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Sasha LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work her great grandmother did for the Lushootseed language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage. With strange obsessions revolving around Twin Peaks, the Seattle music scene, and Coast Salish Salmon Ceremonies, Sasha explores her own truth of indigenous identity in the Coast Salish territory.

She is the author of the memoir Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk. Her collection of poetry, Rose Quartz will be published by Milkweed in Spring, 2023.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

Sumita Chakraborty is a poet, essayist, scholar, and a graduate of Wellesley College, class of 2008. Her debut collection of poetry, Arrow, was released in September 2020 with Alice James Books in the United States and Carcanet Press in the United Kingdom, and has received coverage in The New York Times, NPR, and The Guardian. Her first scholarly book, tentatively titled Grave Dangers: Death, Ethics, and Poetics in the Anthropocene, is in progress. She is Helen Zell Visiting Professor in Poetry at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where she teaches in literary studies and creative writing.

Sumita’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry 2019, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. Her essays most recently appear in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her scholarship appears or is forthcoming in Cultural Critique, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (ISLE), Modernism/modernity, College Literature, and elsewhere. Previously, she was Visiting Assistant Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, at Emory University.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to chat with Sumita about publishing, reading, and writing. E.B. is grateful to Sumita for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series in the middle of her book debut!

EB: Thank you so much for being part of the Wellesley Writes It series, Sumita! I’m excited to get to talk to you about writing in general, but especially your debut collection Arrow. Can you start off speaking a bit about how this book came about?

SC: Thank YOU so much! This is such a joy. 

The book that’s now Arrow went through about seven prior full versions. 

EB: Oh my gosh! Wow.

SC: While there’s a lot going on in there, the most fundamental story I wanted to tell was that of the experience of living in the aftermath of severe domestic violence, other entangled forms of assault, and grief (in my case, particularly for my sister, who died in 2014 at the age of 24). The word “aftermath” is a tricky one, because there is no neat and tidy “after” violence or grief, particularly when one considers the varying scales on which various devastations and mournings take place. One of the main narrative arcs of the collection, though, is that of becoming someone who can embrace love and joy and care and kinship even when those concepts have been weaponized or altogether foreclosed for all of one’s childhood and adolescence. And that’s a narrative that requires a sense of an “after” that I am deeply fortunate to have personally experienced. That’s the main tightrope the collection is invested in walking, which forms the through-line around which and with which its other preoccupations and obsessions orbit and collide. 

EB: Wow, thank you so much for sharing all that, Sumita. I especially like what you said about the lack of a “neat and tidy” ending – isn’t that always the case when it comes to writing about things from our own lives? We want real-life closure but sometimes have to settle for just narrative closure instead.

I meant to say also congratulations on the publication of your collection not only in the US but in the UK as well! What was it like to put that version together? The same? Different?

SC: I was wildly lucky in this regard. Some years ago, I published the poem “Dear, beloved” in Poetry, before it was in Arrow—and in fact before this version of Arrow even existed. At that point, the editor of Carcanet reached out to me to say that the press would be interested in bringing out my collection in the UK. I kind of panicked! 

EB: I totally would have, too!

SC: As I mentioned, there was no Arrow yet. I was on a much earlier version that was “complete,” but when I looked at it, I knew: This ain’t it. And querying US presses was therefore not something I was prepared to do at that time; UK publication was even less within the realm of my imagination. I essentially told them the manuscript was in progress and asked if I could reach back out when it was ready and if I had secured a US publisher. Some years later, the collection was picked up by Alice James in the States and I reached back out to Carcanet to see if they were still interested, and they were! Alice James and Carcanet worked together during the production process, so while there were certainly some differences in approaches across either side of the pond, much of it was really streamlined, and that is all thanks to the outstanding and immense labor of the extraordinary editors and staffs at both publishers.   

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Go to Wellesley Underground for the complete conversation!

