Alongside my latest news on publications, the great essay collections I’ve been reading, and my dip into short-form video essays on TikTok, my latest newsletter looks at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dilemma over titling The Great Gatsby, and the eventual, now-classic choice he was always unhappy with. Read—and subscribe!—here.
My essay for California Book Club
It was an honor to write about Percival Everett’s Telephone, for Alta Journal’s California Book Club—my essay, “The Sad Impermanence of Everything,” is one in a series that looks at various aspects of the novel. You can read my piece, and find links to all the essays, as well as interviews with the author, here.
Revisiting "Are You Really Sisters" for Arab American Heritage Month
It’s always interesting to look at your work through a different lens, and experimenting with the short-form video app TikTok has led to recreating some of my previous writing as short videos. I love working with words and images, and using TikTok’s format, I created digest versions of the written works. These include my 2020 essay for Catapult, “Are You Really Sisters,” which looks at mixed heritage and physical differences within families. While the written version allows for depth and detail, translating the material into video creates a quick, vivid dip into the subject. It’s been great too to reach viewers/readers on TikTok I might not have otherwise. You can watch the video here—comments are on and I’d love to hear what you think. And if you’re on TikTok, let’s connect—I’m at @laurenalwan989
Join us at AWP in Seattle
A persistent thought in my head—where does my work even fit in?—sparked this panel coming to AWP, and I'm grateful to these brilliant writers, Karen Tei Yamashita, Thais Miller, Sandy Marchetti, and Toni Jensen for the chance to chat about literary influences, echoes, and writing in and outside of tradition.
If you’re headed to the conference, join us! Friday 3/10, 1:45 F208 Terrace Suite II, Level 4, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/schedule_overview
An Honorable Mention in Zoetrope: All-Story's 2022 Short Fiction Competition
I was thrilled to learn this week that my story, “The Tayyare Apartments,” was honored by juror Ling Ma and received an Honorable Mention in this year’s Zoetrope: All-Story short fiction competition. The publication is one I love—I’ve admired so many of the stories there and I’m very grateful to be included.
The story is part of my in-progress novel-in-stories, After the Levantines, a generational portrait that moves between Istanbul, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles. “The Tayyare Apartments,” centers on the eldest American-born son, Davud Almasi, who at eleven is taken out of school when the family visits relations in Istanbul—their first chance to do so after the travel ban of World War Two has been lifted.
Here’s the opening:
The Almasis took a taxi to the Peyircis’ by way of the bridge in Galata. Davud prepared himself for something grand, a crossing on the order of the Brooklyn Bridge or the George Washington. An imposing rise to the span, the majesty of the suspension towers, cables flexed against the sky. But when they reached the waterfront, the bridge was hardly a bridge at all. The Galata Bridge no more than grazed the water and at mid-span its elevation barely cleared the ferries that trawled the strait. It was October, their first visit to Istanbul since the war, ten days into an interminable six-week stay. No one spoke. He sat wedged between his brother, Malek, and his mother, who held the baby, Naj, on her lap. His father, poised astride the jump seat, stared into the distance behind them. Propped on Davud’s knees, his sole connection to home, Sword of Sovereigns and the latest issue of Human Torch, wrapped for safekeeping in a sheet of his grandfather’s newspaper. The adults had promised him a bridge, but Galata was a disappointment, and like everything in Istanbul was second-rate compared to Brooklyn.
Courtney Maum on the power and potential of your opening sentences
I subscribe to writer and publishing guide' Courtney Maum’s excellent newsletter, which you can learn more about here, and recently when she put out a call for samples for a study on first sentences, I sent her mine from my novel-in-progress. Her observations and advice were excellent and brought welcome encouragement for a longtime project.
Wisdom from George Saunders
While I try to keep what lands in the inbox to a minimum (ha!), dispatches like this, from George Saunders’ newsletter, are well worth the extra emails (and definitely worth the subscription price). For those grappling with one of the many dubious points in the creative process, here he is on that topic from a recent post:
The biggest thing I’ve learned over the years has to do with where to look for satisfaction in writing. There’s a very samsara-esque quality to this endeavor (well, to all endeavors, but). That is, there’s a predictable & cyclic quality to it all, that goes like this (and I’m sure this will be familiar to many of you): First, the feeling that I’ve got no ideas, and despair over that (“I’ve lost it! I’m finished!”). Then, an idea comes, or at least a place to start. Is it good? Months of work to find out, and: Yes, it is, or could be. Work, work, work. Finally I finish it, feeling good. Send it out. Maybe it’s accepted. Yay, it is! Ugh, I hope I don’t mess up the edits. But no: the editing process goes great. And now the story is coming out! Will people like it? Some do. Hooray! But wait: I’ve got no ideas.
Then it all starts over again, over and over, until I die at 120, busily enacting one of those phases described above.
So, there’s actually no settled place of fulfillment. And maybe that’s as it should be. What’s happened over the years is that, aware of the above, I’ve gotten marginally better at being content/happy during any/all of those phases, kind of like, “Oh, I’m in that phase now. That’s fun.” It’s still frustrating, scary, sometimes euphoric…but less so, or more controllably so - I can be in a certain phase of the creative process, struggling to move out of it, even as I’m looking over at myself struggling, slightly amused by the whole thing.
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My August newsletter is live!
In case you missed it, my August newsletter has news, reviews, and an update on a lawn I grew from seed. You can read it here.
See you at #AWP23 in Seattle!
I’m very excited to be part of this amazing panel accepted for #AWP23 conference next March in Seattle, “Insiders and Outsiders: Following, Bending, and Breaking Literary Traditions,” with these brilliant writers, Karen Tei Yamashita, Thais Miller, Toni Jensen, and Sandra Marchetti, when we’ll discuss literary heritage, cultural connectedness, and canons. Here’s our panel description:
Writers often draw from multiple literary heritages, navigating diverse literary customs. Working within a set cultural tradition can offer connectedness and coherence, however, literary canons have also been consistently used to exclude many bodies. How do writers of intersectional identity work within, bend, and break set traditions? Writers of multiple genres who directly engage with diverse cultural traditions discuss their influences and strategies for wrestling with literary legacies.
I’m looking forward to the conversation! For those not familiar, AWP, or the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, founded in 1967, provides community, opportunities, ideas, news, and advocacy for writers and teachers of writing, A nonprofit literary organization, AWP also holds an annual conference serving college and university creative writing programs, and established and emerging writers.
If you’ll be presenting, or attending, drop your information in the comments!