Hello, dear BookLoves.

I'm back with the next Wayfarer's Book Club pick: Our Lady of the Nile, by Scholastique Mukasonga, set in Rwanda prior to the 1994 genocide, translated from the French by Melanie Mauthner.

1994. I’m living in Trujillo, Peru, and my days are spent teaching English to teens and young adults at a private language institute. Just a young adult myself, I’m adjusting to a whole new life in a new culture, desperate to have a conversation that delves deeper than, "Hola, cómo estás?" in Spanish.

1994. Peru is ostensibly emerging from a civil war. A strongman President is projecting an air of calm after having dissolved Congress in a “self-coup,” while Shining Path and another Maoist terrorist group (MRTA) continue to carry out attacks, while the national police and armed forces disappear university students.

1994. The Rwandan genocide is carried out from April to July, when Hutus (the ethnic majority) brutally murder nearly a million people, primarily Tutsis (the ethnic minority).

For reasons of time and place, age and era, this atrocity didn’t even make the headlines for me.

2004. A decade later, I’m back in Canada, and two books hit the shelves that finally bring this horror to my attention: Shake Hands with the Devil, a non-fiction account by Canadian Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, the former Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, whose hands were tied by politics and bureaucracy while the genocide raged; and A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, a work of fiction by Gil Courtemanche (translated by Patricia Claxton), a journalist who had covered the country prior to the genocide, and lost many friends and acquaintances during it.

Those two stories impacted me profoundly and remain with me today.

Fast forward to the 2020s. As I began to promote world lit more and more, and grew more familiar with African lit, I kept an eye out for Rwandan writers in particular.

But once again, despite her renown as perhaps the most celebrated Rwandan author, with eight books of fiction and non-fiction published since 2006, several available in English, Scholastique Mukasonga escaped my notice until just this past fall.

Before even reading her, just reading about her, I knew I wanted to add one of her books to the Wayfarers list.

Our Lady of the Nile spoke to me because it takes place about twenty years prior to the genocide, when ethnic tensions were building, and from the point of view of adolescent girls at a remote boarding school.

This is no ordinary Catholic school, but one for the future feminine elite, the daughters of government officials and army officers, whose boyfriends are ambassadors, owners of convertibles and motorbikes.

Gloriosa, a Hutu senior, reigns supreme. By her side is Modesta, half Hutu, half Tutsi, less friend and more subject, controlled through fear. Virginia and Veronica are the 2/20 Tutsi allowed into the school by the government-imposed quota, and the obvious targets of bullying.

Just a short walk up a dirt track into the mountains is the Nile, indeed the source of it, and there stands a statute, Our Lady of the Nile, a black Mary—or a white European Mary, painted black.

Just next door is Monsieur Fontanaille, a White coffee plantation owner who lures Tutsi girls to his place.

These are the characters, elements and setting that intertwine until Gloriosa knowingly tells a lie that she fans into a raging fire that explodes into violence—the way lies that are sparked by a kernel of malice and stoked by righteousness so often do.

Throughout this novel, the ordinary belies the extraordinary. Girls study and stare out the window in class, decorate their dorm space and steal teaspoons of sugar for their siblings, bully and are bullied, endure dull routines and homesickness.

Throughout, a certain balance reigns. We are introduced to the intricacies of Rwandan history, culture and politics, yet never lose sight of these particular girls as they walk the line between adolescence and adulthood, school and national politics.

Throughout, the story builds, the undercurrent of an ethnic divide bubbling at the source, swelling like the river Nile in rainy season, and eventually overflowing its banks to wreak havoc.

Throughout, we appreciate the brilliant allegory. The lives, attitudes and actions of these teen girls grow all the more meaningful to us as readers—and all the more frightening—because we know what actually happens country-wide twenty years later.

Born in 1956, Scholastique Mukasonga experienced Tutsi pogroms as a child, when the Hutus came to power and her family was forced to flee elsewhere in the country. Mukasonga later studied at an elite school like Our Lady of the Nile, under the quota system, where she was the target of racism. And later, at college, she witnessed events similar to those at the climax of this novel.

Eventually forced to flee the country, not all of her family did: thirty-seven of them were among the hundreds of thousands of Tutsi souls massacred in the 1994 genocide.

Such personal, lived truths penetrate this novel, in tender language and unabashedly frank plot points.

Though a debut novel, Scholastique Mukasonga clearly honed her voice in two previous books, both non-fiction memoirs. There is a maturity, a solidity to the writing, which comes through in the translation by Melanie Mauthner.

Mauthner is also a sociologist, and her work centered on feminist topics that also included school violence. I can't imagine a more apt, skilled or sensitive translator for this or Mukasonga’s other works.

Our Lady of the Nile was made into a film, and I couldn’t wait to watch it after reading the book. It's a liberal adaptation, not to mention a spectacular, artful and evocative one.

All of the girls in the film are Rwandan, none of them professional actors, and it was filmed entirely in country, in French, with Kinyarwandan featured as well.

The film felt more innocent than the book, the racial tensions more understated as the story progresses…until the climax, which is much more graphic and brutal than the book.

Mukasonga says she cried when she saw the film. I can well imagine that, because even for me, someone with no similar lived experience or exposure to Rwanda, it was an emotional, immersive experience.

What at extraordinarily beautiful, powerful sentiment—let alone from a woman who has been subjected to extreme hatred with tragic consequences.

To be introduced to Rwanda through her eyes, to be in the orbit of such a woman, even at a distance, through this novel, has been a pleasure and privilege I won't soon forget.

I hope you might find the same too.

Yours, in books and love,

~Lisa

Explore More

Scholastique Mukasonga’s website

2020 interview with Scholastique about her books, her movie, her social work, and more

Full film adaptation of Our Lady of the Nile or the trailer

An older article that features Melanie Mauthner and how she advocated for Scholastique Mukasonga and her books to be translated

A review of Our Lady of the Nile

Read More

Reviews of A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, by Gil Courtemanche, translated by Patricia Claxton:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/a-sunday-at-the-pool-in-kigali-by-gil-courtemanche-trans-patricia-claxton-102403.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/05/fiction.features1

Reviews of Romeo Dallaire’s two non-fiction titles relating to the Rwandan genocide:

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda - Quill and Quire

Waiting for First Light: My Ongoing Battle with PTSD - Quill and Quire

Ponder More

What do you remember about the Rwandan genocide when it took place or when you learned of it later?

