write on, vol. 9: special edition chapbook!
Dear friend,
It’s been a minute since I sent one of these notes, but never fear! After a summer of lemonade popsicles and porch emailing, I have returned triumphantly to your inbox bearing glad tidings, treat reviews, and more—beginning with a set of Very Important book-related news items!
That’s right: in addition to being my birthday month, September also marks the arrival of ~my chapbook~, The Theme Park of Women’s Bodies, which will officially be published by Bull City Press on September 17th. In case I have not already covered this here: a chapbook is a small book, often published by an indie press—in this case, it’s about 50 pages of very short stories on the theme of spaces for and/or by women & the pleasures and perils thereof. There are lesbian pirates, heartbroken spelunkers, and much much more—and you can buy yourself a copy by ordering directly from Bull City Press or coming to one of my forthcoming events in Boston; Portland, Maine; Providence; or North Carolina. (If you live in the UK, call or email the iconic Gay’s the Word in London & ask nicely—they told me they would have some copies in stock!)
Curious about the abovementioned events? Here is a handy graphic that covers the northeast leg of my (ahem) “book tour”:
I will also update my new and very unfancy website with links/further details as I have them. I have finally caved and made myself a professional/public Instagram to toot my horn and the horns of my clients about all things books: if you’re an Instagram user, you can follow that here.
Word on the street is that all the books that have been preordered so far went out this very week, so if you’ve placed your order, a book should be appearing in your mailbox very soon. If you read it and (1) hate it or (2) find a typo, please never tell me & we can simply continue to be friends.
Hello, little book!
I would also be remiss not to mention the other major summer event in our household: Ash’s top surgery! They are back to work, recovering beautifully, & very much enjoying b00bless life. Big thanks to all the nice people who sent texts & treats & cards—truly, we are blessed to live in a time when so many GREAT top-surgery-related greeting cards available!
Surprise: it turns out Ash’s breasts weighed more than 4 pounds (!!) & it is nice not to have to carry that around all the time!
Some further updates, related to neither my book nor Ash’s boobs:
READING
In addition to continuing to tear through my fair share of queer historical romance novels (more on that another time, surely!), here are three books that I loved since my last newsletter + some hopefully seductive descriptive phrases:
The New Life, by Tom Crewe | historical queers! walking in the countryside! Oscar Wilde! long conversations!
Greta and Valdin, by Rebecca K. Reilly | queer siblings! New Zealand! chaotic & hilarious family hijinks! last minute wedding planning!
The Book of Love, by Kelly Link | teenagers! the afterlife! the cliffside mansion of a famed romance novelist!
Me, about to continue reading The Book of Love in this cozy rainy day nook!
AGENTING
Since the last installment of this newsletter, we celebrated the arrival of four new books I agented. Some highlights:
June Thomas’s queer women’s history book A Place of Our Own got a great review in the NYT Book Review (which, for better or worse, continues to be kind of a big deal) and fulfilled a career goal for me by appearing in the New York Magazine “approval matrix” (highbrow + classy, of course!).
Nina Sharma’s memoir in essays The Way You Make Me Feel: Love in Black and Brown was reviewed in the Washington Post and excerpted in Lit Hub.
Zoë Bossiere’s Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir was an Indies Introduce Pick & the backpage feature in Publishers Weekly’s Endnotes (ft. a tiny cameo by moi).
Meg Vondriska’s jokey feminist gift book A Tale of Two Titties—a send-up of how far too many gentlemen writers describe their woman characters—was a Midwest Indie Bookseller bestseller!
Plus! We’ve announced two new books I sold this year, an amazing graphic novel about climate change, grassroots resistance, and Appalachia by Denali Nalamalapu (link to their Instagram for a glimpse of their amazing art) AND an anthology of nonfiction essays & interviews about communal living, edited by Samantha Paige Rosen:
Getting to work on Sam’s anthology has really fanned the flames of my obsession with communal living & I am increasingly ready to arrange to live on the same block, swap goods and services, establish a weekly group supper… hit me up!
EATING
If you can count on me for nothing else, you can count on me for plenty of treat-related content. Since I haven’t sent one of these emails since March (good heavens!), I have a lot of ground to cover. Therefore, I present my sweets report, organized by locale:
NEW YORK CITY (June 2024)
Otway Bakery—my favorite pastry find of the trip!
Butterdose—cream puffs in mostly Asian-inspired flavors! I didn’t even think I really liked cream puffs, but I loved these perfect little mouthfuls.
Morganstern’s Bananas—vegan soft serve! obviously I am not vegan, but this was some of the best non-dairy ice cream I have experienced in my time.
HUDSON VALLEY (August 2024)
Cafe Mutton—the crepes! with salted butter and maple!
Kitty’s—the most beautifully braided cinnamon roll! (The kicker here is that it’s filled rather than topped with cream cheese frosting, which is much less sticky to eat!)
Fortunes Ice Cream—peach buttermilk sherbet! seasonal bliss.
Check out that interior icing!
NEWTON & NEARBY (July 2024)
Cacao—iced hot chocolate!
Momma’s—homemade soft serve, in A+ maple and chocolate flavors!
our house—these cookies, which truly never get old! (Can you tell I like chocolate?)
Iced hot chocolate & in the background, one of the four thrifted short-sleeved buttondowns Ash wore in a rotation, 24 hours a day, for the first three weeks after their surgery.
ALSO
Ash & I are definitely not game people (not enough patience, too much barely suppressed competitive spirit), but thanks to the Newton Public Library, we have discovered the joys of Trash Pandas, a delightful raccoon-themed card game for players 8 and up. Highly portable! Simply yet entertaining! I recommend.
We have a new car! After a beautiful 19 years with the trusty Honda Accord on which I learned to drive, we have welcomed Celestine, a hybrid Toyota Corolla I bought by going to the car dealership BY MYSELF LIKE A GODDAMN ADULT approx. four days after Ash’s surgery. She is a dream! We love her! Turns out technology has developed a little bit since 2005, and while we no longer have the luxury of a six-CD changer (!!), we can now enjoy such advancements as a back-up camera and an alien voice that will read you your texts out loud!
Celestine + another one of the buttondowns!
And finally, Nina Katz’s Substack newsletter Bread Apples Milk. I subscribe to far more Substacks than I will ever be able to consistently read, but the beauty of this one is that it is literally just a scan of a grocery list Nina has found in the world—and that’s it. As I think we all know, I love both groceries & lists, so this is so up my alley that I am almost mad I didn’t think of it first.
THE END
Have you pre-ordered my book (it’s only $12!)? What are you favorite corn/zucchini/tomato recipes? Or have you moved on to pumpkin spice season (comic here by an artist I am representing, so please like and share all of her work as we attempt to “grow her platform”!) I am not quite ready for fall, but I project a 10-15 day timeline until I am joyfully eating my first pumpkin muffin of the season.
I actually think we look kinda cute with our eyes closed.