Here’s a new challenge for you—a Book Cover Scavenger Hunt Round Two!
Can you name all 20 beauteous Graywolf Press titles featured in this mosaic?
Leave your guesses in the comments below!
(Want another challenge? Check out my previous collage of titles from Riverhead Books!)
Last Friday, our publishing class had the great opportunity to Skype with Jynne Dilling Martin of Riverhead Books. We chatted all about the history of Riverhead, the changes that social media has made for the industry, and tips on how to break into the NYC publishing scene.
One thing that particularly stuck with me from Jynne’s talk was how the design team at Riverhead strives to craft a unique “visual identity” for each title. Essentially, this means that if you eliminated the text from each cover, you’d still be able to identify the books based on the graphics alone.(Remember this Buzzfeed quiz on classic book covers?)
So in order to test this, I created a fun collaged scavenger hunt, in which I have tucked 18 of Riverhead’s stunning book covers inside. Some are more subtle than others. Can you find them all? Leave your guesses in the comments below!
Currently reading: Kōbō Abe’s The Box Man and The Face of Another.
Just finished: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin; Trinity by Louisa Hall; and The Wild Birds by Emily Strelow.
Read earlier in the year, but didn’t get around to posting about them yet:
What have you been reading?
Need a boost? Let the Astro Poets take care of you:
Week of Feb. 10:
A pile of pink glitter will appear. It may or may not be in the shape of your name. You’ve been telling yourself you’d better come to terms with it all. Don’t waste any more time standing still.
Week of Feb. 17:
There will be health there will be flowers there will be money there will be strawberries. The only thing missing may be a song. Can you go into the past and find it. Probably you will have to go into the future.
(I have gone into the future and found my missing songs. Here they are below:)
Let me know in the comments: which missing songs are YOU bringing back from the future?
I am excited and humbled and incredibly nervous to share my newest piece of nonfiction, “The Fly,” which was recently published online as part of Entropy‘s “Health and Wellness” series.
The fly has become a deep symbol in my life for a kind of never-ending state of recovery, and the insect’s incessant nature sparks the question: Is there such a thing as recovery? Can physical and mental recoveries align, and if so, how long does that alignment take?
Historically, this has been an extremely difficult topic for me to discuss, and I have only recently been able to put it into words. I don’t know if I will ever say all that I want to say on this particular topic, or if I will ever say it HOW I want to say it, but this is me now, attempting just that.
I hope that my piece allows someone to realize they’re not alone and gives them inspiration to tell their own stories.
And when it does and asks for shelter, I’ll surely offer up my body as host to that buzzing fly, because now that there’s enough of me to protect the two of us at once, the least I can do is be hospitable.
A huge thanks to Ian Riggins at Entropy for publishing it and being so wonderful to work with!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Today and every day…believe in pink, believe in love, and eat lots of chocolate.
Want to dig deeper into the sandbox? Explore more at these links:
–The origin of wearing surgical masks in Asia is a surprisingly long-standing tradition.
-The author and artist, Franky Frances Cannon, analyzes and reflects on her relationship with her mother and mental illness in her beautiful book, The Highs & Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank.
-Edward Gorey’s Victorian drama of library paste and throbblefooted specters: (video)
-So you want to hear a mbira, caxixi, talking drum, surdo, dumbek, and tabla all at once? You’re in luck! Check out “Hall of Mirrors,” composed by Rick Baitz, and featuring percussionists Christian Lundqvist, Jeremy Smith, and Brian Shankar Adler.
-Every artist needs their own Ink House. (P.S. I love this Apartment Theory article about the poet Morgan Parker’s unique ink house!)
About Sandbox Notes. Collections by Cameron Finch.
Want to dig deeper into the sandbox? Explore more at these links:
-This list of words to describe the wind is great, but I’ve always been a fan of “scirocco.” Speaking of wind, have you seen this children’s book by Anne Herbauts? It’ll dazzle your senses.
-Need a jazz break? Might I suggest Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz Impressions of Japan?
-Falling in love with the work of Francesca Woodman, Eikoh Hosoe, and Man Ray – seeing connections and departures in everything.
-“‘Wild Geese,’ and so many other poems, are about allowing ourselves the permission to be fully present in our bodies and their incumbent desires.” (A cracking essay on Mary Oliver’s poetry via Literary Hub)
–The longing for Kyōto is endless….
About Sandbox Notes. Collections by Cameron Finch.
Cue The Dragon Boy/The Bottomless Pit. 🎵
It’s been a week since I returned from my travels around Japan, and already I’m in that “Did I actually go there? Did this actually happen?” phase. I was there for two weeks, traveling around Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto, and Tokyo. I had a few contacts there, but because of the New Year holiday, many of those contacts were abroad and unavailable. The major purpose of the trip was to research for my novel, particularly in and around Hiroshima. However, the immersion of just being in the country for that amount of time was research in itself. I loved knowing that somewhere out there, my characters were walking around me. Maybe I had passed one of them at a crosswalk, maybe one had walked out the restaurant door as I walked in, maybe one was staring at me from the second story window of a house, maybe I was sitting behind them in the Shinkansen. Stories lurk everywhere; they don’t just stay on the street corner you happen to be writing about. They are in the air you breathe, the food that touches your tongue.