What books have you read about Rwanda and how did they impact you?

If you’ve read Scholastique Mukasonga’s work, what was your experience?

Our Lady of the Nile: Will you add it to your TBR (to be read) list? What intrigues you most?

And/or will you watch the film?

What about Courtemanche’s novel and Dallaire’s memoirs?

Do share your musings on one or more of the questions or anything else from the recommendation in a comment below! I LOVE to hear from you.

I wrote to you in my mind multiple times over the past year. I hope you may have received even a hint of that connection through the ether.

It was a year of tens of thousands of words for me, read, copyedited and proofread. Mostly outside the realm of the fiction and non-fiction I adore.

I managed to slip in a few other reads, and continued with Wayfarers Book Club. But the few quiet moments available, I mostly chose to spend them away from the written word. Listening to the sounds of nature and the voices of the dear humans around me, as well as the whispers of my heart. Looking out at cedars and blue Jays in the backyard, at bald eagles and the sea on a wee vacation, and every day up at the sky. Feeling exhaustion and anxiety, hope and peace, all morph and move through, and evolve and return.

Then one day last fall, out of the blue, a book I had put on hold at the library was delivered. 

The cover, in its blue and orange hues, and its title, All Our Shimmering Skies, beckoned. Neither the blurb nor the author, Trent Dalton, rang a single bell, but the timing felt right so I borrowed it.

Oh.my.

I was met by 448 pages of the most exquisite prose and portrayal of humanity and nature, light and shadow imaginable.

Trent Dalton enchanted me with every single word. Somehow he combined World War II, the Australian outback, Shakespeare, Dickinson and Whitman with men as dastardly as brown snakes, walkabouts filled with discovery, tragedy, love and redemption. That took unbelievable talent and craft, dusted with magic.

In another twist of fate, I somehow started to read the e-book about 25% of the way through. My fingers must have accidentally jumped ahead, straight into a deep dark hole where teenaged gravedigger Molly Hook is being forced by her Uncle Aubrey to dig up her mother's bones. 

Yes, you read that right.

I didn't know graceful, poetic Molly or drunken, hate-filled Uncle Aubrey, or Molly's father Horace who comes on the scene to sort-of-but-not-quite defend her. I didn't know the Japanese pilot whose perspective we soon switch to, who razes the dry, red, Darwin soil with bombs, or the actress Greta Maze who appears in green dress and takes Aubrey's red truck without a backward glance at Molly. 

But it didn't concern me in the slightest. I trusted Dalton implicitly. The way Molly Hook trusted the world and everyone in it, even crocodiles and Japanese fighter pilots who fall from the sky.

When I reached the end of the book, I was so desperate for more of Dalton's storytelling that I went back to the beginning. I RARELY do that. In fact, I don't know if I've EVER done that. But when I did, I realized I had missed the whole beginning of this book! There was more for me to savor!

It didn't matter that I knew what happened later. It was like a beautiful bonus that allowed me to see and appreciate Molly even more deeply.

But I also had to pause and consider what made that possible, what magic had Dalton worked to enamor me so, to make me feel so safe and secure and held in his story?

Ultimately, I think it's because Trent Dalton is a writer who isn't afraid. He's like Molly that way: a heart of stone that's nevertheless pulsing with light. He takes us straight into the darkest side of human nature, unflinchingly. And then he shines a Hollywood spotlight on the power of love. Both extremes are so genuine that neither feels forced or false. The contrast and pendulum swings feel apt, real, right, true.

On The Garret podcast episode, Trent Dalton admits, "There's a power in going as dark as you can because it makes the light shine much brighter."

In that interview, Dalton also explains that he had to consider if and how to embody the perspectives he does in this book, how a certain delicacy is required to offer readers a perspective outside his own personal demographic. But, as a journalist, he had been to the places he depicts and talked to / learned from many Australians, aboriginal and otherwise.

"I just thought, 'Look, write with respect and awe, and I might just get through, and not do it in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons."

Bravo, Trent.

All Our Shimmering Skies is a classic quest story, perfectly paced. It's pure poetry. It's filled with grace and tenderness and trust and horror. It's storytelling of the highest that I would gladly read again. And again.

This book is the January pick for Wayfarers Book Club and I invite you to read along with us. Comment here with your thoughts if you do?! I'd love that ever so much.

My sincere intention is to bring you each of the monthly titles, hoping that you and these books make one another's acquaintance, and both benefit in some way.

(Please also know that if you’ve been happy with the silence, you can unsubscribe below. No hard feelings, only gratitude for ever having been here at all.)

Yours,

~Lisa

A few further tidbits if you'd like to explore more about Trent Dalton and All Our Shimmering Skies:

At the Sydney Writers' Festival event, Dalton shared how this book is a love letter to the continent, a tribute to storytelling, another layer of healing for himself, and an offering of light in the darkness so that a kid in Korea or Russia or the U.S. can see how they might pass through and heal from their childhood experiences too. 

Dalton's love and enthusiasm imbue his long form journalism as well.

The event that sets Molly off on her quest, the bombing of Darwin in the Northern Territory during WWII, may be quite unfamiliar to those of us on the other side of the world. The state of the Northern Territory produced a short tribute video on the 75th anniversary, featuring residents and service members, photos and footage.
   

I love change.

Have you heard me say that? I have, often. And I do mean it.

Then I get into the act and process and challenges that real change involves, and, well...love is a strong word. :)

There is much shifting underfoot here at Intralingo and in the Carter-Lee household. It is all positive while also being an adjustment.

Writing and reading —two of my true loves— have been given less space than usual, less than I would like.

