a Syracuse thing? We were really given permission to do that. GN: I feel it’s a big part of the program. We had leeway to write and decide what the work was later. That fluidity is so generative. Writing and seeing what happens, following your interests, the sentence, or the emotional heart. I'm hearing echoes of all our teachers. For one class, Michael Burkard led us to a gallery, we wandered around and wrote and shared what we came up with later. I also loved the option to take open workshops opposite the main genre we studied. That’s where you and I met, in an open workshop. AF: And we had art class together! GN: The cake painting you made! I love that we both write about that art class in our books. Before we part, I’d love to know what's on the horizon for you. Are you writing anything new, or are you focused on publication as Dear Damage goes into the world? AF: I want to get messy into something right now, to find a topic I want to obsess about for a little while, something with beauty and lightness. I feel like I’m ready to turn the channel. ASHLEY MARIE FARMER is the author of the new essay collection Dear Damage (Sarabande Books), as well as three other collections of prose and poetry. Her work has been published in places like TriQuarterly, The Progressive, Santa Monica Review, Buzzfeed, Flaunt, Nerve, Gigantic, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Best American Essays notable distinction, Ninth Letter’s Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Review’s Short Fiction Award, as well as fellowships from Syracuse University and the Baltic Writing Residency. Ashley lives in Salt Lake City, UT with the writer Ryan Ridge. You can find her at ashleymfarmer.com.