Robert Freeman Wexler and I will read (in person!) from our recently published books on Sat., Dec. 18, at 7pm Eastern at the Yellow Springs Senior Center—227 Xenia Avenue, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387. This reading is hosted by the Epic Book Shop. I will read from The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival, and Robert will read from The Painting And The City.
If you are in the area, please join us! (Masks will required.)
Robert Wexler and I are grateful to Lauren Shows for this lovely article in the Yellow Springs News. Hoping you can join us via Facebook Live on Dec. 11 at 7pm Eastern from the Emporium!
Robert Freeman Wexler and I will perform recent fiction, accompanied by interdisciplinary/sound artist Michael Casselli. Robert will read from his new short story collection, Undiscovered Territories. And I will read from The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival. Please do join us!
WHEN: DEC. 11, 7PM EASTERN
WHERE: (WHEREVER YOU ARE!) via EMPORIUM WINES/UNDERDOG CAFE FB LIVE
It was an extreme pleasure to read from The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival alongside poets Maureen Alsop and Marty Williams at the What Books Press launch last week! You can watch the replay here. (Marty begins around minute 10:58; Maureen at 33:00; and me at 48:30.) Grateful to What Books Press for making fabulous books, to Skylight Books for hosting, and to all the sentient being, humanity, and machinery that helped hoist this carnival into being. Onward!
“You can’t process these things overnight.” —Alexander Landau
I just heard a Storycorp piece on the radio, about two people who connected over different (but also similar) trauma experiences which happened in Denver, years apart: Police beat and broke the bones of both Alexander Landau and Nina Askew. Both of these citizens endured and survived the violence enacted on their bodies and spirits.
Please listen—in about three minutes, the conversation between Alexander Landau and Nina Askew beautifully illuminates how trauma can begin to be healed: in community, with necessary slowness, with open hearts, and healing forward to the next generation.
“I don’t break.” —Nina Askew
Disclaimer: Being neither Danish nor Norwegian, I am no expert on the history & meaning of hygge. Last winter, I read this book about hygge and found the pages comforting, soothing, fascinating. We joke in my house about how to pronounce hygge, and even our amusing stumble (“higgie?”) has become part of the hygge in my life.
Actually, to call this post a hygge-list is misleading, because—hygge slows things down, allows us to toss aside any requirements for the linear. Hygge has no truck with the word “should.” …so, let’s say we are sitting somewhere comfortable, with warming beverages in hand, and scattered before us on the table or rug are some ideas that I think might bring hygge to your life (as they have to mine). In no particular order, except whatever hygge-order they come to my mind…
Listen to Poor Will’s Almanack. This episode, in particular, but any of his brief radio/print essays about the natural world bring me to a place of hygge (with love & gratitude to Bill Felker)…
Walk in nature. Yes, maybe it’s cold outside. Maybe it’s raining or snowing or the wind buffets the trees and structures. Bundling up and returning to warmth can be hygge. If you are near Yellow Springs, go to the Glen or the Gorge. If you live elsewhere, find a park or a bit of nature wherever you can. Even a walk around the block, de-phoned…look at the buildings, the people, what do you observe? Breathe outdoor air. (Maybe bring a scrap of paper, maybe write a few things down while you are out, or when you get back. Or just observe, and let the images go.)
Practice radical self-love. One way I do this supports my skin and spirit, via this consciously-sourced artisan Radical Self Love body butter from magician-musician Anne Harris. (This body butter is so delicious-smelling that I have to restrain myself from spreading it on toast. And check out & support Anne’s gorgeous music, too!)
Add more light. A few years ago (before pandemic, with no idea how much I was going to need the mood boost) I put up a string of lights like this one around the living room window. This same string of lights has been almost constantly lit/plugged in ever since (& I am talking years!). I got another strand last year, and another for the porch. Candles are great, too. In the dark season, I even light a candle at the breakfast table. Extreme and simple hygge.
Shop close to home. Find & support small, independently-owned local beautiful businesses whenever you can. In my town I’m talking about Emporium, Tom’s Market, and Current Cuisine. Support independent bookstores like Epic and Dark Star and online at Sam & Eddie’s. These types of businesses epitomize hygge. Where do you find that sort of hygge by you?
(As other things occur to me, I’ll post more. Meanwhile I’d love to know what brings you hygge.)
Dear friends,
Mark Andresen at the Pan Review (“a bi-monthly look at the arts and literary scene”) graciously invited me to answer some wonderful questions for the Pan Review Of The Arts No. XIII. I’m very grateful to Mark for this opportunity, and grateful there are such fascinating corners of the internet, where we can ponder the inner workings and explore inspiring esoterica.
Here’s where you can read the Q&A. And please support these creative people, including Daniel Mills, whose story collection Among The Lillies can be found at the most fabulous Undertow Publications.