Yet sometimes it's that gap, created by the shift, that allows a new perspective to sprout.

One wondrous change is that I now write a little less (quantity) but more regularly.

I've taken to drafting things on my phone, since sitting down at my desk for a concerted, uninterrupted spell is harder. I instead take snippets of time on the back deck as Tiber (the cat) frolics after grasshoppers and butterflies. Or with my coffee in the still silence of morning. Or in bed, just before I set my phone on its charger.

I drafted this post on my phone. I've journaled about my dreams. Written scenes for my novel. Blathered for a bit just to get words out of my head.

So even though time feels more crunched in some ways, that has allowed me to expand in other ways.

My reading habits have altered too. I haven't been able to dedicate long stretches to it either. And because my focus is divided, I decided to indulge in a couple of mainstream, non-world-lit titles.

I thought they might be easier on my rather busy brain. I thought they might be a treat.

That led to quite a realization.

Let me repeat my initial thought, for emphasis:

I chose a couple of books that I thought would be easier...

Uhm.

Isn't "hard" the exact label publishers use to describe translated fiction? In other words, it's the excuse they use to publish LESS translated fiction, and often diverse and own voices fiction too.

And isn't that one of the very premises I try to counteract right here? I mean, there's nothing intrinsically hard about a book just because it comes from or portrays another language, culture, identity, outlook.

And yet, on some level —I like to think a deep, unconscious level— I had bought into the stereotype too.

(It hurts to acknowledge that out loud, but you deserve the absolute truth from me, dear BookLoves. I'm as fallible as anyone else, after all.)

Now, let me repeat the second part of my statement:

I thought mainstream titles might be a bit of a treat.

Fair enough. I do love a good treat.

But you know how you sometimes crave fast food? Then you eat it? And feel a little (or a lot) bloated?

You know very well that your belly much prefers, say, an Italian deli sandwich or a couple of tacos on real masa tortillas.

That's how I felt with these two books. I didn't love either of them. I didn’t exactly regret reading them but my tongue and tummy weren’t satisfied.

Certainly both authors are talented. Both storylines developed nicely. The characters in both were fine and transformed over the arc of the novel. One sold well, I imagine, and the other sold millions (upon millions).

Why exactly? Well, with one I felt too many themes were packed in and so none received their full due. The other actually made me uncomfortable because it felt like cultural appropriation.

That is a topic that definitely deserves deeper exploration here, as does my active decision to not name these titles precisely because because my intention is not to critique books here. Stay tuned; I will offer more on these topics at some point.

Today's musing, though, is ultimately about the discoveries that may only be possible when we do welcome change into our lives.

It has challenged me lately, but I can honestly say, from the heart:

I do love change.

What's your relationship with change — in reading, writing, and life? Any shifts in your patterns lately? What was the experience like for you? Any discoveries? I'd truly love to know.

Leave a comment

Yours,

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

As part of our Summer Reads, I’m happy to share this Wayfarers Book Club Guide to our July pick, and a highly recommended read: Peach Blossom Spring, by Melissa Fu.

Peach Blossom Spring, by Qiu Ying

Why I chose this book

Historical fiction inspired by the writer’s own family, set in China, and Taiwan, featuring a marvelously strong female protagonist? Uhm, yes, please!

Each of those elements intrigue and connect with me so deeply, on a personal and professional level, that I could easily write a full essay about how each contributed to my choice and experience of this novel.

(In fact, in a draft of this Letter, I did just that! But it got awfully wordy and wandered away from the book, so I reined myself in and will now keep —as best I can— to how I connected to the two main characters. :)

Meilin, the mother and protagonist in the first part of this story, is everything I admire in a protagonist. Life veered in a direction she never anticipated, again and again, and each time she adapted.

You might say, “Well, of course she did.”

Yes. And no. Most of us do adapt, it’s true. I would say, though, that few of us have Meilin’s strength, to not only cope with repeated hurt and loss, but to remain as loving and caring as she did. It’s this that I admire most in her.

In historical fiction, I also truly appreciate stories about the role women played during times of societal change and, above all, how they empowered themselves and others. I certainly walked away with a new appreciation for what Chinese women endured and contributed in this particular period.

As for Renshu, the son in this novel, I saw aspects of my own father and my father-in-law. Like Renshu, my father-in-law was born in China and lived through some of The War of Resistance, then escaped to Hong Kong as a young man because of the Civil War. None of his family talks very much about those years, or what followed, how all seven children, their mother and father, eventually left and settled in Australia, Canada, and the US.

It may well be like Renshu said: they survived by moving forward.

That’s certainly a sentiment echoed by many migrants, immigrants, refugees, anyone who has experienced the horrors of war and displacement. I understand the reticence to relive traumatic times. It took my own father decades before he spoke about his experiences as a Canadian soldier during World War II.

Yet it’s these stories in particular that help us —help me— to understand and more fully appreciate who people are now as a result. So I’m terrifically grateful to Melissa Fu for sharing this story and providing insight through the lens of fiction.

About the author and this book

To learn about the genesis of this book, Melissa Fu penned a fabulous essay for LitHub: “How a Secret Becomes a Story: Melissa Fu on the Importance of Listening to Elders.”

(How often I have wished that I took even one hastily scribbled note of my own father’s stories, and asked my mother for hers…)

Melissa’s website is FULL of gems, including a Reader’s Area with photos, videos, songs, a folktale companion guide, historical info and insight into the characters.

And in this Harvard Book Store interview with Helen Zia, Melissa Fu touches on her heritage and its influence on the book, her research and the leap to fiction, women's stories at this time and in this place in particular, her writing process and one novel she read that helped her to feel like it was possible to write hers:

A glance at some of the places in the book

No Wayfarers journey is complete without a glimpse into the setting of our books! The links below are not from Meilin and Renshu’s time in these cities, but rather give you a sense of the places today.

Changsha, Hunan Province:

Travel Guide

Walking in Stunning Downtown Changsha from Day to Night (an hour long! feel free to spin through at 2x speed or more)

Street Food Feast (sexy tea, anyone?!)

