The Last Fire Season is out today
martinesque
by manjula martin
hi,
today is publication day for The Last Fire Season, my memoir. it's a book about fire and having a body on planet Earth right now. i am proud of it.
pictured here, pinned above my desk, is the index card onto which i first typed the pitch for this book, while i was at Hedgebrook, a women's writing residency on Whidbey Island, in 2021. many things about the book have changed since then, but this remains its ideal pitch, even ending up in the marketing copy. below the notecard is a bit of a June Jordan poem (as printed by the great Sarah McCarry), as a reminder to myself what the stakes really are.
in the news
in the past few weeks I've been spending a lot of time talking with journalists, and now you can read about those conversations:
my local newspaper, The Press Democrat, came to my house and made me stand on tree stumps.
in a conversation with the LA Times i discussed "hashtag hope," reparations for the land and its original occupants, and the ghost of Susan Sontag. also in the LA Times (i'm so LA now!) i wrote an Op-Ed that conveniently also explains the title of the book.
and i talked with the great Cheryl Strayed about roller skating, regrets, and pain scales. bonus pic of me when i was 19 and cool!
in the flesh
tonight, the book's official publication day, I'll be at City Lights in San Francisco at 7pm. My planned interlocutor, Oscar Villalon, can't make it, so the brilliant and generous Anna Wiener is stepping in to pinch hit. we'll see you there, SF. (it's also being streamed, for those of you not physically nearby.)
this past weekend i had the first event for the book, at Point Reyes Books with the brilliant and generous Jenny Odell. it was a cozy and companionable moment in the middle of a torrential downpour (extreme weather! it's real!). thanks to all you rad people who packed the house at the Dance Palace. pics here.
on deck
Thurs Jan 18: Russian River Books & Letters with Ed Yong
Fri Jan 19: Copperfield's Santa Rosa with Dani Burlison
Mon Jan 22: Powell's City of Books with Lydia Kiesling
Wed Jan 24: Elliott Bay Books with Angela Garbes
Sat Jan 27 (daytime event): Book Passage Corte Madera with Chris Feliciano Arnold
after that, there will be MORE events with MORE brilliant authors — people like Lauren Markham, Edan Lepucki, Obi Kaufmann, Rahawa Haile, and an emerging writer named Jonathan Franzen. all of 'em are here.
sharing is caring
a quick ask for y'all during book launch week: if you have the book, please consider sharing a photo on your social media network of choice, and tag me. or just repost one of the articles above. it's also hugely helpful if you review the book on goodreads or am*zon (hot tip: you can review it there without having bought it there!). thank you. i promise i will resume non-book-promo newslettering soon. but not today.
today i went out into the garden and while i was trying to decide what to read at the City Lights event, i read a little bit out loud to the redwoods.
keep loving, keep fighting,
-m.
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