Out in the world
A note from Northern California.
Here, now, summer is like a diver on a diving board: pent-up, coiled, about to unfurl. The sky is cloudless but the temps are still mild; the poppies are out, swaying in a crisp breeze. At the front door, a shaggy arch of jasmine stinks so sweetly. We bought asparagus at the farmers’ market and the prettiest chicken eggs. On our walk yesterday, we saw a baby rattlesnake in the road (alive, but absolutely still).
I was apprehensive about re-entering the United States in a way that I hadn’t been since becoming a legal permanent resident1. In the end, immigration was a breeze. By sheer coincedence, I returned the same day that a bunch of “refugees” from my motherland were being welcomed at Washington Dulles; maybe the customs guy thought that I too was fleeing from the [non-existent, obvs!!] “white genocide”.
We broke up the journey back to California with a London stop-over. I ate crumpets and M&S sandwiches, attended an AA meeting at the Soho Recovery Centre, and bought too many books in Foyles (can you blame me when UK cover design is often so much better than in America?).
I also got to swim at two public pools I hadn’t swum at before, the Oasis (a three-lane gem on the edge of Covent Garden) and the unheated, 91 metre-long Tooting Bec Lido.
I was in South Africa for long enough to witness the singed end of summer slide into demure autumn, for shorts and T-shirt weather to give way to evenings by the wood-burner.
I picked up my transcript and academic from the University of Stellenbosch — my postgraduate diploma in sustainable development (which I’d chipped away at over two years, part-time) is done.
There were launches in Cape Town and Joburg for my novel, The President. It’s now available for purchase in South Africa from PULP (the lovely folks in Joburg who printed and hand-bound it). The Common Press in London has some copies, and folks in the US who would like to get one, can do so by ordering here.
On Saturday 14 June, Trump’s birthday (and the day he’s due to have a lavish military parade), we’re going to do a virtual launch for The President. It’ll include a little reading, a “hello” from the book’s designer, Catarina, and we’ll reflect on some of the themes the book explores (provocative art vs. populist bigoted demagoguery among them).
It’ll be at 11am-12pm Eastern Daylight Time (which is 4pm in London and 5pm in South Africa). I’d love for you to join, so if you’re interested in attending, hit me up, and I’ll make sure you get the Zoom link when we have one.
While I still check the NYT homepage way to often, I am trying to make time and space for offscreen reading, too. The world might be awash with AI slop, but you don’t have to go too far to find plenty of good human-made stuff to read. The latest issue & Change and the first print edition of fallow were both waiting for me when I got home (after reading the Irish Times essay by the latter’s publisher2, I’m even more excited to dive in).
Two pieces shared recently by struck a chord; maybe you’ll like them too:
I also found myself nodding as I read ’s post from yesterday, which was a shout-out to a fundraiser for a very cool publisher3, but also an inspiring and invigorating meditation on change-making and community and publishing (particularly in a dark and difficult time). He writes:
For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by Huey Newton’s concept of revolutionary intercommunalism: this idea that resistance to the modes of global capitalism won’t come from a vanguard in one country overthrowing a government, but from a network of communities who find themselves in transnational solidarity. Maybe it was growing up around the anti-globalization movement of the 90s, but something speaks to me about the realization that so many circumstances and fights are (and could/should be) shared.
So right now, I want to read all my people here in the Bay doing all their new things in our underground and radical publishing traditions. I want to feel them respond to our particular crises. And I also want to read people very far from here, geographically and culturally, but who are facing a subset of the same problems.
This is my intuition: the answers to our problems don’t lie (solely) in national politics or in some imagined community like an American state. It’s you and me here on the street, in the cafe, at the book shop, and the you and mes in Mexico City and in Norway and in Seoul.
“Only connect,” E.M. Forster wrote in Howards End. How timely those words — written and published many decades ago — are. And, as the brave, feisty and wise reminded us in her electrifying return to the TED stage, we have more power than we realise.
It’s always a treat to hear from folks! What have you found yourself nodding along to lately? Which books, podcasts, movies, shows, recipes and activities have you been enjoying?
From California 🧡
As Mahmoud Khalil can attest, being married to an American or having a green card no longer carry the same assurances they might have once done. ↩
As a nascent artist publisher (and someone who has written extensively for online), this bit of the piece particularly resonated — I think it helps to articulate the excitement I’m feeling about having brought something printed, something consisting of actual, physical pages, into the world:
Being in print also gives you reason to work within the ecosystem of an actual, physical community – of writers, readers, booksellers, festivals – who share your interests and goals, rather than being dependent on the whims of platforms. You reach people in a different way with something tangible, there is a stickiness to it. After 10 years in the frictionless space of the browser, it’s honestly kind of fun to be worrying about ink and paper and postage. There’s a freedom in hard deadlines, and knowing that when it’s done, it’s done. ↩
Which, like many other arts orgs, have lost funding. Thanks, Trump! ↩