Chongqing, Sichuan Province:

Travel Guide

Chongqing - largest city in the world? Huge Chinese megapolis in the middle of Sichuan mountains (includes some historical details and footage relevant to Peach Blossom Spring, a subway train that passes through a building, and the coolest bookstore)

Keelung Harbour, Taiwan:

Travel Guide

Taiwan Travel - Keelung 1-Day Trip (with a soundtrack that, well, just doesn’t seem to fit)

Taiwanese Street Food - Keelung Night Market (no explanations, just super intriguing dishes)

If you indulged in this book, I do so hope you found even a pinch of what Yolanda did:

Thank you so much, Lisa, for selecting Peach Blossom Spring as the July book for Wayfarers Book Club! Wow, just wow! I LOVE this book! I felt all the feelings and it shocked me how much I connected with the story & the characters.”

Yay!

Want to share your experience of this read? I’ll open a discussion thread here at the end of the month, so please do join in then! (Or comment here, now. :)

If you already subscribe to Wayfarers, we’ll still meet for a live café chat on the last Sunday at 3 pm ET. Watch your inbox for the usual link.

Next up in Wayfarers Book Club: Summer 2022 Reads:

August
Moccasin Square Gardens, by Richard Van Camp
A fabulously unique collection of short stories by a writer from the Dogrib (Tłı̨chǫ) Dene Nation in Canada’s Northwest Territories that had me howl with laughter, feel into the mystery, and often left me haunted.

Stay tuned here for the Guide in mid-August!

Wherever your journeys take you, inside or outside of stories, may they open new vistas, experiences and understanding.

Yours in BookLove,

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

My thanks to Little, Brown and company for the ARC of Peach Blossom Spring!

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

A few weeks ago, two members of Wayfarers and I had the great pleasure to sit down for a chat with Curtis Bauer, translator of Home Reading Service, a novel by Fabio Morábito from Mexico.

I’m so pleased to now share that video with you here!

(If you prefer to listen to the audio only podcast, you can find it right here too, on Apple, Spotify, and Amazon, or through your preferred podcast app.)

Home Reading Service is a quirky novella. I can’t say as I loved the main character; actually, Eduardo kind of drove me crazy. But I loved the premise and the writing, and the more I thought about various aspects in preparation for this conversation with Curtis, the more I appreciated it. And that only grew by the time our chat was done.

In the novel, the protagonist, Eduardo, has had an “unfortunate accident” involving a car and been assigned community service, reading to members of the community in their homes. These include two brothers (older bachelors), an entire family (from grandmother to parents to children), a middle-aged woman (an attractive woman in a wheelchair) and a colonel (retired).

Eduardo is not annoyed at having been assigned this task —at least compared to cleaning bathrooms in some hospital or prison— but nor is he exactly engaged. He reads like an automaton, with no depth or emotion and zero understanding or interest in any work of prose, be it Jules Verne, Daphne du Maurier or Henry James.

He comes alive only when he reads a poem, one particular work by a little-known Mexican poet by the name of Isabel Freire. This poem was Morábito’s inspiration for the novel, is the core around which the story evolves and the catalyst that leads every character who reads it to be transformed.

Unsurprisingly, Fabio and Curtis are both poets, so that’s where our conversation began, and in particular Curtis’s translation of this particular poem.

"I think we've got poetry around us all the time. And when we think about the normal cadence of our everyday speech, I think that's something we need to listen to or that I need to listen to.

So I'm thinking, Okay, well, how does this sound? Does it sound natural? Does it sound natural in Spanish? Where does it sound like capital P poetry in Spanish? You know? What are the what are the different tonal qualities to keep in mind?

And then, I’m also thinking, how does that all fit with the context of the novel? Right?

This is a poem that has captivated this main character, and it captivated his father. And it captivated the helper, and one of the women Eduardo reads to, and then all of the audience at the soiree. So it's like everyone who hears the poem is taken in; they're drawn into something about it. I think there's a certain mystery there." -Curtis Bauer

As I said, Eduardo is an odd duck, but so are his clients. One of the old bachelors is a ventriloquist; the family is deaf, except for the children, who don’t even realize they can hear; and the old colonel sleeps through every reading, then sleeps with Eduardo’s father’s caregiver.

“[Oddities and ironies] are everywhere in this story, and that's Fabio, that's what he loves, the odd occurrences in everyday life that aren't often written about, talked about, or focused on." -Curtis Bauer

We also talked about social commentary in the novel, the lack of back story and lots about the translation, of individual words, the poems in the book and the process as a whole.

Fun aside: Curtis’s story of how this book came to life in English closely parallels how my own first book translation came to be! Curtis found this novel in a bookstore, knew he just had to buy it, read it and fell in love with it. His wife then encouraged him to reach out to Fabio, and they went on to establish a great friendship and working relationship. My story couldn’t be more similar. :)

The whole conversation with Curtis, Heidi and Cathy was an absolute delight, but my favorite part comes right at the end.

In an interview I had found in preparation, Curtis said that we must react to a poem or it’s just scribbles on a page.

To me, this is true of prose, and art, and life. The magic lies in our interaction with each of these. So I asked everyone what their reaction was to this novel. Jump to 52 minutes above if you want to hear their answers, all of which extend far beyond what we read on the page.

I do hope you enjoy the conversation and settle in with a copy of Home Reading Service to savor Fabio’s work in Curtis’s translation.

Please do share your reaction to either/both in a comment!

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

GET THE BOOK
Intralingo Bookshop * (US customers only)
Or support the author and translator through your local, independent bookseller or library.

CONNECT
Curtis Bauer
Fabio Morábito and Other Press
Wayfarers Book Club

WATCH THE INTERVIEW
Via the BookLove Letter
On YouTube

Thank you for listening!

*We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

I’m getting ready for a week at the cottage in early July and stacking the books for it already. Feet dangling off the end of the dock in fresh water may be one of my favorite reading spots.

That or in a Muskoka chair in the shade.

