Book Your Stocking with Shellie Faught

Book Your Stocking 2018

Book Your Stocking: December 8

There is no better time for reading and wishing than winter. Luckily, Book Your Stocking combines both. All December long, writers and readers are sharing the books they most would love to discover in their stockings, socks, or shelving units this holiday season. 

Today's contributor, Shellie Faught, is making a direct request to both an author and ALL forward-thinking publishers, for exactly the book she would like to find . . . sooner than soon. Please welcome Shellie to the series.

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Hole in the Middle by Kendra Fortmeyer

The book I would be thrilled to find in my stocking does not yet exist -- a collection of short stories by author Kendra Fortmeyer. Her fiction is a delicious blend of surrealism, humor, heartbreak, and compassion. 

Her debut young adult novel, Hole in the Middle, is smart and beautifully written (and would make a fantastic addition to any teenage girl's stocking). 

Kendra's stories can be found on her website (http://kendrafortmeyer.com/fiction/) and "Asymmetry" will be released next season on the podcast, "LeVar Burton Reads" and can be heard and read on Podcastle, but a bound collection would be lovely for a stocking. 

Maybe in 2019? 

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About today's reader:

Shellie Faught

Shellie Faught lives in Austin, Texas, and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. Her fiction has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine and her debut novel -- a quiet story about Satanic Panic -- is forthcoming . . . someday. Learn more about Shellie and her writing at her website: shelliefaught.com

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Bonnie Brunt

Book Your Stocking 2018

Book Your Stocking: December 7

'Tis the season for solitude and reading. Also, in many climates, socks, stockings, and other warm-foot coverings. As such, the best thing to do with a stocking is clearly to hang it from a knob, a door, a fireplace, a heater vent, or a shelf and then to put a book in it. 

Realizing the need for book suggestions to put in said stocking, all December, writers and readers are sharing the one book that they want to discover in their sock. If you aren't near their socks, the next best thing is to put the book in your sock or in the sock of someone you really like. 

That's what we do here every day of December on Book Your Stocking. So, without further ado, please welcome today's avid reader, Bonnie Brunt, with her book-wish. 

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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (cover art)

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2017)

I would be so pleased to find this book in my stocking because I have wanted to read it for a long time. The premise is fascinating: the parallel paths of two half-sisters born in different African villages, one of whom was captured and sold into slavery, the other who married an Englishman. I am eager to read this story.

• Find Homegoing at your local bookstore.
• Locate Homegoing at your library.
• Discover more about Homegoing from its publisher  (Penguin Random House).
• Follow Homegoing's author, Yaa Gyasi, on Facebook.

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Bonnie Brunt

About today's reader: 

Bonnie is a mom, traveler, word-nerd, a speaker of Spanish. She's also a lover of nature, books, movies, and the arts. Formerly a Spanish instructor, she now serves as Dean of Visual and Performing Arts at Spokane Falls Community College.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Regi Claire

Book Your Stocking: December 6

For as much of December as we can fill, writers and readers--nay, book lovers--are sharing the book they would love to find in their winter stocking this year. So far, contributors have shared a book scheduled for publication, a book that may not be a book, a book discovered on the radio, and now, today's book is a book that somehow fell between the spines of all the other books she's read so far.

I'm happy to welcome writer Regi Claire back to this year's edition of Book Your Stocking.

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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1994)

A little ashamed of this inexplicable gap in my literary education, I admit to never having read Chinua Achebe’s acclaimed novel Things Fall Apart. It is one of several twentieth-century classics I have for a long time been meaning to seek out. Now, sixty years since its first publication, I hold my Christmas stocking wide open to receive this book with grace, and gratitude.

• Find Things Fall Apart at your local bookstore.
• Locate Things Fall Apart at your library.
• Learn more about Things Fall Apart at its publisher's website (Penguin Random House).

