Your Next Great Read

Hi all! I feel like I should start this with a short update, but what to say? I am on sabbatical, which is great. I am house-sitting at a tiny farm and minding five goats, a duck, three dogs, and five cats (I promise another post with pictures and details soon.) And I am maintaining amid ongoing challenges. Things are getting done, even if my husband is sad and on this gray February Friday I might not see a way forward. I am doing the next right thing. And my friends and books are sustaining me, which is why I wanted to share these delicious riches either that I bought at AWP or that have arrived in the mail recently.

The Cleaner by Brandi Wells is a deliciously odd novel. You’ll find yourself rooting for the custodian who figures out all the inner workings of a dicey business. As a former custodian, I relate to that weird sense that you’re seeing people’s personalities and secrets in their desks, and the novel raises bigger questions about why we sometimes use work to define our entire lives. And if you work in an office, it’s a reminder to be nice to the folks who make sure that your physical workplace functions. As an amazing bonus, Brandi was my student at Georgia Southern University, though I take zero credit for all the success she’s finding. She was one of those students who I looked forward to reading every assignment because she came in with her own distinct vision and voice.

My Withered Legs and Other Essays by is so fantastic. If you’re a queer and/or disability activist and want to hear from someone who has been active for a long time, this collection is for you, and it also is delightful to be immersed in Lambert’s perspective and point of view about disability. I first met Sandra through being on a panel with her at AWP about writing and disability, and she’s been an important writer and presence to me. I love this cover, and University of Georgia Press put my blurb on the cover! Excuse me while I quote myself: “This a must-have collection by Sandra Gail Lambert, one that draws together disability, community activism and political analysis, friendship and queer community, aging, love, and the minefields of family—all with deadpan humor and the occasional creek filled with alligators. More than merely timely, these essays offer the gift of stability, radical perspective, and a reminder of activist lineages and how we survive: together.”

I’m halfway through Susan Ito’s beautiful memoir I Would Meet You Anywhere. It deserves all the praise it’s getting, including being named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award! The writing is so carefully weighed, honest, and vivid; it’s one of those books where you feel like each word was carefully chosen. Susan is deft with bringing herself to live at various ages while also sharing her changing viewpoints. I am so thrilled about this book and all the work Susan has put into it!

I have known Susan quite a while, as we began working together as nonfiction editors at Literary Mama in 2008! That was a wonderful circle to be a part of. I started doing that work when my son was five, and as I was teaching in Georgia and going through some rough times, the on-line connection to other mama-writers really helped me feel like there was a future, helped me feel connected to other writers, and first got me on panels at AWP. If you are a writer, I’d highly recommend any opportunity you have to serve as a volunteer editor at a literary journal.

I first met Polly Atkin through social media after my essay collection Pain Woman came out, so it was a thrill to read this memoir, Some of Us Just Fall: On Nature and Not Getting Better, which is both about pain and rooted in place and nature, a genius combination that I was really drawn to. And it delves into and connects with many works of literature, so it feels like a whole ecosystem. I got to blurb it, too, and here’s me quoting myself: "Polly Atkin's work is a luminous swim through the worlds of chronic illness, wedded to place in a way that adds a new layer to conversations about how bodies resonate with landscape and nature, with a depth of research that provides an ever-illuminating web." 

Each sentence in Penny Guisinger’s new memoir (available for pre-order, ships March 1) Shift is a delightful jewel, which isn’t a surprise because Guisinger is a master of the short form and one of the founders of the Iota Short Form Writing Conference. And I blurbed it: “The sum of these sentences asks, ‘What is time? Am I the selves I was, who I pretended to be, and the selves that have grown into the present?’ Guisinger tracks love and days as they wink and flitter within and beyond timelines and roles, creating a breathtaking quantum nonfiction portrait.” This one is a lesson in economy and vividness and handling time in a way that explodes chronology.

This novel, Behind You is the Sea, by Susan Muaddi Darraj , slayed me. It’s a series of connected sections, with related characters in a Palestinian family in Baltimore interwoven through the stories over time, that really reminded me of the world of Joan Silber, who I love. I have also had the great joy of getting to know Susan through working with her in the Fairfield University MFA Program. Susan is fantastic with students, beloved, and this book just hit me in the heart—It will leave you feeling a lot, especially in these times of ongoing oppression and violence against the Palestinian people. You will love these characters.

I just got to meet Brooke Champagne at the most recent AWP in Kansas City, and she’s my kind of person. I sat next to her in the back of a crowded panel and she went right in for a hug! This was awesome especially because I adore her writing, and now I get a new friend on top of it all! I went and got her new essay collection Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (ships April 1) and trust me, you will want this too. I admired so much that Brooke gets right to the heart of the matter—that quick, confusing, pulsing moment of the now—in each essay. I felt like she was wrestling with the nature of life itself on the page, and she’s also funny and vulnerable. She does something with voice here that fascinates me, in that she lets the reader know exactly what’s at stake, and then shows her mind and life at work as she’s trying to make sense of different moments, and the scene-setting happens right when you need it in the midst of the essaying. I think what I’m trying to say is that it’s propulsive: I read the whole thing on the plane on the way home. Awesome!

This book, Mama: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of a Family Lost and Found, is written by my friend Nikkya Hargrove, who happens to live just a few streets away from me, and who I met in a writing group. I’m so glad to count her as a friend. And her book is coming out this fall, also with my blurb on it: “Unforgettable: A compassionate, wise, full-hearted and beautifully crafted memoir of queer love and family.” This is a necessary story about the impact of addiction and incarceration on an extended Black family, with the author right in the middle as she navigates the loss of her mother, and then adopts her baby brother in the wake of her mother’s death. It’s so good—so well-written and multi-layered.