(This is not my partner’s family cottage, but it could be! The photo is from just a few miles away. Oh am I ever looking forward to being back there!)

There’s something special about summer reading. It feels more carefree. Enjoyable. Indulgent. Relaxing.

I’ve long wanted to offer a reading retreat. A place where we can scatter around a lovely piece of property to read quietly on our own during the day, eat delicious fresh meals prepared by loving hands, gather by a bonfire in the evening to share our thoughts and experiences, and tell our own stories too.

Hmm, one can dream…

In the meantime, why don’t we take this summer to have a together-while-apart reading retreat, right here?

Wayfarers Book Club is just too good not to share, so I’m going to deliver it directly to your inbox this July and August. You’ll get:

• Our reading list (below!)

• A guide to each title (early in the month)

• A discussion thread to share your experience of the book (at the end of the month)

If you already subscribe to Wayfarers, we’ll still meet for a live café chat on the last Sunday at 3 pm ET.

Wayfarers Book Club: Summer 2022 Reads

July
Peach Blossom Spring: A Novel, by Melissa Fu
A tender work of historical fiction spanning three countries, three generations and three wars, offering insight into aspects of Chinese culture, history and heritage, as well as emotions and experiences that are entirely universal.

August
Moccasin Square Gardens, by Richard Van Camp
A fabulously unique collection of short stories by a writer from the Dogrib (Tłı̨chǫ) Dene Nation in Canada’s Northwest Territories that had me howl with laughter, feel into the mystery, and often left me haunted.

I’ll bring the diverse reads, an opportunity to contemplate and connect. You bring your curiosity. What do you say?

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

My thanks to Little, Brown and company for the ARC of Peach Blossom Spring!

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

Are you wondering what the heck these Afternoon Delights even are?

Last fall, I was easing back into work after brain surgery to remove a (benign!) skull tumor. Contemplation, creativity and community were balms that helped heal me, and I wanted to share the love.

“What if I host a monthly get-together that combines all three?” I thought. We could ponder and write, share, be seen, be heard, and delight in an exploration, together.

Now, here we are, months later!

The gatherings are intimate. Engaged. Often poignant. Always enriching.

I look forward to every single one and relish in the glow afterward.

Participants have said I’m great at bringing lovely, kind, generous people together and the creative prompts allow them to write and express themselves in a way they haven’t in years, or maybe ever.

Read on for musings on this month’s theme and the link to attend!

Ah, summer...

Light. That's what I love most about this season. The longer days. The warmer quality, in all senses. The life-giving force.

The sense of delight feels so much more present, prolific.

For me, summer light and delight mean morning coffee on my back deck. The cat stretched belly out on dew-soaked grass to watch the chipmunks, eyes darting, paws twitching, captivated.

It's the pop of deep purple, orange, rust and yellow blooms spilling over the top of an old milk can that draws my eye.

It's three flavors of gelato in a cup: tart raspberry, dark-dark chocolate with cherry, and nearly neon pistachio. Each little plastic spoonful a burst of magic on my tongue.

It's a book of poems in the morning. Mary Oliver's Devotions for reflections on the complexity and simplicity of nature and life. Gillian Sze’s Quiet Night Think for contemplations on language, the shaping of thoughts and existence.

A novel in the evening. Fabio Morábito’s Home Reading Service, with its irony and oddities. (And an upcoming podcast episode with translator Curtis Bauer!) Mira Jacob’s The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, with its Suriani family dynamics.

Long spells of each in the shade any time I can.

I would live in eternal early summer if I could.

What does summer light offer you? What delights?

Join me to connect, to share what lights each of us up, and play with the written word, this Sunday, June 19 at 3 pm ET for our Afternoon Delight!

Note: It'll be the last live edition until fall, so I extra hope you can join me!

For July and August, I'll send a contemplation and a creative prompt for you to explore as part of your summer fun, and you can always connect with me here! The plan is to then resume our live gatherings in September.

Click to join via Zoom

Sunday, June 19 at 3 pm ET
Meeting ID: 892 5282 6610
Passcode: 778007
Confirm your local time here!

Reminder:
There's no cost. No RSVP required. Simply click the link above to attend.
Come exactly as you are, with an open heart, curious mind, paper and pen(cil).

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

Thank you to ECW Press for the review copy of Quiet Night Think, by Gillian Sze!

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

I’m here today with a highly recommended read, a work of non-fiction that captured me, heart, mind and soul: Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, compiled and edited by Colleen Kinder.

Through the kaleidoscopic lens of personal and travel essay, well-known writers offer profoundly poignant pieces that explore how even the briefest connections with others can affect us deeply, illuminate aspects of ourselves and expand our understanding of humanity.

My enjoyment started with the table of contents:

(If you didn’t already know this about me, I start a book on the first page. No, no. I really do mean the first page. I read the inside title page, the copyright page, the dedication page, and so on. For both writers and readers, there’s oodles of insight to be gleaned there! But I digress…)

• The titles: “To the Man I Believe Was Good,” “To the Stranger in My Family,” “To the Drunk Mr. Flunchy,” “To the Traveler Who Hid Cash in her Underwear”!

• The places: ones I have been to (like New York, Oaxaca, Mexico and Florence, Italy) and those I have only dreamed of thus far (Antarctica, Okinawa, Burma).

• The authors: Pico Iyer, Lauren Groff, Aviya Kushner, Jamil Jan Kochai.

• The themes: Symmetry. Mystery. Wonder. Remorse.

Though the collection could easily be enjoyed like you might hop islands or countries, I chose to follow a linear path, from the first page to the last. Arranging a collection takes art, and I found this one built steadily while still surprising me throughout.

Travel narratives thrill and enliven with their description and sensory details. When combined with the reflection so particular to personal essay, each of these short pieces offered a richly unique view.

I think it was the third section, Mystery, that veered in an unexpected direction. Up until then, the strangers had all been chance encounters with people the writers didn’t know, primarily while travelling. All of a sudden, here were stories of individuals physically close to their day-to-day lives or even genetically related. What distanced them was most often time/generation, addiction or death. Including these “unexpected” strangers added real depth to the collection.