Love, Rebecca
Dear readers,
Nous sommes embarques! To all who helped put THE EIGHT MILE SUSPENDED CARNIVAL between portable covers, THANK YOU. Check it out:
Buy the paperback: Ask your local bookseller, or buy online at Bookshop.org (coming soon); Amazon (US); Amazon (Canada); Amazon (UK); Or the ebook.
And if you like the book, feel free to review it wherever (Goodreads, etc). And ask your local librarian to buy a copy, because libraries are where it’s at.
Join us at the What Books Press launch party, online, November 12, 7pm Pacific.
Love & gratitude, Rebecca
Please join me for the online What Books Press Launch party, hosted by Skylight Books! I will read from my debut novel, The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival, alongside poets Maureen Alsop and M. L. Williams. For more information, or to register, please visit the event page. (Please note the event will be held at 7pm Pacific/10pm Eastern.)
I’m So Fine: A List Of Famous Men and What I Wore by Khadijah Queen
This book is hypnotic and gorgeous and it is so good to be alive right now and be living at a time when this book exists. My friend Melissa loaned it to me, and I am ordering a copy for my shelf, because, well, if you’ve read it, you know why, and if you are yet to read it, you will soon discover why.
Queen builds a rock-solid feminist narrative—a memoir formed by tight, crystalline, lyrical fragments, whose accumulation seems as effortless as how iridescent shells appear and gather on the beach, carried by waves of awareness and poetry, to shine in the sun…
Here are some of my favorite fragments.
On page 27:
“I never met Bill Cosby but I met Beverly Johnson at Magic Mountain with my dad & my sister one summer in the mid-1980s & she had on an oversized cardigan & jeans casual but lovely my dad chatted her up while we rode the Colossus with her daughter he said he asked for her number & she politely declined I remember her grace & regality & lace-up boots she sat on the beat bench with her feet crossed at the ankle so when she went public about Cosby drugging & trying to assault her I immediately believed her & not him I have seen enough of powerful men by now to know she had nothing to gain by going public & the truth of beauty means both spotlights & shadows find you & it takes more than instinct to know where to stand on the stage & I don’t mean looks all the time I mean all women are all beautiful and I wish we knew it in ways that make us realize the relative insignificance of the arrangement of external features so we might as well not get so caught up & my dad had a lot of nerve right I mean some men have a lot of fucking nerve in general & I think my sister & I had on matching Hawaiian shirts that day & wore them tucked in I didn’t wear that shirt again & not long after that I fell in love with fashion & asked my dad to start buying me issues of Vogue”
On p. 53
“At the end of summer I met a guy who looked like a six-foot-two Lenny Kravitz but he turned out to be another narcissistic sociopath & where is the law against men that fine & that messy but at least I could tell within the first 30 minutes of conversation which included tales of his multiple cars & failed pro football career & travels to China where he had adventures with sex traffickers & drug dealers & later (because I had to finish my raspberry cheesecake & glass of rose) the break up with his Chinese baby’s mother who he called his former weed bitch & his switch from Christianity to Judaism because he said he wanted to be rich & what in the world happened to this man to make him think it’s okay to reveal all of that to a stranger what kind of man does that I thought but it’s the kind who makes sure you arrive at the restaurant in time to see him speed into the parking lot in a black on black Porsche & the kind that wears not one but three diamond rings not one but three gold chains & after he hugs you hello reaches back into the car to grab his Louis Vuitton man purse & the zing of attraction crackles to ash because when I met him at the bookstore he claimed to be a small-time restaurateur he had on jeans & Frye boots & a worn Jimi Hendrix T-shirt no gold no chains just a leather cuff & a zillion tattoos & his arms were CUT so when he asked to buy me a drink later I gave him my number I had on zero makeup my 20 post-surgical pounds & an orange & white maxi tank & raffia wedges & I should have known better because he was 10 years younger & chose one of those self-published looking wealth management books & wandered to the money-oriented magazine aisle but his attention made me feel lovely at a time when I needed to feel lovely but I’ll be damned if I get dumb so I blocked him & changed his name to Red Flags & avoid making eye contact with men at the Barnes & Noble”
On p. 68:
“When I saw John Singleton buying a bean pie at Simply Wholesome I knew I had done the right thing cutting off all lover & ex-lovers all man candy & even decent prospects & coming to L.A. for my 40th birthday to hang out with my best friends & also who doesn’t love bean pie if they’ve had some bean pie & my son came with me his face all smiles because spicy Jamaican patty & cream soda heaven & even the live music at Simply is perfect & even though I’d had two surgeries & my newly cut up gut prone to protest I was alive in my hometown & seeing celebs just like old times & when I was young I could in equal measure celebrate & take everything about living for granted but 40 is so cool 40 is seeing & knowing not seeing & wanting 40 holds beauty as the accumulation of bliss & survival 40 widens its arms 40 seeks all the June sun instead of shade & flies with more than usual mechanical luster & says yes to all the right things because 40 knows what it wants & mostly gets its every fineness”
Please read this book!
