Show & Tell: AWP, Perfect Pants, and the Cornbread that Haunts Me
Unstacked Digest for the week of March 24-30
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
This week was AWP, a big writers conference, here in LA and I got to see so many of your faves and it was an absolute delight. I’ve got my full week at a glance for you below. The Stacks has a birthday this week, and so I’m doing a little “ask me anything” in Friday’s newsletter, so if you have things you want me to tell you about, ask away in the comments
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As a reminder I need your help to pull off Stack the Shelves, the big event we’re hosting for those impacted by the LA fires. I need donations, volunteers, and so much more. Check it out below.
This Week in The Stacks
I wrote about Stack the Shelves for you last Monday. Please give it a quick read.
was back on the show for book club, we discussed, They Were Her Property by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers. If you’d like to join our virtual book club on Tuesday April first, join The Stacks Pack!
I had to divide books on deck and my monthly reads ranked (coming this Friday) because it is still March and I’m still reading. The April books I’m looking forward to I went ahead and dropped on time last Friday.
Books I Read This Week
Scorched Earth by Tiana Clark
You all know I have no business giving you a review on a poetry collection. What do I know? Here is what I can say about Scorched Earth, I liked the book and Clark does a wonderful job of keeping her poems in a language that feels familiar and colloquial without feeling obvious. The book starts with her divorce and moves through time to her dating life, and her confrontations with religion, sexuality, and race. There is humor and vulnerability. I liked (and got) most of the poems, so that is a thumbs up, I’d say.
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Book two in The Hunger Games series where we see the aftermath of Katniss' victory when she returns to District 12. I dunno man, I think we owe Collins all the awards. This book, like the first, is even better on the second read. The pacing, the plot, the character development. It is all there. I’ll be real here, book two isn’t as as good as the first, but it isn’t far behind, and it is better than 99% of all literature ever recorded in human history. My one complaint? It starts off slow, which I get coming off the ending of book one, but I needed more at the top. I will attribute some of my impatience to my excitement of getting through with my reread to get to the newest book.
Fave of the week!
The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir by Martha S. Jones
Historian Martha Jones digs into the history of her own family and tells their (and her) story through many rungs of the family tree. The book focuses on their fair skin and how it was (mis)understood over generations. This is a quiet book that displays Jone’s skills as a historian willing to stick with the most minute of clues, as well as a writer who has a gentle touch and guiding hand. I would’ve liked more introspection (or even historical context) on what it means to have a family that lives so closely to the color line for so long. The colorism and status of it all, and why that matters. The book feels a little sleepy by the end, but overall I enjoyed it and could sense the love, time, and care that went into it.
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green
A broad overview of the history of Tuberculosis and the impact it had on one child in Sierra Leone, Henry. This is a nice little book for people who do not like (or normally read) nonfiction. If it ends up being a reason that people activate around Tuberculosis treatments for poor nations, that would be amazing. It is, however, a very surface level book. In pretty much every area Green could’ve gone deeper. It reads very much like a book report, someone repeating the work of others, on the subject instead of an expert’s perspective or even a deeply reported book.
Housekeeping
My fave Chelsea Devantez of
let me come on and talk with her and Becca Platsky of the Corporate Gossip podcast about the new Facebook takedown memoir, Careless People.
Coming up in a little under a month is the LA Times Festival of Books, and as usual, your girl will be there. This year I am on The Mainstage in conversation with actress, comedian, and author Jenny Slate. This goes down on Sunday April 27, no tickets needed.
Things I Love…
Book Things
I had the best time this week seeing so many friends of the podcast at AWP. I really have no business being at a writers conference, but that is neither here nor there, because I was there1, and it was great. What makes it so great, at least to me, is that you do get to see and connect with so many people you might only know from their books, social media, or in my case, a virtual interview. And sitting down to share a meal or a drink with a person whose work I admire is such a humbling and thrilling experience.
I’m going to give you a rundown of the last week2 — not very many of my weeks play out like this — but I was having to pinch myself a lot this week because it was a reminder of how lucky I am to be welcomed into these spaces by some of the best and brightest out. I do not take it for granted.
Monday
School drop-off.
Orange Theory workout.
Record the episode that will drop on April 16th
The illustrious
was in LA for non-AWP related reasons and we got to have lunch and talk about the classics and it was fun as hell.
Tuesday
School drop-off.
Another Orange Theory morning workout.
Record the
episode on Carless People.Do a site visit for the Stack the Shelves event. The space is so beautiful. I am really excited for this event.
Wednesday
School drop-off.
