If you’re headed to AWP in San Antonio , come to our panel on high style! Thursday, March 5, 10:35 am, Room 211.
Get all the details, and download the panel outline and high style examples in contemporary fiction here. The panel has chosen some terrific examples that innovate upon the traditional apolitical stance, and the discussion promises to be a fascinating one—hope to see you there!
The second installment of my column “Invisible History,” at Catapult looks at my father—his bicultural heritage as an American born son of Arab immigrant parents and the conflicts he faced living between cultures. I’m so grateful to Catapult and to Nicole Chung for this opportunity! And especially thrilled I’m able to include family photographs and other images. For this latest column, “Why My Father Could Not Embrace His Name,” the cover image is a watercolor my father painted, likely sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
Happy pub day to A MAP IS ONLY ONE STORY, the first published anthology of writing from Catapult magazine! So grateful to editors Nicole Chung and Mensah Demary for including my essay in this beautiful collection: twenty writers sharing stories of migration, family, the search for home and belonging, and what it means to exist between languages and cultures.
Praise for A MAP IS ONLY ONE STORY:
“At Catapult, Nicole Chung and Mensah Demary have worked to publish voices from all over the world on the human geography that defies political borders and how immigration policy takes shape in the everyday lives of individuals. A Map Is Only One Story draws from that work, presenting pieces from 20 writers that weave reporting with personal stories of immigration and identity.”
—Corinne Segal, Literary Hub
The collection is now available in bookstores and libraries everywhere!
If you're headed to the 2020 AWP Conference & Bookfair in San Antonio, TX, join Anita Felicelli, Olga Zilberbourg, Lillian Howan, Aatif Rashid, and me, discussing "High Style and Misdemeanors: The Virtues and Vices of Elevated Prose," as we discuss the intersection of elevated prose and socially and politically engaged work. Thursday, March 5, 10:35 AM, Room 211, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level.
A MAP IS ONLY ONE STORY is included in TIME's list of 11 New Books You Should Read in February. Catapult’s first-ever published anthology of essays features twenty writers on migration, family, and what it is to live between cultures—and I'm thrilled to be included! More details here.
I’m thrilled to have an essay included in this beautiful anthology from Catapult Books, edited by Nicole Chung and Mensah Demary. The collection launches Feb. 11, but you can pre-order online now from Catapult, or your favorite indie bookseller.
From the publisher:
In the first published anthology of writing from Catapult magazine, twenty writers share stories of migration, family, the search for home and belonging, and what it means to exist between languages and cultures
From rediscovering an ancestral village in China to experiencing the realities of American life as a Nigerian, the search for belonging crosses borders and generations. Selected from the archives of Catapult magazine, the essays in A Map Is Only One Story highlight the human side of immigration policies and polarized rhetoric, as twenty writers share provocative personal stories of existing between languages and cultures.
I’m thrilled to have the chance to share some of my family stories in a new column up at Catapult Magazine, Invisible History. The first installment, “Are You Really Sisters? On Identity and Sisterhood Within a Multicultural Family,” is up today. I love the artwork by Catapult’s contributing illustrator, Sirin Thada.
Thank you to The Common Breath for the chance to share this list of memorable books (and a story that decades after first reading it, I'm still thinking about), in Brian Hamill's #FictionFriday series.
The end-of-year/new year is the best time to take stock of my reading in 2019—and for planning the coming year’s list. Story collections, memoir, novels, essays, and nonfiction for research make up 2019’s list, and reviews of some can be found, or are forthcoming, over at Litstack—likewise my TBR list for 2020 (which includes Hilary Mantel’s newest installment of the Thomas Cromwell series, The Mirror & The Light, and Garth Greenwell’s follow-up to his beloved debut, What Belongs to You, Cleanness).
If you’re headed to San Antonio for #AWP2020, the yearly conference of writers and educators (which attracts over 12,000 attendees and is widely considered the largest literary gathering in the US), we hope you’ll put our panel on your dance card. “High Style and Misdemeanors: The Virtues and Vices of Elevated Prose,” will take place Thursday, March 5, featuring Anita Felicelli (LOVE SONGS FOR A LOST CONTINENT, CHIMERICA), Lillian Howan (THE CHARM BUYERS), Aatif Rashid (PORTRAIT OF SEBASTIAN KHAN ), and Olga Zilberbourg (LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES), and me, in a discussion of the highs, and lows, of literary high style.