The post Wellesley Writes It: Sumita Chakraboty appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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I cannot tell you how excited I am to have an interview with Nina MacLaughlin up on The Believer Logger today. Nina has been a role model and inspiration to me since I first met her in spring 2015, right before the debut of her memoir, Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter. It was such a pleasure to talk to Nina about her new book Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung, which was published this past fall by FSG Originals. Thank you to Hayden Bennett at The Believer for his edits and for publishing the interview, and thank you to Nina for letting me ask her a million questions and for giving such thoughtful responses. I hope you enjoy reading the interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. Here’s the opening:

“THESE STORIES HAVE BEEN EXISTING IN ME ALL ALONG, LIKE HOW THEY EXIST IN ALL OF US, WHETHER WE KNOW IT OR NOT.”

Nina MacLaughlin and I went to the same high school, but not at the same time. She graduated nine years ahead of me—long enough that we didn’t overlap as students, but short enough that we shared many of the same teachers and experiences. Nina and I speak a common language—that of two people who both grew up in the suburbs of Boston, who both attended a New England prep school, who both studied a dead language, who both have spent their adult lives in Cambridge, who both love books and plants and art, who are both working writers.

Up until recently, Nina and I also had in common the fact that we both only write nonfiction—she is the author of Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter, a memoir about her decision to leave journalism (Nina wrote for The Boston Phoenix for almost a decade) and pursue carpentry. But I arrive at her Cambridge apartment—located on the first floor of an old brick building, a former Harvard dormitory—to chat with Nina not about writing what she calls “true books,” but about another kind of true writing: fiction.

Nina is the author of Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung, a modern retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published this fall by FSG Originals. Sure, it’s not nonfiction—but what is this book? A short story collection? A series of vignettes? An epic poem? A historical novel? Fan fiction? I arrive at Nina’s flustered from the extraordinarily hot August day—having walked the fifteen minutes to her apartment from my own, because we are neighbors, too—and also from the fact that talking about fiction is out of my usual comfort zone.

I trip on an uneven floorboard in the vestibule of Nina’s building—the same spot where I tripped entering Nina’s place for a housewarming party several years ago—but I catch myself. Nina and I exchange a sweaty hug, and she welcomes me in, offers a ginger beer, and I take a seat on her couch behind a beautiful wooden coffee table, handmade by Nina from a board from her grandmother’s house. Nina arranges herself in a chair across from me, her legs tucked up under a billowing skirt, and I wonder if we are still part of the same world.

—E.B. Bartels

Read the interview with Nina here.

Also, never forget:

Bojack Horseman (season 5).

The post Interview with Nina MacLaughlin on The Believer Logger! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

Happy 2020, my bookish friends!

First off, let me say right away that I will NOT be doing a favorite books of the past decade post. Sorry, but also I am not sorry, because I would actually drive myself insane trying to figure out my favorite books from the PAST TEN YEARS. That is so many years! So many books! How is that even possible? Also, it seems unfair? Ten years ago, I was 22, and the books that hit me hard at 22, I may roll my eyes at now at 32, but I don’t think that diminishes the impact they had on me a decade ago, so, yeah, I’m not touching that.

If you want recaps of my past reading habits, check out my 2018 Reading Round-Up and 2017 Reading Round-Up posts and this piece I wrote for Wellesley Underground about spending 2015 only reading books by women. (2010 to 2012 I was pretty much reading only YA and middle grade books because I was teaching at a middle school in Dorchester, and 2012 to 2014 I was in grad school and was reading whatever my MFA professors were telling me to read, and then I guess I was too much of an empty shell in 2016 to write anything about what I read that year?) You can also browse my GoodReads profile which I have been updating regularly since January 2012, and see my GoodReads reading challenges from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

I would only read 568 pages for Alexander Chee and no one else.

But! As promised, even if I can’t handle recapping the whole past decade, I present to you my annual reading tally for the past year. So, as is tradition, here is the breakdown of what I read in 2019, my top 19 books that were published 2019, plus my reading resolutions for the upcoming decade and some of the books I am looking forward to in 2020.

WHAT I READ:

• I read 122 books, by 107 writers.