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About today's reader: 

Regi Claire

Regi Claire is a Swiss-born novelist and short story writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She has had work included in Best British Short Stories and is a two-time finalist for a Saltire Book of the Year award. Learn more about Regi, her books, and upcoming events at www.regiclaire.com

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Donna Miscolta

Book Your Stocking: December 5

Book Your Stocking 2018

You love books. Your favorite person loves books. You have a burning desire to love books. You have a book list ten miles long composed of book titles you must read now.

Good.

This is the place to be to revel in that love of books and to add another 1/4 mile to your to-read list. All December, writers and readers are sharing the book that they'd love to find in their winter stocking, whether they've read it, wish to read it again, or just discovered it.

Today's book recommendation is a discovery. Please welcome  Donna Miscolta who found a voice from the radio and traced it to a new book, just released this November.

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Insurrecto by Gina Apostol

This is the book: Insurrecto by Gina Apostol

This is how I found it:
One morning in November, I turned on the radio and dropped into an author interview Scott Simon was conducting on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

I sat in the car, alert to the voice of the author whose intelligence, passion for her novel’s subjects, and humor and goodwill transfixed me.

Later, I went to the NPR site to read the interview with Gina Apostol and to find the passages that had most riveted me. 

Like this one about Elvis and who he belongs to:

The thing about Elvis is that I — you know, I didn't like him because he was my mom's favorite. But it was only a few years ago that I realized that all these songs that my uncles, when I was a kid, would sing — this is in the '70s — would sing for, like, long long long guitar-strumming fests, were actually all Elvis songs. So I actually thought Elvis was Filipino for a long time. ...

And this one about Americans’ history that goes beyond liberator:

I think it's important, for instance, for an American to recognize its multiple histories. You know, this history of wanting to be the liberator in the Spanish-American War period, but also recognizing the inhumanity that came from that war. So there's this tension of the two.

And this one about the kind of book it is:

…it's a Filipino book, it's an American book…

And this one about her intention as a novelist:

So I think as a teacher, it's just — given the difficulty of our times, it's also kind of liberating for me to do the work that I do as a novelist that's not at all separate from the ethical reader that I want, and the ethical citizen that I want in my classroom.

Shouldn’t we all read this book?

• Listen to the author interview that Donna heard here: An American and Her Filipina Translator Exhume A Massacre in 'Insurrecto'
• Find Insurrecto on indiebound.org and/or the publisher website (Soho Press) 
• Read Kirkus Reviews Insurrecto
• Learn more about Gina Apostol at her author website, here.

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About today's reader:

Donna Miscolta
(photo by Meryl Schenker)

Donna Miscolta’s story collection Hola and Goodbye, winner of the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2016. It won an Independent Publishers award for Best Regional Fiction and an International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Fiction. She’s also the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced published in 2011. Recent work has appeared in The Fourth River, Cascadia Magazine, Moss, Blood Orange Review, and Seattle Review of Books. She writes a monthly blog at donnamiscolta.com.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Julia Drescher

Book Your Stocking: December 4

Book Your Stocking 2018

Welcome back! Every day of December, writers and readers are sharing The One: the book that most captured them this year, a book remembered, a book found, a book wished for . . . a book that would utterly please them should they find it in their winter stocking. 

Please welcome back poet Julia Drescher, who is recommending today's book.

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Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions by John Akomfrah (Author), Jean Baudrillard (Author), Judith Butler (Author), Tina Campt (Author), Ernest Hardy (Author), Dave Hickey (Author), and 6 more

I am not sure this book would fit in anyone's stocking!! (which is part of the reason I am so happy it exists! - it is a serious undertaking to figure out how to even read this book *physically*). Merely one reason why I love this book: it approaches an alternative to the whole problematic of the 'single artist' in such wonderful ways--the collaborative "casebook" construction (i.e. texts/artists that are/have been in some way present in/to Jafa's work interspersed with stills from his work etc.) is just amazing and so moving--like a library without walls (or something:)...

Here is a really good interview with him:

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About today's reader:

Julia Drescher

Julia Drescher lives in Colorado where she co-edits the press Further Other Book Works with the poet C.J. Martin. Her book of poems, Open Epic, is available from Delete Press. 

