A secret, silent story! + 3 book recs
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Hi all,
It’s back-to-school time! I always enjoy the rush of new faces and new things to do at my day job (though it also leaves me very tired.) Whether or not you are involved in any school system in any capacity, I hope you’ve found something about this month to refresh and invigorate you.
Meanwhile, amid this rush, I just realized that I had a story come out back in July and never told you.
The Silent Sea appears in Issue Sixteen of Baffling Magazine. This is a themed issue, on the theme of “quiet,” and different authors interpreted the theme in very different ways - “From the quiet to the the cozy, the silent to the silenced,” as editor dave ring puts it.
My story is about an ocean that no longer makes the set of ocean sounds you would expect, and a protagonist who craves that silence more than anything.
“The Silent Sea” started life as a writing exercise given by Marianne Kirby. The assignment was: imagine something that normally makes a sound. Now imagine it doesn’t make that sound anymore, and describe it using your other senses. I ran with it from there. :)
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Meanwhile, here are three books I’ve read lately that left an impression on me.
RB Lemberg - Everything Thaws: A poetic cycle (Ben Yehuda Press, February 2023)
Ok, so, full disclosure: RB is my friend and I love everything that they write. But don’t go in expecting it to feel like Birdverse. Everything Thaws is a memoir in verse, and in many ways it’s a striking departure for Lemberg. The themes of trauma and loss that always haunt their work are rawer here, and visible in a way that’s closer to real-world home. You’ll like this if you like real-world stories of immigration and how pain is passed down from generation to generation. I liked it a lot.
Akwaeke Emezi - Content Warning: Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022)
Speaking of raw and close to home - whew. The title is accurate; this one’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a poetry collection, brief but powerful, and what I love about it most is the way it blends the mythic with the real - it almost seems unfair to call it mythic when it’s so obviously and intimately drawn from the author’s own experience. Figures from more than one religion accompany Emezi through their turbulent life, not objects of worship so much as family and confidantes who participate with them directly even in the most difficult moments. I’m going to keep thinking about this one for a long time.
RB Lemberg - Yoke of Stars (Tachyon Publications, July 2024)
Two Lembergs in one email? Is that allowed? Am I breaking some rule of reviewing? Well, whatever - I happened to read two of Lemberg’s books in close succession recently and I love them both. Yoke of Stars is their latest work and it is a return to Birdverse in its finest mythic form. It’s the story of an encounter between two characters - a linguist and an assassin - with two very different stories, who find that their fates are intertwined in ways that neither of them could have imagined when they began. Its central question - can people be in community with each other and still free? - is one that haunts me, and one that I happen to have been chewing on in therapy for a while now. Lemberg handles it with impressive sensitivity and depth, and you will want to hear their answer.