THE GENRE BREAKDOWN:

• Fiction: 24
• Nonfiction: 39
• Graphic novels/comics: 3
• Graphic memoirs/nonfiction: 14
• Poetry: 9
• Drama: 1
• Young adult/middle grade: 10
• Picture/art books: 22*
• Books that I had already previously read: 6**

*Again, many of these were dead-pet-related picture books for research.

**Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty, Jane: A Murder and The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson, Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN:

• Books by women of color: 29
• Books by white women: 55
• Books by men of color: 15
• Books by white men: 22
• Books by non-binary people of color: 1
• Books by non-binary white people: 0
• Books by LGBTQ folks: ~23

THE REASON-FOR-READING BREAKDOWN:

• Books for dead pets research: 48
• Books for Non-Fiction by Non-Men/other interviews/essays/reviews: 19
• Books for my People Who Read Darkness book club: 12
• Books for teaching: 4 (though every book I read is for teaching, in a way)
• Books for fun/other reasons/just for the hell of it: 39

E.B.’s TOP 19 BOOKS PUBLISHED in 2019:

As I’ve said in past years, I am really glad that I am doing this tradition of my top [xx] books published in 20[xx] because it means I get to add one more book to my list each year. I am also glad that in this list I focus on only books that were published in 2019 because that helps me further narrow down my choices, though it does mean that some of my favorite books I read this year may not make the cut, just because they weren’t published in 2019, such as Cottonmouths by Kelly J. Ford (2017) or Edinburgh by Alexander Chee (2001) or Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (2011) or The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (2015) or The Reckonings by Lacy M. Johnson (2018) or Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala (2013). So, it’s an imperfect art, but it makes my life a little easier, so here I present to you: my 19 favorite books that came out in 2019, organized chronologically by their publication date.

1. The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang (February 5)
2. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden (March 5)
3. Good Talk by Mira Jacob (March 26)
4. The Body Papers by Grace Talusan (April 9)
5. I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib (April 30)
6. Allowed to Grow Old by Isa Leshko (May 10)
7. Ugly Music by Diannely Antigua (May 15)
8. The Edge of Every Day: Sketches in Schizophrenia by Marin Sardy (May 21)
9. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (June 4)
10. Bunny by Mona Awad (June 11)
11. With a Polaroid Camera by Sarah Dickenson Snyder (June 25)
12. Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton (August 6)
13. Mitz by Sigrid Nunez (August 6)
14. Malaya: Essays on Freedom by Cinelle Barnes (October 8)
15. Holding On To Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne (October 22)
16. This is My Body by Cameron Dezen Hammon (October 22)
17. In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (November 5)
18. The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West (November 5)
19. Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung by Nina MacLaughlin (November 12)

E.B.’s READING RESOLUTIONS for 2020 (& the rest of the decade):

• Last year I said I wanted the majority of the books I read in 2019 to be by people of color. I did not achieve that goal: of 122 books, 78 were by white people and 44 were by people of color. So, once again, my goal for the upcoming year is to read a majority of books by people of color.
• Also as I said last year, I want to keep reading more and more books by nonbinary people and LGBTQ folks. I am embarrassed that I only read one nonbinary author this year and that this year only 18% (down from 20% in 2018) of the authors I read identify openly as LGBTQ. I can do better.
• I want to continue to make sure my People Who Read Darkness book club reads diverse writers. (This year we only read one book by a person of color, My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, so we really need to work on that.)
• And also, like in past years, I need to keep paying attention to who is writing the books I am reading for research and diversify the voices I am quoting in my own writing.
• And, finally, as always, I want to continue to remind myself that if I don’t love something I am reading… I don’t have to finish it!!!! This is a reminder for you, too!