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Kendra Fortmeyer

Book Your Stocking: December 3

Book Your Stocking 2018 

Well, friends and folks, we've reached the changing of the seasons and, thus, the festivities, customs, and traditions that winter brings. Here at What She Might Think, that custom is Book Your Stocking. All December, writers and readers will share books they would be delighted to discover in their winter stockings--or in their sock drawers, really . . . or dryers, which would be a lovely tradition: to find a book in your sock, wherever your sock may be. If you try that with family or friends, let me know.

This year on Book Your Stocking, writers will share The One: the book that captured their imaginations this year, whether that's an old book remembered, one they lost track of, one they are craving to read, one they did read and now love, or even a book that doesn't exist but how magical life would be if it did exist and appear in one's stocking--and so on: so many books, so many possibilities, so many socks and stockings to fill and unfill.

Please welcome the first contributor of the season, Austin, Texas author Kendra Fortmeyer.

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As a Jew, I have no idea how Santa works -- I'm pretty sure he's a time traveler, right? I hope so, because that would allow him to leave the perfect book in my stocking: Gita Trelease’s debut Enchantee, which is forthcoming from Flatiron in February 2019.

This book – a YA fantasy set in Paris during the French Revolution – has everything: a bloodthirsty dress, a desperate heroine bound to save her sister, the birth of balloon aeronautics, the gilded intrigue of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles, a cameo by Marquis de Lafayette, magic powered by sorrow... it’s rich, luscious and intoxicating, a perfect winter read.

• Learn more about Gita Trelease at her website: here.
• Learn more about Enhantee: here. 

Kendra Fortmeyer

About today's contributor:

Kendra Fortmeyer is the author of the magical realist young adult novel Hole in the Middle, and a bunch of weird short fiction. Her work has won the Pushcart Prize and appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, LeVar Burton Reads, One Story, The Toast, Lightspeed, and elsewhere. Find her at @kendraffe or kendrafortmeyer.com.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Willow Springs, I'd nominate you for a Pushcart if there were an application

Willow Springs, Issue 82

The Pushcart Prize is an annual award bestowed upon written works published in small journals the previous calendar year. Most journals vie for the awards by nominating works for the prize, and submitting them to the Pushcart Committee for review.

This is the time of the year when you'll begin to see nomination announcements from editors, journals, and writers themselves. This is one such announcement. My story "Valentine's Day," published in the Fall issue of Willow Springs (Issue 82), has been nominated for a Pushcart by those-behind-the-pages of the magazine.

Willow Springs is a long-standing magazine based out of Eastern Washington University; every issue is created, curated, and run by writing students in the Master of Fine Arts program.

"Valentine's Day" follows three brothers on a night several years after their father's sudden death. It's a long story, at the 50-page mark; so I'm not only honored that they published it, as most journals shy from long works, but I'm also honored that they have risked nominating it since works awarded the Pushcart are published in an anthology, and so, again, space is surely considered by the committee when selecting the best works for an anthology that isn't a million pages long.

Valentine's Day by Erin Pringle,
published in Willow Springs Issue 82

But, listen, my dear reader, luck's on your side no matter my Pushcart fate; you and all your favorite people can read "Valentine's Day" by ordering Issue 82 of Willow Springs ($8).

Additionally, you can subscribe to the journal ($18/year). Of course, when you subscribe, you're actively supporting the arts, culture, and the written pursuit of reality--not to mention ensuring the ongoing opportunity for graduate students to learn the craft of journal curation, creation, and publication. Willow Springs publishes non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and interviews. It's also one of few remaining markets that pays its contributors in cash-money (as opposed to payment in the form of a copy of the journal).

Now, I'd like to speak directly to everyone at Willow Springs. Thank you for supporting my work through publishing it and, now, nominating it for such a prize. Even if you don't consider it a risk (good on you), it was. And much of writing, if not life, is battling people, institutions, and groups who swerve from risk or interpret it as a wilderness that should be a hedge. Thankfully, confidence is contagious and yours plays no small part in my ability to write more today. Thank you for all the time, energy, and focus you have given and give the journal, its contributors, its writers, and our culture. May another group of readers and editors bless you with the same support and confidence as you go forward with your writing, editing, and arts careers.

