Gatherings | Issue 39
Fertile Festival, Kagiso Lesego Molope, Commotion on the Giller Boycott, AI & Creative Writing, Alexander Chee, More Munro revelations, Farzana Doctor, Rosali, and more!
Gatherings
Recommended readings, viewings, music, and art from Send My Love to Anyone!
My News
Anecdotes has been shortlisted for the 2024 Fred Kerner Award along with Lucian Childs, Ifeoma Chinwuba, Lara Okihiro, Janis Bridger, and Caroline Vu. Congrats to all the finalists. The winner will be announced at an online event in September!
The judges had some nice things to say about Anecdotes:
“Kathryn Mockler challenges our preconceptions about what a short-story is and can be with this collection. Like Lydia Davis before her, she pushes the envelope on this form, opening new vistas for writers who are bound to follow her lead. Particularly engaging are the stories that play with form to bring us new perspectives on story-telling. In any collection this approach would be brave and challenging. When taking on topics like sexual violence, abuse and environmental change it rises above those laudable aims and achieves something more profound: pure art, gracefully achieved.”
“Anecdotes is a highly original and an intentionally jarring hybrid collection in four distinct parts. Mockler’s bold and darkly playful approach to exploring some of the big issues of our time is an authentic and empowering call to action to anyone who’s paying attention.”
Thanks to Heidi Greco for the lovely review of Anecdotes in subTerrain!
Thanks so much to Tim Blackett (author of Grandview Drive) for having me on his podcast to talk about Anecdotes (Bookhug Press) and other random stuff like TikTok and favourite email salutations! Fun fact: Tim was my first TikTok friend!
My micro short film Do You Know What’s Great? adapted from a story from Anecdotes will be screening at the following festivals:
August 29-31, 2024 - Oxford Shorts Festival at St. John’s College, Oxford University
September 16, 2024 - Austin Micro Film Festival at the AFS Cinema, 6259 Middle Fiskville Rd, Austin, TX
Anecdotes can be ordered through Book*hug Press or to your favourite independent bookstore!
Kirby News
Kirby is reading in Barrie with Caitlin McKenzie on August 9, 2024!
Tickets available at knifeforkbook.shop
Fertile Festival 3rd Instalment
Have you got your copy of Kirby’s She yet?
SMLTA Recommendations
Several writers are cutting ties with the Giller Awards. Much respect for these authors. My book is not eligible or I would be joining them!
Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with former Giller Prize winner Omar El Akkad about why he’s protesting the Giller Prize.
ICYMI
wrote one of the best Alice Munro essays:
More Alice Munro news. Another victim comes forward and an employee quits Munro’s bookstore over abuse revelations.
Inspired by a need for more grounded, non-elite analyses of the current situation in Sudan, we interviewed four people whose organizing against the oppressive policies of the Sudanese state spans years and in some cases decades. Each of them links the revolution to the current war and foreground the organizing and collective visioning processes that have and could potentially still move us toward a popular democratic future in a post-war Sudan. We are incredibly grateful to them for speaking to us despite the circumstances that they face, including telecommunications and electricity blackouts in much of the country. In this first installment, you’ll read our introduction and an interview with Abdelraouf Omer, a Gezira farmer and union organizer.
If you would like to help grassroots civil society and mutual aid groups at the frontlines of relief efforts in parts of Sudan most impacted by state violence, donate to the Sudan Solidarity Collective.
— Rabab Elnaiem, Nisrin Elamin, and Sara Abbas
Read In Sudan, the People’s Revolution Versus the Elite’s Counterrevolution in Hammer & Hope
Sad to hear about David Lynch’s diagnosis.
Interesting discussion about AI and Creative Writing Pedagogy from AWP. Honestly feeling at a loss about AI and teaching. I worry about the environmental and other costs of using it. Here’s a conversation with professors who are addressing it in different ways in the classroom. I’m at the point where I’m just listening to a variety of perspectives and trying to learn as much about it as I can.