What held the book together and made each so intimate was the personal, reflective component.

Editor Colleen Kinder says (in an interview I’ll link to below), “What’s really different about the Letter to a Stranger stories is that the writers are allowed time to really sit with their experiences… They benefit from the passage of time and the work that hindsight does to distill what really matters to us and what’s important to us.”

Yes!

You know how brilliant writers get straight to the heart of human behavior and emotion in a way that allows us to see ourselves? Yeah, that. In.Every.Essay.

This collection inspired me to reflect, distill and see my own travel and other interactions with strangers, and even inspired me to write my own letter. Though a pale comparison to what has been published in this book, here’s a bit of mine:

To the young Russian mother at the hotel in Pisco, Peru.

When my boyfriend and I sat down at the bar for a drink, and your big, thick-accented husband joined us, it was clear we’d be there much longer and for many more shots of fiery pisco than I would have liked. When you joined us a while later, relief washed over me: another woman, someone to converse with, maybe practice my dwindling university Russian class vocabulary with, someone who might encourage her husband to stop drinking before oblivion. After all, you two owned the hotel. Surely you’d have to remain alert.

When a half hour later you said you had something to show me and asked me to follow you, I never expected that up three flights of stairs, down a horror-movie-worthy hall and into a sparsely-furnished attic, you’d reveal your infant son, sound asleep on a mattress on the floor.

You left this wee one all on his own? There were no baby monitors in those days, let alone in Peru! Were you drunker than I realized? On drugs? Mentally ill? Your sprinting, run-on sentences and vise grip hold on my wrist, urging me to sit on the mattress, to stay, frightened me.

All I wanted was to flee. And before long I did. On the pretense of getting more pisco, I hurried to my room, locked the door and hoped you wouldn’t use the master key to come in, then tossed and turned until dawn, waiting for my boyfriend to return from the all-night binge with your husband.

I’m sorry your desperate loneliness and isolation inspired the opposite of compassion in me. I’m sorry I abandoned you. I’m sorry I put blinders on to avoid your pain. And my own.

You see, you and I weren’t so different. We were both in unhealthy relationships and too immature to understand this wasn’t the highest expression of love. We were both too newly arrived in Peru to see that, even as foreigners, we could have thrived on our own. I was far too wounded at the time to help myself, let alone you.

If I reimagine that night now, I would have been fully present, remained by your side on that mattress in the attic, listened, heard the plea under your words, stroked your hair and hushed you to sleep, watched over your baby so you could get one full night of sleep, then asked in the morning if you wanted to stay or to go, and held out my hand so we could support one another, whatever the decision.

Honestly, this collection inspired a long list of essays I’d love to write. Whether in my travels or anywhere I’ve happened to call home, I’ve often left things unsaid or later wished I’d done certain things differently. That’s not a regret, just a fact.

Indeed, the power of this book is that it reminded me we rarely see a moment for all that it is, and always benefit from time and distance, reflection and perspective. The stories here taught me that, when that insight comes, it’s not too late to write or speak my heart to someone who was once a stranger.

I can see myself opening this book again and again, at random, to re-read the fabulous journeys, writing and life lessons, to see others’ experiences and gain yet more appreciation for theirs and my own.

For a wonderful taste of this book, the Los Angeles Times recently aired a conversation featuring editor Colleen Kinder, contributing authors Maggie Shipstead, Michelle Tea and Pico Iyer, and travel writer Christopher Reynolds.

As Pico Iyer says in that chat, travel is about learning to open your heart, your eyes and your mind much more than you do at home. This book did that for me, right from my reading spot on the couch. I hope it might do the same for you.

Now, before you go, what strangers on your own travels through life come to mind? Who might you like to write to and what is one thing you’d want to say?

Leave a comment

Or hit reply to tell me in confidence. Let’s not remain strangers forever.

Yours,

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you.

Thank you to Algonquin Books for the review copy of Letters to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us!

Last Saturday, my city was one of many hit by a powerful windstorm known as a derecho. This one rose up in southwestern Ontario, barreled across a thousand-kilometer stretch, spanning the whole province and moving well into Quebec. In a matter of hours, it hit four of Canada’s largest cities, bent power transmission towers in half, tore rooves off community centers, killed ten people and left hundreds of thousands in the dark.

As the sky turned greenish, sideways rain obscured my front yard. I couldn’t see the street. The four-story-tall pine tree just outside my living room window swirled and swayed. I sat poised, ready to call Jon and Tiber down from upstairs, ready to race into the basement. Then it was over. The whole storm lasted mere minutes. The power outage lasted three days—for us. Some areas are still out.

I’ve experienced scary storms before. At 3,200 meters above sea level, in Cuzco, Peru, we were basically in the clouds, in the middle of thunder and lightning. I saw furniture and animals swept down cobblestone streets. In the prairies of Saskatchewan, sheet lightning lit up my tent and miles in every direction.

I didn’t realize it until Sunday, but something about this weather event triggered my nervous system. It revved into high anxiety, then slipped into freeze mode. The feeling was similar to when the pandemic started, not knowing how long this adverse event would last. Add that to other less-than-ideal circumstances in parts of my life right now, and the unknown took on extra large proportions. A long weekend that should have been delightfully relaxing filled me with fraught uncertainty.

The good thing is I recognized my reaction right away and have gathered multiple tools and techniques over the years to calm my system.

I turned to books, as I so often do, only this time back to a real paper book. I tend to read ebooks on my phone, but with no power this weekend, I picked up a novella* that Other Press had kindly sent me for consideration. It helped tremendously. To escape, yes. Less obvious, though, it helped me to read of migration and war.

Sometimes those topics hurt. This time, they provided a contrast. The people in this novel faced the most momentous, life-altering unknowns. They let me see that, despite my body’s reaction, I was alright. My circumstances were still lush in comparison, with nothing of that magnitude to endure. Though the storm as a whole was devastating, but no tree crashed through my roof, like at my sister-in-law’s. I didn’t lose a loved one to a falling branch or entire trunk, as some did.

