READ WATCH PLAY FEAST (MAY EDITION) + OFFICE HOURS!
If You Have Any Writerly Questions I'll Try To Help
Gang,
Sorry for the lateness (usually I try to post our round-ups at the end of the month).
Graduation ceremonies are over and my best friend, a surgeon and US Army veteran, has finally returned home safely from his volunteer mission in Gaza (he was providing medical care at European Hospital in the Khan Younis).
Here on StoryWorlds I’ve been working through the Conflict section of our Story formula. I’ve always been something of a structure wonk and it’s nice to have an opportunity to put some of these thoughts on the screen. Really grateful to everyone for tolerating these strange dives.
As for my own work, I continue to struggle with the writing and while I wait for something, anything, to grab hold, I’ve been steeping myself in art, in learning and in celebrating the safety (and courage) of old friends. Below you’ll find some of what’s been keeping me nourished this last month.
And, yes, time for another OFFICE HOURS.
If you have any questions at all regarding building stories or the creative life in general — if you have any questions about anything we’ve been discussing — please post them in the comments section of this very post or message me directly.
(OFFICE HOURS is normally for pay subscribers only, but this month let’s open it up to all our community.)
As always, thank you all for supporting StoryWorlds...
And now onto our…
READ
If you’re looking for a dynamite story collection, look no further. Tobias is the real deal, a ferocity of love.
Here’s what I said for the book jacket: Superb, original and thoroughly alive with heartbreak and wonder. Tobias is electrifying.
Also: we need to support our small presses as much as we can. It’s always on the edges where literature finds its voice.
https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/monarch/
There’s a TV adaptation, but it’s in the novel where the real magic awaits. If you’re a mystery hound or if you love historicals there’s nothing like Sansom’s Shardlake novels. The Name of the Rose meets Wolf Hall and that’s not just me being glib. Sansom is amazing and I’ve read six of the books over the last five weeks and I can’t sing their praises loudly enough.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288126/dissolution-by-c-j-sansom/
Steven Hahn is my favorite historian and once again he knocks it out of the park in this searing look at the deep roots of American illiberalism. (Fun fact: Hahn’s Pulitzer Prize–winning book “A Nation Under Our Feet” inspired Ta-Nehisi Coates’s famous run on the Black Panther comic.) If you want to understand what really happened on January 6, start here.
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393635928
WATCH
Interview With The Vampire is my favorite show on TV right now. Louis and Claudia wash up in post-war Paris, and as you might imagine the City of Lights ain’t exactly a vampire’s best friend. Also, Louis’s haunting by his former lover, Lestat, is one of the finest representations of not-being-over-it that I’ve seen on screen.
https://www.amc.com/shows/interview-with-the-vampire--1053259
PLAY
Misha Kim is a musician, single father, and a half-Korean undocumented immigrant from Kazakhstan, and is also the tender suffering heart of Tatyana Kim’s amazing short film. Our world would be a better place if we all watched a film like this a week.
For more info: https://offhollywoodfilm.com/
FEAST
Dominican born artist Firelei Báez’ is everything and her exhibit at the Boston ICA exceeds that superlative. If you’re in the Boston area or are planning to be here before Sep 2, 2024, you owe it to yourself and your ancestors to check out this exhibit.
Báez says it best: “My works are propositions, meant to create alternate pasts and potential futures, questioning history and culture in order to provide a space for reassessing the present.”
But believe me the works on display are a lot more than that. They are a graft from the Afro-diasporic universe to your battered decolonial heart.
https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/firelei-baez-0/
Monica Glass and Ken Oringer have opened up a gluten-free bakery in the heart of Cambridge and normally I don’t go for the sans-gluten, but Verveine is a showstopper. Plus they got all-day congee. Win on top of win.
https://boston.eater.com/2024/5/10/24153952/verveine-cafe-bakery-opening-cambridge
Hi Mr. Díaz, I was wondering if you had any advice about submitting to literary journals. In your view, what are the most important considerations to an editor of a literary magazine/publication? How does one know if a journal is right to submit to? Thank you.
Hello! I was curious if you’ve read The Apartment by Ana Menendéz? I was in her creative writing class at FIU when she sold this book, I tell everyone to read it—it’s so excellent! Have an excellent June!