Eleanor Glewwe's Blog, page 21

Yosemite and Beyond

Next up in my Northern California trip: Yosemite! My mother and I drove there from San Francisco, stopping for lunch in Tracy. Quite by accident, we stumbled upon an Indian grocery store/restaurant called Apna Bazaar, where we ate a delicious meal. Plus there was a case full of different flavors of barfi, labeled in English and (what I think was) Hindi, and the aisles of the grocery store were full of millet flour and pickled mangoes and rusks!

The last time I was in Yosemite, I was not yet b...

One Month Till WILDINGS!

Yesterday marked two years since Sparkers was published, and today the publication of Wildings is one month away! This week I received a finished copy of the book in the mail. It’s gorgeous! The cover is purple underneath the dust jacket.

Companions!

Now seems like a good time to remind you that you can:

Add Wildings on Goodreads Preorder Wildings from your local independent bookstore or other retailers

Additionally, I have two launch parties planned! If you live in the area, or even if yo...

Angel Island and Muir Woods

Wildings just got a lovely review from Publishers Weekly!

The day after the opera, my parents and I visited Angel Island with some friends. We took the ferry from Tiburon to the island.

Angel Island was once home to an immigration station that processed hundreds of thousands of immigrants, most of them Chinese. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese immigrants were detained for weeks, months, or even longer on Angel Island. They carved poetry expressing their hopes, disillusionment, melan...

紅樓夢 – Dream of the Red Chamber

The second weekend of September, I joined my parents in San Francisco for the premiere of a new opera, Dream of the Red Chamber, based on the 18th century Chinese classic 紅樓夢 (Dream of Red Mansions) by Cao Xueqin. The Chinese Heritage Foundation, a Minnesota organization, commissioned the opera, and the San Francisco Opera produced it. The music was composed by Chinese-American composer Bright Sheng, and Sheng collaborated with Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang on the libretto.

Th...

Minnesota State Fair 2016

First, a bit of book news: Wildings received a review I’m quite pleased with from Kirkus!

I kept up my tradition of making it to the Minnesota State Fair every year I can. Here are some photos:

I started off with the beer brat buddies

Ukrainian eggs decorated by Luba Perchyshyn

Lovely delphinium at the flower show in the Ag and Horticulture Building

Minnesota food brands

Kids in the Miracle of Birth Center

Sheep in the Sheep Barn

Cattle in the Cattle Barn

There was once again a sad dearth of...

The Boundary Waters 2016

My family returned to the Boundary Waters this year, this time to Isabella Lake and environs. Here are some photos:

35-rod portage into Isabella Lake

The view from our campsite

First sunset

Curious chipmunk investigates hot chocolate, matches, and iodine tablets

Bottle gentian on the Powwow Trail

Second sunset

Mergansers!

Garter snake!

A spectacular rainbow

A misty last morning

And then sun and still waters!

Georgian Yodeling and the Cave Temples of Dunhuang

Last Tuesday, my advisor e-mailed the members of our Georgian chorus from Montreal to tell us that a Georgian yodeling workshop was taking place that evening in Los Angeles at the Machine Project. It was very short notice, but my friend Isabelle and I decided to go. At 8:00pm, we found ourselves in a mostly empty storefront with white walls and a wooden floor. Around the edges of the room, there was some sound equipment, a cooler of beer, and a collection of potted cacti. The workshop leader,...

Gaping Graves, Summer Doldrums

The blog’s been quiet because my July has been pretty quiet. I spend my days looking for a dissertation topic and wrestling with Efik data in the air-conditioned Phonetics Lab and my evenings drafting what I hope will be my next book after Wildings. This time a year ago I was playing music in the mountains at Camp Kiya, and I kind of wish I were there again this year…

I’ve been listening obsessively to Nightingale’s album Three. I learned to play the reel Mariposa (third tune on Track 3) on...

Inaugurating the Hapa Book List

I decided to start a list of books I’ve read featuring hapa main characters. You can check it out here (and read all the accompanying caveats). I thought such lists had to exist already, but if they do, they aren’t particularly easy to find, so I thought offering one of my own couldn’t hurt. Hope you enjoy.

Mixed Remixed 2016

As I mentioned last week, I went to my second Mixed Remixed Festival two weekends ago. Last year, I went for the first time and had a wonderful time. This year, I applied to be a presenter and was placed on a panel entitled “Excavating Family Mythology & Publishing Your First Children’s or YA Book.” (I was a little perplexed when I found out because as far as I’m aware I excavated zero family mythology for either of my books, but it turned out not to matter.)

Oh, my goodness! I’m on a panel f...