Reading as Resistance:
Since Hillbilly Elegy came out in 2016, I’ve experienced countless people claiming to now “understand” where I come from and what Appalachian people are like. But they don’t think of my childhood watching my dad lose himself while arranging music on his piano or my grandfather tenderly nurturing plants in his ridiculously large garden. Instead, they imagine the stereotypes of J.D. Vance’s version of Appalachia, where the entire region is made up of poor rural white people consumed with violence who have no one to blame but themselves for their life circumstances.
Back when the book was first released, Book Riot published an excellent piece about why Hillbilly Elegy is problematic. It’s been over four years since Vance’s memoir hit the shelves, but now we have to contend with the movie of Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard and starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams. Many of the issues from the memoir carry over to the film version of Vance’s story, presenting his harmful portrait of Appalachia to a whole new audience.
Read 15 Books About Appalachia to Read Instead of HILLBILLY ELEGY, Book Riot
SMLTA contributor Farzana Doctor has a novel out this fall with ECW Press, The Beauty of Us.
“This novel’s quiet genius lies in how it reminds us that we are all always recovering and starting over; this is a story for everyone. A moving and seriously empathetic novel, as faceted as a jewel.” — Thea Lim, author of An Ocean of Minutes
“Undeniably cinematic.” — Catherine Hernandez, author and screenwriter of Scarborough the book and film
Watch this vital conversation from 2022 on the Importance of Storytelling and the Novelist as Knowledge Keeper between Kagiso Lesego Molope and Zakes Mda!
For novelists whose works are situated in conflict zones, could it be said that they must be seen as having multiple roles? In these worlds where books are banned and libraries are lost, can the novel then be considered an archival site, a place where the people's histories can be documented? Though this can often be said about historical fiction, novelists writing about conflict zones have the added pressure of recording history as it happens or from recent memory. Kagiso Lesego Molope and Zakes Mda are both apartheid survivors and have written extensively about apartheid. They are in conversation about the role of the novelist, the importance of documenting history in fiction and the burden of the survivor as a storyteller. This event was produced in collaboration with Gothenburg Book Fair.
From
four flashes you need to read right now!
The inaugural Inside Prize has named its first recipient—the author Imani Perry. The new book award is “a collaborative project of Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation, Center for Justice Innovation and Dallas bookstore owner Lori Feathers.” And in a novel move, all the prize judges are incarcerated individuals.
Read The first US Book Prize judged entirely by incarcerated people has announced a winner on Lit Hub.
Check out this essay by SMLTA contributor
in his Substack which is a companion essay for his new story collection Rubble Children.
Also SMLTA contributor Saeed Teebi interviews Aaron Kreuter for the podcast, Short Story Today
Toronto reading series Junction Reads is fundraising!
Thoughtful essay by
on writing and the market!
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici
“Dressing the Ghost” by
on !
“ …in my experience, if you go to an MFA program without having done anything like that, you can quickly find yourself undermined just through inexperience. And by this I mean that if you have the feeling of winning a golden ticket that will save you when you get into the program, you are in danger. You are already giving that institution too much power. You will save you, as it were. To believe otherwise is to give too much power to the faculty and your new peers. You may find yourself in a crisis if you feel you are letting them down somehow, more afraid to disappoint them than yourself. I say this because by the time you are in graduate school, you need to know it’s important to be able to disappoint a teacher if you feel you are right about what you need to write, perhaps especially if that teacher is a hero to you. You are not there to become someone’s acolyte. You are there to locate you in all of this and to give yourself what you need to live and work as a writer.”
Read Alexander Chee’s excellent advice about the writing life and MFA programs in On Turning Writing Community, Writing Habits, and Submitting Work Into A Life in The Querent!
A Woman Under The Influence (1974) | John Cassavettes
I am obsessed with Rosali! Enjoy!
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It's all great, but my favourites are still the Past and Future stories.
Thanks for linking to my newsletter, Kathryn! Your newsletter is such a gift. Thank you for this treasure trove of goodness!