The lives of these characters also offered a mirror. At one point, a mother falls mute, unable to cope. A daughter gives up something she loves when it’s no longer tenable. A grandson writes to ease his pain.

There on the page were events and reactions, failures and triumphs, hurt and courage and determination. I was reminded that I am just another member of the human race, riding the highs and lows of life.

It’s a beautiful circle. I look inside a book to look away from life, and what I encounter on the page reminds me to look once again at myself, and at the same time to keep lifting my gaze, to see all that is around, whether near or far away.

When I did look out, here in my corner of the city, I saw heaps of kindness. Our neighbor borrowed an industrial-sized generator and offered to connect an extension cord, snaking across the fence, over the lawn and through our window, to run our fridge. They stored another neighbor’s insulin and another’s chemo drugs in theirs. We made room for yet another’s perishables. A friend across the city who did have power invited us to come for a hot shower and connect to wifi to work on Tuesday. I saw charging stations set up in nearby driveways, with lawn chairs to make the wait more comfortable. Friends and family texted to check in with us, happy to hear we were safe, and crossed fingers and toes for the quick return of electricity.

That paper book, that story that led me to peer inside and out, all contributed renewed calm in body and mind.

We see every day how the world can still be a precarious, tragic place. In Ukraine. In Uvalde, Texas. In Senegal today.

But if I can keep my eyes open, if I can continue to take in fictional and real lives, within my sphere and far beyond, I know I will continue to find contrasts and mirrors to support me, which I can hopefully then use to support others in turn.

Join me? Let’s continue the circle right here, today.

Comment or hit reply to share what you’ve found in a book lately, to share a hurt I can perhaps witness for you and/or a joy I can celebrate with you.

Yours, in Books & Love,

~Lisa

*P.S. I promise to tell you more about the novella from Other Press in a future letter. I’m hoping to chat with the author and/or translator, and share their their insights too. (And if you’re in Wayfarers, we’ll be reading it for sure!)

**P.P.S. If you write for an audience of any kind, I’d love to be the reader you need, to see you and your writing, to offer zero judgment, oodles of encouragement and keen professional advice. See here for a list of coaching and editing services or schedule a chat to talk about what you need and how I can support you and your stories.

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

New here and reading this on the web? If there’s still room in your inbox, I’d love to find a place there so you never miss a letter.

Subscribe now

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about book clubs lately.

(Full disclosure, which you likely already know: I run two book clubs, and yes, I’ll tell you about one of them here and extend an invitation. I’ll also share what we’ve been reading, so please do read on.)

My thoughts have ranged over:

• What makes book clubs work and what doesn’t always serve?

• The importance of group dynamics and how they shift, as members grow and change, come and go.

• What are the essential ingredient(s)?

• What does a club really offer its members?

I come back again and again to the fact that, once again, it’s not necessarily / always about the books.

When I moved back to Canada from Latin America in the early two thousands, I settled in Toronto. It was the biggest city I’d ever lived in and wanted to meet people, so I looked for a book club. One that was seeking new members received a huge number of responses, and the organizer kindly arranged an intro get-together for the overflow in case we wanted to form our own.

We met a restaurant, sat at a big round table by the window, and all introduced ourselves. When Sandy said she was a translator, I was thrilled: that made two of us! Lana was from Serbia and her blunt nature immediately intrigued: this woman would share nothing but an honest opinion. Larissa, newly arrived from Russia, with two young children, cried: she was so happy, so relieved to finally be having an adult conversation with other women.

About ten of us agreed to continue and met monthly for a couple of years. We always talked about the book, always knew we could say what we really felt, never all had the same opinions and were always respected. We also shared something of our lives that the book brought up in and for us. The book was not an abstract, distant object to be dissected but a fulcrum point around which we could have an experience and share it with others.

THIS is what I love most. In a book club, it’s about all of our stories. It’s about you, and me, and us together as a community. It’s about reading and exploring, sharing and listening, discovering and growing.

This is what I attempt to foster, allow, create in Wayfarers Book Club. It’s what members say they appreciate most. They don’t always like the book. But because it’s not all about the book, that’s OK. We always get something out of it.

Book clubs definitely aren’t for everyone, and there are all kinds, run in very different ways.

Many these days are celebrity led, so in a way you get to connect with the stars: Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jimmy Fallon, Barack Obama!

Some never meet, so you can be your full introverted self. (I might run a book club, but my introverted self feels the appeal in that. :)

Some are very structured, follow a certain format and even contain presentations on the structure of or themes in the book; while others are wild and free, with the talk more likely to turn towards chitchat.

Some read only certain genres. Others vary. Some are coordinated and led. With others, everyone involved selects the titles.

So, book clubs…

What’s your flavor?

Do you love ’em or avoid ’em?

Why?

Share in a comment, or hit reply and let me know?

Leave a comment

It’s nigh impossible to give everyone what they want —nor would I want to because then no one is truly served— but if you’re willing to go one step further, which aspects of Wayfarers compel or repel you?

• World lit - you get to go places you may have never been, yet even armchair travel can be uncomfortable

• Online - it allows for us to be international, but yup, once a month you’re on Zoom again

• Small - we get actual time to share and be heard, and so it’s hard to hide

• Subscription - monthly, affordable (and no one turned away on account of money), although a commitment can be daunting and any price can call its value into question

(And if it sounds good as is, join us for June? You’d be so welcome.)

I can’t wait to hear from you.

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

What we’re reading / will be reading in Wayfarers and the World Lit Collective…

The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, translated by Philip Boehm - Written by a German Jew in a feverish few weeks, soon after Kristallnacht in 1938, this book is prescient and astonishingly complex despite its short length and simple structure. Our narrator, Otto Silbermann, goes from successful businessman to persecuted Jew overnight and takes train after train, trying to process his situation and outrun his fate. The story behind the story, of this almost-lost novel and the author’s life in transit before his own tragic end makes this novel even more stunning.