E.B.’s LIST OF BOOKS SHE IS ANTICIPATING in 2020:

There are many, many, MANY books to look forward in 2020, but here are just a few I am especially excited about, that you should put on your radar:

• I Know You Know Who I Am by Peter Kispert (February 11 from Penguin Books)
• Thin Places by Jordan Kisner (March 3 from FSG)
• Wow, No Thank You. by Samantha Irby (March 31 from Vintage)
• Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan (April 21 from Celadon Books)
• Summer Solstice by Nina MacLaughlin (April 27 from Black Sparrow Press)
• Fairest by Meredith Talusan (May 26 from Viking)
• Let’s Never Talk About This Again by Sara Faith Alterman (June 6 from Grand Central Publishing)
• The Names of All the Flowers by Melissa Valentine (July 14 from Feminist Press)
• Big Friendship by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman (July 14 from Simon & Schuster)
• A Wicked Magic by Sasha Laurens (July 28 from Razorbill)
• Tomboyland: Essays by Melissa Faliveno (August 4 from Topple Books)
• Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine (sometime in September from Graywolf)
• I also heard a rumor that Eula Biss has a new book coming out in fall 2020!

Here’s to reading all the books in 2020!

The post 2019 Reading Round-Up appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

Thanks for the graphics and stats, GoodReads. Shocking that no one else has read “My Pet Died” by Rachel Biale.

WHAT I READ:

• I read 137 books, by 131 writers.

THE GENRE BREAKDOWN:

• Fiction: 19
• Nonfiction: 43
• Graphic novels/comics: 9
• Graphic memoirs/nonfiction: 7
• Poetry: 15
• Drama: 1
• Young adult/middle grade: 6
• Picture books: 37*
• Books that I had already previously read: 6**

*Most of these were for research. I swear.

**Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, Playing Dead by Elizabeth Greenwood, Black Mass by Dick Lehr & Gerard O’Neill, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN:

• Books by women of color: 39
• Books by white women: 50
• Books by men of color: 14
• Books by white men: 26
• Books by non-binary people of color: 1
• Books by non-binary white people: 1
• Books by LGBTQ folks: ~26

THE REASON-FOR-READING BREAKDOWN:

• Books for research purposes: 30
• Books by Non-Fiction by Non-Men authors: 14
• Books for the Nobles English curriculum: 9
• Books for my true crime book club: 10
• Books for fun/other reasons/just for the hell of it: 74

E.B.’s TOP 18 BOOKS PUBLISHED in 2018:

I am really glad that I am doing this tradition of my top [xx] books published in 20[xx] because it means I get to add one more book to my list each year. HOWEVER: narrowing my list of books read this year down to only 18 was still brutal, so please appreciate the pain I went through to bring you this blog post. Now, without further ado, my top 18 books published in 2018, organized alphabetically by author’s last name.

1. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (October 23, 2018)
2. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee (April 17, 2018)
3. All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung (October 2, 2018)
4. How To Sit by Tyrese Coleman (September 1, 2018)
5. My Own Devices by Dessa (September 8, 2018)
6. Freshwater by Awaeke Emezi (February 13, 2018)
7. Movers and Shakers by Hope Ewing (October 9, 2018)
8. Tango Lessons by Meghan Flaherty (June 19, 2018)
9. This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins (January 30, 2018)
10. Sick by Porochista Khakpour (June 5, 2018)
11. If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim (August 7, 2018)
12. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara (February 27, 2018)
13. How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery (September 25, 2018)
14. Open Mic Night in Moscow by Audrey Murray (July 24, 2018)
15. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (February 6, 2018)
16. There There by Tommy Orange (June 5, 2018)
17. Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister (October 2, 2018)
18. My Dead Parents by Anya Yurchyshyn (March 27, 2018)

E.B.’s READING RESOLUTIONS for 2018:

• I want to continue reading more and more books by people of color, and my goal for 2019 is to read a majority books by people of color. (This year, of 137 books, 80 were by white people and 57 were by people of color.)
• I also want to keep reading more and more books by nonbinary people and LGBTQ folks. This year I read work by two nonbinary individuals and 20% of the authors I read were LGBTQ, which is okay, I guess, but could definitely be better.
• I want to make sure my true crime book club reads more diverse writers as well! (So many white people love to write about true crime.)
• Like last year, I need to keep paying attention to who is writing the books I am reading for research and diversify the voices I am quoting in my own writing.
• And, as always, I want to continue to remind myself that if I don’t love something I am reading… I don’t have to finish it!!!! This is a reminder for you, too!

