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A Letter from Caitlyn Paxson
Dear Reader,
We are on the brink of March as I write this, but I hope you won’t mind rambling back to January with me so I can share some highlights of the deep winter. The whole month was a blur of snow, with ferocious new storms every week. It often felt like the Island existed inside a snow globe, its own little world enveloped in white. And the drifts were epic!
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Image Description: My husband standing next to the top of a tree that is emerging from a ten-foot snow drift.
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Writing
January’s NPR review was a YA mystery, perfect for cozying up at home with a little murder and intrigue. Click here to read my thoughts about The Red Palace.
Also, at the very end of December, I had a poem published in Mermaids Monthly. It’s a collaborative piece, co-written with my two darling friends Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica P. Wick. Once upon a time, we were all editors of Goblin Fruit, a poetry quarterly. In “Merbraids”, we argue poetically about who can drown you better.
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Reading
January was very full of reading for review roundups that will publish in February and March, as well as reading the finalists for the YA category of the Audie Awards, for which I will be a judge (more on that at a later date)! But I did manage to squeeze in a delightful set of novellas for pleasure reading, Silver in the Wood and The Drowned Country by Emily Tesh. I’ve been trying to figure out the ideal way to pitch them, and I feel like the best I can do is: imagine that Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell had a very small, earthy, cozy, gay dream. I especially like Silver in the Wood - it features a weary green man, nosey folklorists, and a dryad who is tried of everyone’s nonsense.
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Image Description: Two books lying on a bright carpet
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Crafting
I planned ahead! Anticipating that we would be buried in snow (though not perhaps able to envision HOW MUCH snow), I collected a bunch of willow back in December to use as bases for my winter crowns. We had a stand of massive willows at the back of the farm where I spent most of my childhood, and every time there was a storm, the ground would be littered with bendy twigs, perfect for twisting into crowns. I’m sure my mom showed me how to make the first one, and then probably regretted it because I was constantly making them and hanging them all over the house like some kind of deranged, circlet-obsessed fairy.
I decided that for January, my crown would pay homage to the first evil queen I ever fell in love with: the White Witch of Narnia.
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Image Description: A willow crown perched in a snowbank. Me wearing the willow crown, face very pale, freezing my buns off but still witchy. The crown in the snow from a different angle.
This crown was made by twisting together willow twigs. When I made it, I wasn’t yet planning this newsletter in earnest, but I’m going to try to take more process pictures moving forward! I only got one picture of me wearing it that turned out because in all the others I look like I’m about to die from hypothermia.
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Growing
My garden in January:
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Image Description: My garden absolutely buried in six feet of snow, with pink light from the setting sun cast across it.
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Watching
My viewing highlight for January was definitely Station Eleven. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about art and humanity, featuring a civilization decimated by a flu virus and the travelling players who may find a way to redeem it with Shakespeare. I like the book it's based on, but I LOVE this adaptation of it – one of those rare and beautiful times when an adaptation finds a way to reshape a story for a different medium and make it something greater than it was. It’s not perfect – there are some baffling plot moments and slow bits and it’s not exactly what one could call realistic, but my goodness, whenever these two actors in particular are on the screen, it's magic:
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Image Description: A man and a little girl walk through a winter street, all bundled up in coats and other gear.
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Enthusing
After a hiatus, my amazing mom has returned to her ceramics practice and has reopened her Etsy Shop! I am so thrilled to see her back at the wheel and so happy that all my friends who have long coveted squid mugs can now fulfill their cephalopodic dreams.
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Image Description: A brown and white mug with a squid handle. A honey-pink urn with seahorse handles. Two blue and green mugs with pale snake handles.
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Thank you for being here with me for my very first newsletter! I plan to send out one for each month, slightly after the month has ended. January was obviously running a bit late, so keep an eye out for February, coming later this week to catch us up. Farewell until then!
Wishing you the best books and the most berry-full brambles,
Caitlyn
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I write this from the traditional unceded territory known as Mi’kma’ki. Two books by Indigenous authors that I really enjoyed recently are Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley and Mi’kmaq Campfire Stories of Prince Edward Island by Julie Pellissier-Lush.
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