A stellar breakfast with
at Cafe 2001 where we talked about writers and criticism and art and parenting. I also gushed about my current obsession over Suzanne Collins3.Come home and record the April 2nd episode of The Stacks.
Head back out for the National Book Award, Whiting Foundation, and CLMP cocktail party.
Then from there I got invited to tag along to dinner with Randy, Jared, and their pals at Hatchet Hall. If you’re ever in LA you gotta eat there.
Thursday
School drop-off.
A perfect lunch with
, , 4, and Mahogany Browne at Rappahannock Oyster Co. All I can say5 is that the lavender margaritas were hitting and the vibes were right. This is the hardest I laughed all week. I did talk about Suzanne Collins. It was the first time I ever met Mo Browne and now I’m a fangirl. Add another crush to the list.
I finally met
IRL— the woman who gave Grown-Up Show & Tell its name — for a delicious ceviche dinner at The Hummingbird6. Minda is as funny and warm as you’d expect. Also she mentioned what she is working on next and it sounds hecka hella good.
- hosted an extra special (read: star-studded) edition of Empty Trash which he co-hosted with Jen Winston. This was the most packed out event of all of AWP. The readers included (but were not limited to): Deesha Philyaw, Mahogany Browne, Denne Michele Norris, Alexander Chee, Melissa Febos, Morgan Parker….and on and on. Aside from the folks reading, the audience was a whole who’s who of the literary scene including friends of the pod and 7
Friday
School drop-off.
My kid’s assembly where they sang “She’s Got the Whole World in Her Hands” and talked about kindness. My kid won at life because he said “kindness is respectin’ people”. Feel free to send me to the parent hall of fame at any time.
Then I was invited to a lunch at Moonlark’s Dinette8 for the Whiting Foundation’s creative nonfiction grant. If you’ve got a work of nonfiction in contract you should apply, they will give you $40,000 to write your book. You can tell the lunch was delicious because it worked like a charm here I am promoting their grant like a shill9 after some Caesar salad and fries10. I also met some very cool publishing people and immediately tried to get all the hot goss I could. I was semi-successful but can’t share it here because of that NDA11.
I met up with my favorite hater and cousin12
13 for a quick bevie before heading to…
The event of AWP, the Electric Lit Martini lunch. It is always a scene (from what I’m told and my experience last year in Kansas City) and this year was no exception. It was there that I go to see the man, the myth, the legend (and the best dressed human in any room) Mitchell S. Jackson.
was, of course, there, and she was giving hostess with the mostest. I finally got to meet Lauren Markham and Ingrid Rojas Contrearas (both lived up to the hype), plus seeing the wonderful R. O. Kwon again. There were a lot of fancy people there I didn’t know or meet, but I could feel their superiority just in wafting in the air14.
Then it was time for dinner with a crew that was too elite to even handle. I sat across from Oakland’s finest, Jasmine Guillory, who, believe it or not, I had never met, even though I was in the same high school class as her sister. Shout out to Deesha for making that meal come together. Deehsa, is the business. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.
Saturday
The Black List brunch at the Soho Warehouse was the dopest and LAiest way to end the week. The homie Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was there and I met and bowed at the feet of Tananarive Due. I was so overcome and starstruck I promised her I would read some horror, so I guess that is coming soon, nightmares be damned15. Mira Jacob was there, and she remains undefeated at being a human. I got some badass floral portraits taken and ate some bomb ass arancini balls. Oh, and I met one of my favorite editors, Nicole Counts from One World. She has basically edited all of our faves (Donovan X. Ramsey,
, Jay Ellis, 16, and so many others). OMG and I met Kara Brown, who is on the original dream guest list for the podcast, and you bet your bottom I begged her to come on the show. Only time will tell if I was persuasive enough.
You’ll be happy to know I got in a fight with an author17 who said audiobooks weren’t reading. I am certain I won. The way I had all the talking points *ready* from years of fighting with trolls about this online.
Then I went home and made miso butter noodles for my kids and promptly knocked out at 9:30pm as my copy of Mockingjay slammed into my face. I still love Suzanne and would never hold this against her.
Sunday
Mr. Stacks was on call so I had to step in as assistant coach for the Mini’s tee-ball game.
Then off to the Mini’s tennis.
And now I’m writing this. A lot? Yes. Worth it? A million times yes.
You made it to the end of all that18, the rest of this newsletter is slim, because look at all I did last week, do you think I had time to be a human? No, I obviously did not.
Politics
This piece from Kaveh Akbar on the abduction of Tuft’s grad student, Rumeysa Ozturk, is a must read.