Here’s to more amazing books in 2019!

The post 2018 Reading Round-Up appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

In the mean time, there are a couple of ways that you can get involved with Pangyrus right now:

Pangyrus co-sponsors a series called Resistance Mic! which happens at the Oberon Theatre in Harvard Square. The Resistance Mic! Season Opener is TONIGHT (Tuesday 9/25) at 8pm and there are still tickets available. See you there?! If that’s too last minute for your taste, then save the date for the rest of the 2018-2019 Resistance Mic! season: Tuesday 11/13/18, Tuesday 2/9/19, and Tuesday 4/16/19. Tickets are $10 and you can buy them here.

If going to live shows isn’t your thing and you’re more of a curl-up-on-the-couch-and-read type, don’t worry because Pangyrus Vol. 5: The Resistance Issue will be out in October! You can get a copy of your very own if you subscribe to Pangyrus for $3/month via our Patreon. Come on, this issue features REGIE GIBSON. He’s the best. 

Also, while we are at it, consider supporting our Patreon in general. Pangyrus is still a relatively new literary magazine, and they’ve already done so many great things in the few years since they published their first issue in spring 2015. Help us be able to do even more great things and pay our authors the big bucks they deserve! Plus, for a small monthly donation, you can get a Pangyrus notebook or mug or drawstring backpack, and who doesn’t want that?!

The post Get involved with Pangyrus! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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Diamond J. Sharp is a poet and essayist from Chicago. She has performed at Chicago’s Stage 773 and her work has been featured on Chicago Public Radio. She has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Vice, Pitchfork, Lenny, PANK, The Offing, Fjords, Winter Tangerine, JoINT Literary, Wellesley Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, BLACKBERRY and others. Sharp has been an editorial fellow at The Root, a features editor at Rookie, and a staff writer for Laundry Service. Her essay “Friends for Life” and her interview with Margo Jefferson were recently featured in Tavi Gevinson’s anthology Rookie on Love. A Callaloo fellow, Sharp has also attended the Wright/Hurston workshop, and is a member of the inaugural Poetry Foundation Incubator class. She has a B.A. from Wellesley College and an M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute. Sharp lives in Brooklyn.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Diamond J. Sharp appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

Are you a teenager who wants to take a creative writing class this summer? Then you should consider signing up for one of the two week-long teen writing camps I am teaching at GrubStreet: Week of Drama: Playwriting and Screenwriting runs from July 16 through July 20, and August Week of Creative Writing for Teens: Section A runs from August 6 through August 10. Keep reading for more information!

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Week of Drama: Playwriting and Screenwriting
Monday, July 16 – Friday, July 20, 10:30am-3:30pm

• 5-day teen writing camp.
  
• Open to writers aged 13-18 years old.
• Scholarships available!

Do you know all the words to every song in Hamilton? Are you constantly watching old movies on Netflix? Do you live for the spotlight? Are the Academy Awards your personal Super Bowl? Then this week-long course on playwriting and screenwriting is for you! Designed for theatre geeks, musical nerds, film buffs, and series bingers we will study what makes for great dialogue, character development, pacing, and plot structure when it comes to plays and movies. During this course, you will have the chance to try your hand at writing your own original play or screenplay and also learning the art of adapting a work for the stage or screen as we study famous screenwriters and playwrights from Jordan Peele to Wes Anderson to Mindy Kaling to Nora Ephron to Suzan-Lori Parks to Martin McDonagh to, of course, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Writing notebooks will be available, but feel free to bring your own. For writers age 13 – 18 ONLY.

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August Week of Creative Writing for Teens: Section A
Monday, August 6 – Friday, August 10, 10:30am-3:30pm

• 5-day teen writing camp.
  
• Open to writers aged 13-18 years old.
• Scholarships available!

