Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 15
with Laurie D. Graham & Catherine Graham
Hello friends,
This month for Issue 15 of Send My Love to Anyone, I publish an excerpt from Laurie D. Graham’s latest poetry collection Fast Commute (McClelland & Stewart) and I interview Catherine Graham about her latest novel The Most Cunning Heart (Palimpsest Press).
Check out April’s recommendations below!
On May 4th, I’m moderating the FOLD panel The Truth Behind Climate Fiction, a virtual conversation with Sydney Hegele, Premee Mohamed, and Mary-Lou Zeitoun about their recent novels.
Hope you enjoy!
Kathryn
FOLD: The Truth Behind Climate Fiction - May 4, 2022 at 2:00pm EST
The Truth Behind Climate Fiction, a virtual conversation with Sydney Hegele, Premee Mohamed, and Mary-Lou Zeitoun about their recent novels.
Register here.
My sister’s memoir Fractured is coming out this fall:
A collision with a moose on a dark highway left Susan Mockler with an incomplete spinal injury, suddenly compromising her ability to walk and to care for herself. She spent months in a rehabilitation facility learning how to adjust to her new reality, and though her body partially recovered, every aspect of her life changed.
Fractured is a compelling illumination of the challenges of acquired disability and the ways in which people with disabilities are sidelined and infantilised. Mockler, a psychotherapist, speaks with frank honesty about her family and friends’ reactions to her injury, and the hard-won lessons that she and those around her learned from her experience.
Recommendations from Send My Love to Anyone!
Remembering Steven Heighton
I was very sad to learn of the passing of Steven Heighton. He was such a kind and warm persona and I have fond memories of hanging out with him at Banff many years ago.
For a writer so adept at crossing genres, Heighton was also highly attuned to the more difficult aspects of the writing life, which perhaps contributed to the empathy and compassion with which he treated his peers. —Steven W. Beattie
Two moving pieces honoring Steven Heighton:
Steven Heighton remembered by Dan Wells in Quill & Quire
Steven W. Beattie honors Steven Heighton in the Toronto Star
Connecting to Planet Earth Through Poetry by Fiona Tinwei Lam in the Tyee
Verses of love and loss for our endangered flora, fauna and ecosystems, compiled by Vancouver’s poet laureate.
Celebrating Earth Day feels fraught. Increasingly alarming reports by the United Nations about the estimated one million species threatened with extinction and the need for immediate and profound emissions reductions to limit global warming fill us with dread.
The climate emergency is upon us, yet so much more needs to be done. It can feel overwhelming.
But we still must celebrate — and fight — for what we still have. If we all raise our voices, perhaps governments, institutions and corporations will finally hear us.
Danielle Geller’s memoir Dog Flowers:
I just finished Danielle Geller’s Dog Flowers. I highly recommend this beautiful memoir.
A daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to retrace her mother’s life in a memoir that is both a narrative and an archive of one family’s troubled history.
You can read an excerpt at Penguin Random House.
Naben Ruthnum’s new horror novella is out:
Deadline September 21, 2022 for the Banff Centre’s Winter Writers Residency
Write with Yvonne Blomer:
Some excellent advice:
9 Ableist Tropes In Fiction I Could Do Without by Margaret Kingsbury, Book Riot
After talking with publishers, reviewers, writers, and readers about disability, I decided that it wasn’t enough to say there needed to be more disability representation in publishing. People in the bookish community need concrete examples of problematic portrayals to understand how and why these portrayals are harmful to the disabled community. At the same time, disability is not a monolith. Our experiences and personalities vary, of course! This is what makes it challenging to write a list of disability stereotypes, because there should be — must be — nuance in the way disabled characters are written. This list isn’t meant as a set of rules so much as a list of things to think about and problems disabled readers frequently find in fiction. I used my own knowledge as a disabled reader combined with discussions in some of the disabled groups I’m in to come up with these nine ableist tropes most frequently seen in books for all ages. As a warning, while I try to be vague about the ableism in books, I do list some spoilers.
Kim Fahner on Bronwen Wallace:
Samantha Jones has a new chapbook:
A reading by Caroline Bergvall:
Kim Fahner’s Covid Diary, from The Republic of Poetry:
I promised to write something ‘other,’ afterwards. Sometimes, ‘afterwards’ is overwhelming, and can’t be shared right away. It takes time to process major losses in a life, a grief that digs deep to root into your own body. Sometimes, ‘afterwards’ is about pretending or imagining that you are a turtle, and pulling into your shell and building strong walls so that you know you are strong enough on your own, without anyone else to lean on.
A first look at Victoria Mbabazi’s new KFB chapbook:
A great webinar from Jael Richardson on how to moderate:
Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome by Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey
For many women, feeling like an outsider isn’t an illusion — it’s the result of systemic bias and exclusion.
Issue #15 of Send My Love to Anyone
Interview with Catherine Graham
Excerpt from Fast Commute by Laurie D. Graham
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