This edition of the newsletter is very short, because it’s finals week here and that means three things: grading, grading, and procrastination grading. But I’m taking a quick break from two of those three to share some news.
Today my story “She Blooms and the World is Changed” is free to read at Lightspeed. This story is personal to me. It’s about sisters, colonialism, the limits of a “leave no trace” ethos, and what we do with the wreckage of the past.
It’s also a rarity for me. I don’t often write about siblings, despite being from a big family and loving my siblings. I’m not sure why they don’t appear more often. Maybe it’s for the same reason animals don’t occupy a lot of space in my fiction: I don’t want to put them through the kind of stress that characters are often facing.
Which is pretty wild; if you’re reading this, you probably know that I’m not the least bit shy about putting my protagonists through some terrible times. I’m sure siblings and animals will start showing up more, though. I’ll do my best to keep the animals out of harms way. No promises for the siblings.
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All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From received a lovely review from Maya C. James in Locus. I particularly loved this line: “I felt like I was traveling through a liminal space with little protection but tremendous wonder and hope.”
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With the semester almost over, I’m preparing for a busy summer. One of my goals for the summer is to listen to a lot of audiobooks while I’m working around the house. So I ask you, dear reader: what’s a great book you’d recommend on audiobook? Recent books and those written by marginalized folks are ones I’d particularly love to see.
I know of at least one book that I’m thrilled to see out in the world: Emma Törzs’s Ink Blood Sister Scribe. A story of two sisters and the magical library they protect, it features exquisite prose, amazing worldbuilding, and characters you’ll want to obsess over. I can’t wait for y’all to read it.
Oh!!! So excited to read!