I've been keeping busy since graduating with my MFA from NYU: working on a novel, finishing some short stories and starting to send them out, and also writing some poems. I've also been reading submissions for a special "Queers Destroy Fantasy!" issue of Lightspeed Magazine, guest-edited by Chris Barzak, and working on the editorial team of Mercer Street, the annual volume of student writing produced by NYU's Expository Writing Program. I'm also headed out soon on another European trip: I'll be in Greece for several days (Athens and some other nearby sites), then a few days in Istanbul followed by a tour of the Aegean coast. And then, I'll head back to Paris for Bastille Day and to attend the graduation readings of the next MFA class to graduate.
I've also been reading some amazing books. I just finished volume one of Knausgaard's My Struggle and I can't wait to read the next several. Meanwhile, Diane Cook's Man V. Nature, her debut collection of stories, killed me. So amazing. Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion might have changed how I approach fiction forever. I'm enjoying dipping into James Salter's short stories as well: "Am Stronde von Tanger" is a masterpiece. Also, discovering Patrick Modiano's work in Paris (where everyone is reading him) was a game-changer for sure... Suspended Sentences, which I read for a craft class with Helen Schulman, uses white space in such mind-blowing ways and totally opens up what fiction can do in terms of representing the unspoken, working almost entirely in subtext.
And finally, at John Freeman's suggestion and recommendation, I've been reading and rereading Constantine Cavafy's poems. Something in them stirred me to start writing my own. Looking forward to bringing him with me to Greece.
More soon. But for now, a picture of me with my amazing classmates at graduation: