Kathryn Mockler's Blog

Mosab Abu Toha | Issue 35 the nebulous issue of the 'about'

Gatherings | Issue 35

Gatherings

Gatherings is a recommendation list of what I’m reading, listening to, and watching.

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My News

Thanks to Catherine Graham for writing about Anecdotes for the Ampersand Review:

I highly recommend Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, a hybrid collection arranged in four parts. Particularly gripping is Mockler’s deep dive into autofiction, stories that span childhood to adulthood and those emotionally charged moments—first love, first crush, first period and more—that inform our growing identity and show us what it means to belong. In powerful, distilled prose, Mockler seamlessly blends dark humour with pain. Add in absurdist flash fiction, climate anxiety, micro-conversations—this is a book with existential bite.

So thrilled to be included to celebrate the Real Vancouver 14th Anniversary Showcase with these wonderful writers Adrienne Yeung, Jes Battis, and Joseph Kakwinokansum.

If you missed the event, you can watch here on Vimeo:

Kirby News

From the author of Poetry is Queer and This is Where I Get Off, their highly-anticipated new full-length collection.

Preorder, She by

Register for On the occasion of their 65th

reads from their new collection she w/Special Guest Travis Sharp (Monoculture, I Am A Corpse Flower) streamed online before a live audience.

Ticket includes a signed copy of she (shipped)* and access link to the live online event 22 April 2024 7pm EDT.

NOTE: Preorders of she will also receive a link to the event.

*Be sure to include shipping address and use the code SHIPFREE (in Canada only).

Gatherings

Looking back, the shock and grief of observing this physical dehumanization of children had taken me to an unfamiliar psychic place. I was bargaining, mentally, with the perpetrator, the state of Israel itself. I visualized the pitch I could make. I am well-educated, articulate, have a Western-level income, and, critically, am a Palestinian. Would they take me instead? How many children could I save if I sacrificed myself? A dozen? That seemed far too ambitious. What about just three or four? One?

In some of my mental negotiations, I felt ready to surrender myself in exchange for no children. Take me. Please, just take me.

Read You Will Not Kill Our Imagination by Saeed Teebi in The New Quarterly

The birds don’t know about self-immolation

jinxpress

A post shared by @jinxpress

It is the task of humanity to bolster, develop, and encourage others to operate according to a different standard. “The single most important part of the mind that operates in higher functioning is the conscience,” says Bollas.

Read “The Making of the Genocidal Mind” by Sophie Monks Kaufman in Hazlitt

wizard_bisan1

A post shared by @wizard_bisan1

Short Stories by 10 Palestinian Women, in English Translation, Arab Lit

If Jonathan Glazer’s brave Oscar acceptance speech made you uncomfortable, that was the point

Read The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza by Naomi Klein in the Guardian

In the months leading up to the April 2022 hardcover release of my book, Some of My Best Friends, I tended dutifully to the rituals of prepublication. I sent a gamely cheerful email blast to my contacts asking them to please preorder copies. I plastered my website and social feeds with graphics of the cover art. I retweeted, with genuine glee, every photo of a galley copy spotted in the wild. I was going to be a model citizen of self-promotion, giving my debut a fighting shot at selling well.

Read “Do I Really Need to Op-Ed to Sell Books?” by Tajja Isen, Vulture

Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing, The Marginalian

The term cli-fi purposely evokes this lineage. In a 2013 Guardian article that proclaimed its rise, cli-fi is defined as “novels setting out to warn readers of possible environmental nightmares to come,” which reminds me of a sentence from Donna Orange’s Climate Crisis, Psychoanalysis, and Radical Ethics: “When we cannot panic appropriately, we cannot take fittingly radical action.” But if warning readers to panic appropriately was a legitimate strategy in 2013, it didn’t work.

Part of our failure to panic may have to do with what scholar Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects,” or objects so huge and massively distributed across time and space that they are impossible to point at directly. Elisa Gabbert explains further: “[The massiveness of climate change] paradoxically makes it harder to see, compared to something with defined edges. This is part of the reason we have failed to stop it or even slow it down. How do you fight something you can’t comprehend?”

Read Matthew Salesses on the Possibilities of Climate Fiction, Lit Hub

#MeToo Arrives At French César Awards As Actress Judith Godrèche Makes Impassioned Speech For New Era Of Truth In French Film Biz: “The World Is Watching Us”

Gender Equity in Film Will Only Be Reached in 2215 in Canada, 2085 in U.K., 2041 in Germany at Current Pace: Study, The Hollywood Reporter

Between the Covers Podcast - Canisia Lubrin : Code Noir

I was thirteen, beginning to read stories by and histories of artists and writers, memoirs and essays. Oh the Americans in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, how wild they seemed, bohemians they were called. After college, in a middle-class tradition, I was offered a trip to Europe and grabbed it. Once there I would transform into the writer I was destined to become since the age of eight. Whoever I was, I was riven with images from books, delectable visions, say, of Parisians, their antics, streets and cafes.

Read Generation Gap by Lynne Tillman on Granta

Calls

Canthius is seeking submissions on the theme of TRASH for its 14th issue.

Ampersand Review has a new Book Lovers Bulletin Board where you can share books you love!