june 2023
Happy June! You may have noticed this newsletter hasn’t been updated in a while. I have been doing plenty of reading and writing behind the scenes but thanks to a megadose of life haven’t had the time/space to update this, but I’m back!
Reading + other media
Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang: If you’ve read previous entries to this newsletter, you’ll know that I am a diehard K-Ming Chang fan. I’m working through the ARC of her new novel coming out this fall and it’s everything I love about her work—luscious, almost painfully physical imagery, the way she uses stories and myths, that subtle sense of humor threading through all her work. Organ Meats has all that and reads closer to Bestiary to me than her short fiction. IMO Organ Meats feels like a novel-in-flash, with each section being roughly flash/shorter short story length and could possibly be read independently from the novel as a whole. Verdict: if you’re a fan of K-Ming Chang, you’ll enjoy it. If you aren’t, you probably won’t.
Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohammed: I’m currently in a graphic novel phase. Shubeik Lubeik was translated from Arabic and the title roughly means “your wish is my command” and takes place in a Cairo where most things are the same as real life but there are wishes you can buy/acquire. We follow a few people who end up with first-class wishes, which each part focusing on a different person. The worldbuilding is so well thought through. I loved Shubeik Lubeik, and I bawled my eyes out through much of it.
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor: I loved Filthy Animals, Taylor’s short story collection from a few years back. His substack is worth a read too, so I was looking forward to his new novel. The Late Americans is advertised as a novel but is really a novel in stories, as in a series of short stories mostly about these messy queer grad students at the University of Iowa. A good chunk of the pleasure I get out of reading fiction is in the language itself, and I could read his prose forever. It’s just that good. His characters make me feel like my life is put together in comparison! Some of the POV characters do start to run together after a bit because they’re all just total messes on the inside, but overall I really enjoyed reading this.
My review of Flux by Jinwoo Chong is here.
Desire, I Want to Turn Into You: This is Caroline Polachek’s new album and it’s been stuck in my head the past few months. She used to be a member of PC Music, this avant-garde pop music collective in London that has collaborated with Charli XCX and Carly Rae Jepsen, and you can def hear that lol. The sonic landscape she pulls from have totally blown me away.
Publishing Updates
Already noted the Flux review above. I have another review coming up in SH later this month too!
“One for Sorrow, Two for Mirth” was included as part of Strange Horizons’ special Wuxia/Xianxia issue. SH is a dream fiction market for me—Carmen Maria Machado, Nghi Vo, and all these people whose work I admire have all been in SH, so this whole experience has been cool AF. Mia Tsai, who guest-edited the issue, worked with me to polish my Western/wuxia story about siblings, magic, and honor.
I did want to note that the character Tie is named for Tie Sing, and the Chan siblings in the story are from Nevada also because that’s where Tie Sing was born. I tried several names and none of them stuck until I settled on Tie. Everyone who I got early feedback from said he was their fave character LOL.
A Rose for Jun (Frivolous Comma) - Some feelgood slice of life witches.
I’ve got some flash that came out recently that I’m too lazy to link here. My website has a complete list if you’re curious.
Anyway that’s all for the moment! I’ve got a few other things coming out this summer/fall, one of which I’m still not allowed to talk about but is very exciting. Hope everyone has a lovely Pride Month and summer!