I’m tired of saying there’s news
But there’s so much. But first.
Remember during the pandemic, how big bodies were all over ads and magazines? How people were promising to care about Black lives in this country and all over the world? How everyone was talking all the time about how much everyone cared about everyone else and how beautiful everyone was and how we’d maybe turned some kind of corner?
What happened? I’m nostalgic for lock down. The bodies we’re being sold are more emaciated than they were in the 90s, no? The vibe is kinda radical and ruthless and pushy, which I love, but it’s also kinda hopeless and bad and dark. There’s this weirdly hopeful tenor, in a throwback way, in an Obama-era way thanks in large part to Kamala, that feels like a mild, temporary, not-at-all-scratching-the-itch relief from an assumed impending global ruin on the way sooner than later.
During the pandemic, Twitter and Instagram became these “safe” “places” where people loved and supported each other because it was the only way we had to be together without burning our eyes and brains out on Zooms. They became the spaces we could tell each other, in real time, what to look out for, how to stay safe, what to do and where to go, when everyone who was supposed to help was lying to us or getting it really wrong. I got used to this relationship with social media. I still sometimes mistake those spaces as being that way, even though they haven’t been for literal years already.
The loss of that coziness, that feeling of us all going through the same thing and different things together, was made even more extreme when we all started going outside again. Nonfiction for No Reason happened, in large part, because I couldn’t believe I had so lost touch with a literary community in Seattle, that I had nowhere to read in my own city while a national bookish event passed through. I needed us to circle up again. I pulled in my favorite, most treasured readers, and some surprises, and we warmed up together. It was so good.
I don’t know what to do about these 2000-era ass-crack jeans that are back, much less the massively disastrous events surrounding us from every direction BUT NFNR continues to warm up rooms, make people feel good, bring us together. We lol, we say our messy, weird truths, we hug and blah blah, and go home on highs from the connection and exhausted from all the listening and talking.
I’m planning for 2025. I’m thinking about how to keep this little ship sustained, thriving, and how to keep myself, it’s compulsive and impulsive and sentimental captain, fed. Like, literally. I’m excited to share those plans soon, whatever they may be. In the meantime, thanks. As always. For reading, for coming out, for being part of this footloose journey.
For now, here’s what’s coming
Oct 11, 7pm, Little Saigon Creative with Hannah Murphy Winter, Jane C. Hu, Nathan Vass, and Sasha Su-Ling Welland, co-hosted with Ravenna Koenig.
Actual, real nonfiction and long-form journalism. Four readers so they can read longer and you can really GET INTO IT with them. They are not lightweights. Being in close proximity to journalists the last few months, I can tell you if you don’t already know that these are the types that walk toward a fire rather than run the other way. They’ll have stories you want to hear. Just look at the books they’ve made and GET TICKETS NOW.
Nov 1, 7pm, Northwest Film Forum with Eric Acosta, Bill Carty, Dan Navoti, Alex Gallo-Brown, Chelsea Werner-Jatzke, Mike Fu, and Patrick Milian.
Mike Fu is beaming in from Tokyo, poets are exposing their true selves, there will be video essays with family footage, peeks into books long in the works, and there are only about 40 seats. This will be a banger, and our last NFNR in Seattle of 2024. Come party so hardy dudes!
Nov 16, 2pm JST, Tokyo! with Polly Barton, Karen Hill Anton, Motoyuki Shibata, and Thu-Huong Ha, co-hosted by Leo Elizabeth Takada and Florentyna Leow.
It’s been a journey, but we’re launching round two of NFNR TOKYO. These writers are wildly incredibly globally good, and it’ll all be on livestream. Tickets coming soon.
We’ve been in the actual news
Did you see? Thank you to The Stranger for the coverage and to Adam Willems for the sterling journalistic coverage of all we’re trying to do! And to Billy Winters for these gorgeous photos of us. <3
My first Stranger interview
It came out this week! This was an incredible book, and very difficult to choose over the other incredible books out right now. You can read the interview here, but also please peek these other writers who have wonderful work out NOW!
In addition to this first interview with Daniel Saldaña París [@dsparis], I wanted to shed some light on other books released recently that are fantastic. If you don’t pick up Planes Flying Over a Monster, or even if you do, don’t miss these.
It was wild reading Tisa Bryant’s [@misstisab] Unexplained Presence alongside Laura Paul’s [@laura_n_paul] Film Elegy. Bryant’s book is essential reading and a re-release from Wave Books [@wavebooks1], a dearly beloved local Seattle Press. While their focus is poetry, this is a prose collection that walks no line of genre, but creates its own.
Wave describes the book: “Moving from cultural analysis to cinematic (re)creation, Bryant's prose traverses like a tracking shot through John Schlesinger's Darling, Patricia Rozema's Mansfield Park and Virginia Woolf's Orlando, giving voice to characters whom have otherwise been structurally silenced.” Are you not compelled? It’s a mind-bender, and one I will return to again and again for lessons on how to say what must be said.
Local poet Laura Paul has been busy bending genre as well, stretching into autobiography and prose in one of the very first books from Prroblem Press [@prroblem.press]. Formatted to look like words projected onto a movie theater screen, Paul creates an evocative tribute to the medium as well as to the filmmaker Amy Halpern. Don’t miss it.
This last recommendation doesn’t need any help from me, but if you don’t yet know Jessica Hoppe [@nuevayorka and @jessicahoppeauthor], now is the time to know her. I’ve been waiting impatiently for First in the Family [@flatiron_books] because Hoppe is a standard setter in everything she touches--fashion, activism, writing. From the publisher: At the time of a cousin’s overdose during the pandemic, Hoppe had been in recovery for four years, but… “hadn’t told anyone. Hoppe shares her journey… and takes the [reader] on an investigation of her family’s history, the American Dream, and the erasure of BIPOC from recovery narratives.” This book is close to my heart. I think it will be to yours, too.
AWP, babyyyyeeeee
It’s a weird organization, but boy do we all have a good time when we’re together. I’m one of the lucky ones this year who had a panel accepted: apparently there were 1,597 event proposals this year, and only 369 were accepted. The panel, EVERYBODY GETS A STAGE, will feature Jason Koo, @brooklynpoets founder & executive director; Jen Winston of Empty Trash in LA and author of GREEDY; Jessica Johnson of Constellation Reading Series in Portland/of Tin House and author of
of Sunday Salon in NYC. March 2025, in LA, where I grew up, at the conference where NFNR was born. It’s gonna be juicy.
And yes, obviously, NFNR will be at AWP, March 27, 7PM in a gallery downtown mostly likely. SAVE THE DATE.
NFNR NYC, Sept 12 was amazing.
I loved it. It was better than I could have imagined. You all give me hope. I’ll be back.
If you’ve read this far
Bless you. Thank you. Come on Oct 11.
Love,
Katie
GOOD LORD yer busy!!