In this week-long general creative writing course, we won’t discriminate based on genre! Whether you’re working on your first novel or writing memoir, short stories, poetry, plays, or fan fiction, this is an opportunity to improve your skills and learn about new forms. Each day will be filled with exercises designed to get you creating, and to expose you to new genres you may not have previously explored. What is flash fiction anyway? Does nonfiction have to be 500-page biographies of dead presidents? Do my characters have to be likable? How can I make my reader feel the way I am feeling? Do I have to stay confined to one genre? We’ll explore these questions and more! This class is geared toward creative, energetic, and open-minded writers all of levels who aren’t afraid to try something new. Writing notebooks will be available, but feel free to bring your own. For writers age 13 – 18 ONLY.

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Again, let me know if you have any questions! Sign up today!

The post GrubStreet summer classes: teen edition! appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

WHAT I READ:

• I read 110 books, by 96 writers.

THE GENRE BREAKDOWN:

• Fiction: 11
• Nonfiction: 29
• Graphic novels/comics: 5
• Graphic memoirs: 9
• Poetry: 8
• Drama: 2
• Young adult/middle grade: 6
• Picture books: 40*

*Most of these were for research purposes. There are a lot of kids’ books out there about how to cope with pet death, FYI.

THE DEMOGRAPHIC BREAKDOWN:

• Books by women of color: 22
• Books by white women: 56
• Books by men of color: 4
• Books by white men: 28
• Books by LGBTQ folks: 18

THE REASON-FOR-READING BREAKDOWN:

• Books for research purposes: 52
• Books for the Nobles 9th grade English curriculum: 4
• Books for fun: 54

E.B.’s TOP 17 BOOKS PUBLISHED in 2017:

I would just like to say that a lot of really great books were published in 2017. Narrowing it down to 17 was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life. This list could have easily been twice as long, but “34 books published in 2017” didn’t have quite the same ring to it. But, ugh! Making choices is so hard! Sigh. Anyway, let me present to you, my top 17 books published in 2017, in alphabetical order by author’s last name.

1. The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
2. How To Fall in Love with Anyone by Mandy Len Catron
3. From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty
4. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
5. Hunger by Roxane Gay
6. Fetch by Nicole J. Georges
7. Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett
8. Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
9. Alfie (The Turtle that Disappeared) by Thyra Heder
10. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
11. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul
12. Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo
13. Yawn: Adventures in Boredom by Mary Mann
14. A Surprise for Mrs. Tortoise by Paula Merlán
15. Animals Strike Curious Poses by Elena Passarello
16. A Girl Walks into a Book by Miranda K. Pennington
17. After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry

E.B.’s READING RESOLUTIONS for 2018:

• I need to pay more attention to who is writing the books I am reading for research and try to diversify the voices I am quoting in my own writing. (Turns out there are a lot of white ladies who like to write picture books about pets dying.)
• I need to continue to read more books by people of color and LGBTQ folks. (Especially men of color. That 2017 statistic was shameful.)
• I didn’t tally the exact numbers, but I know that most of the books I read this year were by American writers (Scaachi Koul was one of the most “exotic” as she is, gasp, Canadian) and I want to try to read more work by international authors.
• And I want to continue to remind myself that if I don’t love something I am reading… I don’t have to finish it. I’m going to die before I get to read everything on my To Read list on GoodReads, so, live it up. Life is short. Read what you want to be reading.

Here’s to a 2018 full of even more great books!

The post 2017 Reading Round-Up appeared first on E.B. Bartels.

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Sarah Dickenson Snyder is poet based in Massachusetts and Vermont. She is the author of The Human Contract (Kelsay Books, 2017) and the chapbook Notes From A Nomad (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Snyder’s poetry and prose have appeared in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Comstock Review, Damfino Press, Chautauqua, West Trade Review, The Main Street Rag, and Passager, among other magazines and anthologies. In May of 2016, she was a 30/30 Poet for Tupelo Press, and she has been selected to be part of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In addition to writing poetry, Snyder worked as an English teacher for thirty-seven years.

The post Non-Fiction by Non-Men: Sarah Dickenson Snyder appeared first on E.B. Bartels.