Happy Summer! I am once again contemplating how to merge Summer Book Bingo with Women in Translation Month. This year, I'm a new parent (have I said anything about that on this blog???), so my reading time is quite constrained. I have given up on trying for a blackout and am just focused on reading five adult books by September 7 (I will have read Goodnight Moon 50,000 times by then. Luckily it's a brilliant book! I love Kate Bernheimer's essay on it in Lit Hub.)

I am two books into my goal. I very much enjoyed Rabbits for Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum, which I put on the "Made You Laugh" square. It is a dark book about depression with a sharp sense of humor, narrated in a voice I need to return to (I also enjoyed the voice of Kirshenbaum's An Almost Perfect Moment). The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim, which I put on the "Asian American or Pacific Islander" square is a beautiful novel which has one of those surprising-yet-inevitable telescoping endings that you just want to keep mulling over. The next square is "On Your Shelf," and I'm reading R.L. Maizes's story collection We Love Anderson Cooper. I am loving it. So this is a very fruitful book bingo thus far!

"Set in an Olympic Host City" is the square I am going to merge with Women In Translation Month. The Seattle Public Library has a list of recommendations on their blog here. I'm thinking I'll opt for Valeria Luiselli's Mexico City-based The Story of My Teeth (trans. by Christina Macsweeney). Then I also need a book for the "QTBIPOC" square; SPL once again has suggestions on their blog. Maybe I'll re-read Baldwin's Giovanni's Room as I so rarely make the time to re-read, but then again, branching out would be good too. Hmm...

In any case, if the thought of book bingo intrigues you, I also want to share the Women in Translation-focused bingo card Meytal Radzinski made. I made a WITMonth bingo card several years ago, but what I like about this one is it focuses in on specific regions so you get to zoom in on parts of the world you might not have explored yet.

What are you reading this summer?

I've written an If My Book column for Monkeybicycle, wherein I compare Daughters of the Air to weird things. Here's how it begins:

If Daughters of the Air were fruit it would be blood orange and pupunha.If Daughters of the Air were cheese it would be Roquefort. Also: Kraft saved from a dumpster.

Continue reading

Fun news: Lanternfish Press is running a giveaway for Daughters of the Air on Goodreads. You can enter here. If you've already pre-ordered the book, perhaps you might add it to your to-read list and recommend the giveaway to a friend or two?

Women in Translation Month is around the corner! Last year, I compiled a list of translated books by women that I enjoyed and created a Women in Translation Bingo game. I also wrote about novellas by Marguerite Duras and Eileen Chang and poetry collections from Rocío Cerón and Angélica Freitas.This summer has been a bit more hectic as I've been teaching more, taking my second novel through an eighth draft, and researching my third novel. However! I'm excited for Women In Translation Month and wanted to share with you four books on my to-read pile.What have you been reading?

Today I kick off a series of 16 blog posts issuing writing prompts for the Ploughshares blog. The posts will discuss using art, architecture, dance, eavesdropping, and all sorts of other sources of inspiration to keep your writing going. I'm excited to be embarking on this new project. The first post uses portraits on Google Art Projects to write monologues, and a game on Twitter, and the posts will appear every two or three weeks. Check it out, write, share, tweet! Wee!

Last night I read "Go East" at the Library Lounge, a lovely performance space at Telephone Bar. It's an intimate room for about 30-40 people, lined with antique mirrors and candles, and there's a fireplace on the stage with more candles. My legs were trembling pretty hard (no one claimed to notice), and luckily, I didn't shake my way into the fireplace and die a firey death. I'd agonized all week over where to add he-said's and she-said's to make the dialogue more comprehensible to the ear (thanks to a seminar I'm taking on teaching listening!). In all, the reading was a fun time.

My next reading is coming up pretty soon! Very much looking forward to that too.

Just in case there are people reading this that aren't also reading my brother Victor's blog, here is a link to his great, fun, inventive take on traditional video games. He had an exhibit at the Salone del Mobile, in Milano, which has just closed shop. Which shows how up to date I am...

(Just as expected, the more work I should be doing, the more posts end up here. This does not bode well for productivity.)