This was also the first weeks-long solo trip I had ever embarked on. How to describe it? Empowering, inspiring, emotional, exhausting (in the best way), delicious, and to be honest, sometimes lonely. I’m forever thankful for the wonderful people I met along the way, and for every person who helped me when I made a mistake or didn’t know what to do or where to go. I hope our paths cross again soon!
Here are a few photos from the magic that is Japan:
Now, I just need to keep plowing away at my Japanese language practice, so when I go back, I will be able to speak with my characters when I see them!
I’m attempting to pack my bags (I’m a horrible procrastinator when it comes to packing) as I leave tomorrow for a two-week trip to Japan! I’m nervous excited with the arrow pointing more to the excited portion of the scale. I’m reviewing my hiragana/katakana charts and stuffing as many notebooks as physically possible into my carry-on. I’ll be palling around with local cats (named Mimi and Otsuka for all you Kafka on the Shore lovers) in Hiroshima/Miyajima, Kyoto, and Tokyo. I went to Japan as a wee lass in 2005, but I don’t remember too much except that I loved it. I have a few places I know I want to check out this time (e.g. the Atomic Bomb Dome, Itsukushima Shrine, Fushimi Inari, Yayoi Kusama Museum), but if you have any spots you think I should check out, I’d love to hear from you! Mostly, I just want to soak up as much history and culture to add to the novel I am writing — and if that means hanging on a park bench or sipping green tea in a cafe for half the day, then I’m down for that. Book-wise, I’m bringing Akutagawa’s Rashōmon and Jean Genet’s The Thief’s Journal, plus the Poison issue of Tin House, for all those long hours on the plane and the Shinkansen.
I think this trip is coming at the perfect time—a reset at the top of the New Year.
But today, I take a few moments to look back.
This was a glimpse of 2018:
-My first trip to the AWP conference in Tampa, Florida, and celebrating the publication of this beautiful issue of Hunger Mountain I had the pleasure to help make!
-Finishing my third year of beginning every day with a yoga routine (will you join me in the challenge as I enter my fourth year?)
-The launch of a new series of (almost weekly) posts called Sandbox Notes where I collect and curate words, links, facts, thoughts, descriptions, and objects of interest into creative visual pieces. Learn the story behind my Sandbox Notes here!
-Tapping into a state of delicious movement with Eiko Otake, and hearing brave hibakusha share their stories of the atomic bombs.
-There were tears: family illnesses, heartbreaks, stress, listening to Visions of Gideon.
-There were fears. Most of them seen on TV.
-There were very good friends—new and old—who made my life a little brighter.
-My creative work was accepted three times this year, with two essays forthcoming in 2019 (thank you so much to all of the editors of Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Windmill, and Entropy, and to Glimmer Train for giving my piece “Frozen Locks” an Honorable Mention in the Jan/Feb Short-Story Award for New Writers). I continued writing blog content for the Michigan Quarterly Review, as well as published articles and interviews in Artscope Magazine, Everything is Music, Storyboard, and Perpetual Beta. And my interview with the amazing Rene Denfeld was published in the back of her paperback book!
-Attending the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and meeting Carl Phillips in real life.
-I started writing a novel!
-Somehow I read 82 books (message me for the full list!) and narrowed it down to 20 “favorite things I read this year.” An eclectic bunch of old and new titles, here they are hand-drawn, in no particular order:
Her Right Foot – Dave Eggers
The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
My Favorite Thing is Monsters Vol 1 – Emil Ferris
Vice – Ai
Heart Spring Mountain – Robin Marie MacArthur
Vermilion Sands – J.G. Ballard
Indictus – Natalie Eilbert
Census – Jesse Ball
The Principles of Uncertainty – Maira Kalman
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
Confessions of a Mask – Yukio Mishima
Dialogues in Paradise – Can Xue
Premonitions – Elizabeth Schmuhl
There There – Tommy Orange
The Country Between Us – Carolyn Forché
For Other Ghosts – Donald Quist
Man v. Nature – Diane Cook
Severance – Robert Olen Butler
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
Everything Under – Daisy Johnson
Favorite moving pictures I saw this year: a Monty Python Flying Circus marathon, Maniac, Alias Grace, The Crown, The Lobster, and Call Me By Your Name.
2018 sounded like Sufjan Stevens, Poliça, Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie, AURORA, the Westworld soundtrack, The National, Father John Misty, Neil Young, and of course, my forever faves — Emancipator and Fleet Foxes.
Next year will see graduation and beyond, the great job search, and more. But for now, Japan! And being grateful for each day as it comes. Peace to all <3