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P.S. Learn more about the Pushcart Prize at their website.
P.S.S. Follow Willow Springs on Facebook to learn about past, present, and upcoming issues.

Spunky the Turkey, We Like You

Spunky the Turkey

This Thanksgiving, our family decided to adopt a turkey. That's right. So, Henry and I looked through all the turkeys and their stories at Farm Sanctuary, and Spunky's story stood out most to him because it involved an adventurous rescue directly from a factory farm. Spunky lives at the Farm Sanctuary in Southern California. Until the day we can meet Spunky, we will proudly display this turkey's portrait and adoption certificate in our home (in a prominent place, far from the dinner table, this Thanksgiving)!

I learned about Farm Sanctuary from my friend Tina when she was living in New York. She would share posts on Facebook about her involvement with the organization, from visiting the farm, to fundraising for the organization through dedicating races to them, to adopting a turkey every Thanksgiving. 

I'm so thankful for friends who lift us up, like my Tina who constantly reminds me, no matter where she lives in the world, that the community we live in is large and good when we include all creatures great and small.

Learn more about Farm Sanctuary here: https://www.farmsanctuary.org/adopt-a-turkey/

Happy Turkey Day to Spunky and to everyone in our giant, twirling community.

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I Told a True Monster Story at Pivot Spokane

Spokane is now home to its own storytelling series, Pivot. Now in its second year of bringing community members and their stories to the stage, Pivot curates three main-stage events through the year as well as monthly open-mic story slams at Spark Central. 

Last week was the main-stage event, themed Monster; I joined six storytellers who shared their own true monster stories at the Cracker Building, a wonderful warehouse that has been renovated into an event space. It was a full event, with about 200 people in the audience, and as many vintage-style bulb lights sweeping across the ceiling.  

Although I have deep gravitational forces pulling me to the art of fiction, I found myself telling a true story, as are the rules, from when I was five, on an October night in the Midwest. Though I had never told this particular memory before, and I hope never to tell it again, it's true, I do like to tell a story.

If you missed the event, you can hear the stories on Spokane's NPR station, on The Bookshelf: Tuesday, November 6th (91.1 FM).

To learn more about Pivot, upcoming events, and how to participate as a storyteller or listeners, visit the Pivot website or Facebook page.

That time I told a story, and my friend took a picture. Photo by Rebecca O'Bryan

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2018 Summer Library Series, Finale

Leaf by Richard Ricciardi,
used under CC license

2018 Summer Library Series

Somehow summer closed and autumn has opened, and we reached the end of the 2018 Summer Library Series. I must have been in denial about it. But here we are after a wonderful summer of writers sharing memories of their childhood libraries. Thanks to all who contributed this year. Please enjoy another trek down their library aisles of memory, and look to their bios for more of their writing.

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• How Many Libraries Can One Childhood Hold? by Azaria Podplesky 

  

  Azaria Podplesky, journalist

• Neighborhood Libraries by Cetywa Powell
• Two Libraries by Lane Falcon

  

  Lane Falcon, poet

• Library Time by Rachel King

  

  Rachel King, editor, writer of poetry and fiction

• The Bartholomew County Library by Melissa Stephenson

  

  Melissa Stephenson, nonfiction writer

• The Missing Library by Rajia Hassib

  

  Rajia Hassib, novelist

• That Texas Library by Julia Drescher

  

  Julia Drescher, poet and publisher

• A Chinese Laborer, a Mural, Carlos Santana, and My Hometown Library
  by Donna Miscolta

  

  Donna Miscolta, fiction writer

My First Library by Richard Paolinelli

Richard Paolineli, novelist

The 2019 Summer Libraries will begin in June with a new lineup of writers. The second annual Book Your Stocking series will return in December with reading wish-lists by writers. Until then, I hope you find time to visit your local library, read many books, and have a lovely winter and spring. 

Library Loading Dock by LibraryGroover, flickr, used under CC license