Gatherings | Issue 33
Vancouver launch on February 29, 2024!
Register for your free spot on this Eventbrite page, as capacity is limited.
On March 3, 2024, I’ll be reading at the Real Vancouver 14th Anniversary Showcase with Alicia Elliott, Steffi Tad-Y, Jess Battis, Joseph Kakwinokansum, and Adrienne Leung!
Hosted by Dina Del Bucchia and Sean Cranbury
Sponsored by BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts
Join us for this free online event!
In these days when reviews in mainstream outlets are in short supply, I absolutely cherish when writers take their reviews to social media!
Here’s what some friends have to say about Anecdotes.
There’s a primal chittering in my body whenever I read brain-meltingly good books that defy easy structural definitions. I feel immediate, deep respect for authors who break genre conventions with intelligence and intention and style. This book has plenty of all three.
—Hollay Ghadery, author of Fuse, Rebellion Box, and Widow Fantasies
—Kimmy Beach, author of Nuala: A Fable and The Last Temptation of Bond
Kirby News"Just finished @themockler's brilliant new collection of stories. Dark twisty tales which might seem cyncial on first glance but really are deeply compassionate and empowering. I love how formally inventive they are. A range of forms and lots of surprising turns. Also, they implicitly illustratrate how life isn't a series of story arcs, epiphanies and "life lessons" but rather an accumulation of experiences which sum together over the span to make our life what it is. Five out of five thumbs up."
—Gary Barwin, author of Nothing the Same Everything Haunted and Yiddish for Pirates
”Last Licks” by Kirby on Bandcamp
GatheringsA gathering of what I’m reading, listening to, and watching“My dissociation has become more norm than exception: I walk down Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn as though I’m gliding, as though someone is transporting my body through sheer will. I enter rooms and freeze, stop speaking mid-sentence, forgetting where I’d begun. My grief is dormant during the day, masked by alternating helplessness and frenetic bursts of energy.”
Read ‘I am not there and I am not here’: a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity by Hala Alyan in the Guardian
Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024
"The League’s leadership team has been profoundly shaken by the genocidal violence in Palestine and the waves of Islamophobic and antisemitic hatred that have surged in its wake. We extend our deepest sympathy and compassion to all those grieving, and we stand with our community in calling for an end to the violence."
Read the League of Canadian Poets statement on censorship and activism
“I’ve always been attracted to things that are a little bit different,” she said in a phone interview on a grey day in January ahead of the publication of her new book, “Code Noir.” “What I try to go to is the authentic expression of something and that seems to always take me toward innovation. I think there is a tendency for us as a species (to) get used to things, and the more ordinary and commonplace they are, the more invisible they tend to become.”
Read Deborah Dundas’ interview with Canisia Lubrin about her debut fiction collection, Code Noir
Catherine Hernandez watercolors
author
Catherine Hernandez on Instagram: “My process as of late. Share or comment if you feel the same. This is a #watercolor #watercolors #watercolours #watercolour #watercolorpainting of a family sleeping side by side, screen capture from a video on @zainab_fitforallah profile.”January 29, 2024I missed the Grammys but found some key performances!
Stevie Wonder doing tribute to Tony Bennett
Joni Mitchell “Both Sides Now”
Annie Lennox singing “Nothing Compares to You” and says “Artists for ceasefire. Peace in the World.”
Carl Wilson on this year’s Grammy Awards for Slate
Another Indigenous Curator Leaves Art Gallery of Ontario, Hyperallergic
Inuk-Scottish curator Taqralik Partridge’s exit follows the resignation of Wanda Nanibush, the Toronto museum’s inaugural curator of Canadian and Indigenous art.
Lecture: ‘Dionne Brand: Writing Against Tyranny and Toward Liberation’ (2017)
Pamenar Press Book Launch - Join us for an online collective book launch by Pamenar Press, featuring readings from recent poetry collections by Sally-Shakti Willow, Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Rhys Trimble, and J.R. Carpenter.
February 17th, 6 PM GMT / 1 PM EST.
Lisa Robertson and Julie Joosten reading at Type Books on Feb 18, 2024
On the radio,
a singer born in a place where children watch the sky
for bombs is trying to sell me on love
as something akin to war.
I have no lie to offer as treacherous as this one.
Read “The Prestige” by Hanif Abdurraqib, Poets.org
Mirabel wants to learn to swim, but she’s been told her whole life she’d just sink to the bottom and that swimming is not only a risk to her, but also to the lifeguards who might have to retrieve her extra-large body from the deep end of a pool.
Read “The Deal With Roger” by Alison Gadsby, Ex-Puritan
On Zoozve, Radio Lab
Sad to hear Glass Bookshop is closing.
Check out the amazing faculty for the Sage Hill Writing Summer Courses. I attended a fiction workshop with Diane Warren way back in 2000. It was a great experience.
“There’s a particular kind of feeling to describe preparing and planning for a literary event, only to show up and find the room empty, or nearly empty. You keep looking at the door hoping the passers-by will stop and come inside. It’s worse being a host and having a sense of responsibility for your readers, and the feeling that you’ve wasted their time when no one shows up. I briefly touched on this sentiment in a column for Open Book last summer on Being an Author during a book tour, but I wanted to spend a column on the topic of the “empty event.” This was an experience I thought was unique to me until I saw posts by prominent writers about experiencing the same.”
Read “Facing (the Failure of) an Empty Event” by Manahil Bandukwala on Open Book
Recommended Newsletters
Hmm That's Interestingthe internet is too monetizable nowApologies for coming in with nostalgia on a Thursday evening, but I miss how the Internet used to be. I'd sit at my desk-bookcase-stereo-unit (you know the one) and go on my little websites — Meg Cabot's author page, or IMDb, or Miami-Dade library's online catalogue, from where I was constantly requesting cute inter-library loans with which to terrorize…Read more4 days ago · 141 likes · 24 comments · ClaraGeorge TolesGiggles of GoodnessGiggles O'Hearn was sitting up in bed trying to think of a good deed she had done. Someone calling herself Anonymous had posted a long list of such praiseworthy deeds online. Suddenly one came back to her. A woman with a walker had left her purse behind on her chair in the restaurant. Giggles had noticed and retrieved it for her. Not only did the woman …Read more6 days ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · George TolesSupport Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
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