Home Reading Service, by Fabio Morábito, translated by Curtis Bauer - I’m still processing what I think of this slim novel set in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where the narrator is given community service for a driving offence, in which he is to read to disabled or otherwise underprivileged members of society in their homes. There’s a pinch of humor, an undercurrent of poetry, a heap of detachment, and ultimately a bit of tragedy with a relatively happy ending for the protagonist. It’s a wholly atypical classic, brought to us by two award-winning poets.

What are you reading, in your book club and/or on your own?

Are you wondering what the heck these Afternoon Delights even are?

Last fall, I was easing back into work after brain surgery to remove a (benign!) skull tumor. Contemplation, creativity and community were balms that helped heal me, and I wanted to share the love.

“What if I host a monthly get-together that combines all three?” I thought. We could ponder and write, share, be seen, be heard, and delight in an exploration, together.

Now, here we are, six months later!

The gatherings are intimate. Engaged. Often poignant. Always enriching.

I look forward to every single one and relish in the glow of connection afterward.

Participants have said I’m great at bringing lovely, kind, generous people together and the creative prompts allow them to write and express themselves in a way they haven’t in years, or maybe ever.

Read on for musings on this month’s theme and the link to attend!

Hello, BookLoves.

When I sat down to choose the themes for this year’s Afternoon Delights, I looked at the UN calendar of observances and chose the ones that were most resonant. Every single one has been fitting, to my mood and even world circumstances, when the date comes.

This month is no different. On Friday, we’ll be exploring peace, for the International Day of Living Together in Peace:

"United in differences and diversity

“Living together in peace is all about accepting differences and having the ability to listen to, recognize, respect and appreciate others, as well as living in a peaceful and united way."

Honestly, this encapsulates the ultimate hope for my work here at Intralingo. By embracing our diversity and recognizing our shared humanity, through personal stories and the ones inside of books, we become more tolerant of others and contribute to a more harmonious world.

At this point in human history, it may seem like living together in peace is an impossibility. Futile to even try.

Yet peace, like everything else, starts from the tiniest seed, one that may seem contradictory or even selfish: it starts by cultivating it inside of ourselves.

When we embody peace, we positively influence those around us.

For real.

Mirror neurons in the brain are believed to fire when we observe another’s emotions and actions, and their experience is simulated in us. You ever see someone cry and burst out crying yourself? Mirror neurons.

We can literally, physically feel another’s pain. Joy. Peace.

So, when we cultivate our own sense of peace, and actively engage from that place with others, it ripples out.

But how do we find, nurture, embrace peace in this awfully challenging world?

I think there as many answers to that as there are readers…

To me, I don’t necessarily think of it as capital letter Peace. It’s simpler than that.

I find peace outdoors, sitting on my back deck or at the end of a dock, gazing at cedar trees and lake water.

I find it in tai chi, and all the components of my training in those arts.

I find peace in words, beautifully expressed, from the heart.

I find it in purring cat cuddles every morning.

Mostly, it’s fleeting.

But, having noticed it, having recognized the feeling of peace, I can pause and call it up or let other emotions morph into it when need be.

It’s a practice.

So, in this week's Afternoon Delight (Friday, May 13 at noon ET), let's unite around our differences and diversity, explore how we each perceive and cultivate peace to contribute to a world that lives together in peace.

As part of the fun, we'll read a Mary Oliver poem, try a little brain exercise, and play with some presence writing.

Can't come? Share your thoughts and feelings, poems and practices around peace right here in a comment!

Leave a comment

Can come? Wonderful, I’ll see you there!

Join Afternoon Delight

Friday, May 13, 12:00 to 1:30 pm ET
Meeting ID: 892 5282 6610
Passcode: 778007
Confirm your local time here!

Reminder:
There's no cost. No RSVP required. Simply click the link above to attend.
Come exactly as you are, with an open heart, curious mind, paper and pen(cil).

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

The next Afternoon Delight is Sunday, June 19, 3:00 to 4:30 pm ET, on the theme of Light.

*July to November dates will be published soon.

Did you know you can choose which posts you get by email? If you’re not interested in Afternoon Delights, click on the “Unsubscribe” button below, then turn off the emails you prefer not to get. (I hope you don’t unsubscribe from all, but that is always an option!)

Today, May 5th, is the National Day of Awareness and Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Gender diverse people (#MMIWG2S) in Canada. It’s a day to recognize the colonial violence that has been and continues to be committed, to honor and mourn the victims, and to call for justice.

One of the calls is for media to support Indigenous people by sharing their stories, so it seems propitious to share a recommendation for a novel by a Canadian Indigenous woman that touches on related topics of colonial violence.

Probably Ruby, by Lisa Bird-Wilson, came out here in Canada last fall and was recently released in the U.S.

The novel begins with a diagram of the protagonist's relationship web. This is the first clue as to how this novel differs from most others: it's not linear or chronological, but circular and filigreed. It's a map of Ruby's quest to belong.

Ruby is born to a teenaged white mother and Métis father, in a home for unwed mothers, put into foster care against her mother's will a week after her birth, brutally neglected in a foster home, then adopted by a white couple in a home that displays all signs of dysfunction, which the social worker simply chooses not to see.

“Home” is an overly generous word in all the uses above…

The novel offers a frank commentary on Canada's multiple failures with respect to its First Nations, including the residential school system, foster care and the adoption of Indigenous children. All of this (and more) severed generations from their kin, land, people and culture, with lasting traumatic effects.

Ruby is adrift, hurt, rejected, abandoned. She runs away, drinks, practices self-harm.

And she laughs. And she searches. And she makes “miskâsowin, belonging, out of words and her only memories—her blood memories.”

Throughout, Ruby demonstrates agency.

The story Lisa Bird-Wilson tells is raw and real, based in part on her firsthand experience as a Saskatchewan Métis and nêhiyaw (Cree) woman who was adopted:

“It's a convoluted path, but there are similarities between Ruby's path and my path to find my birth family. My birth father died at a young age. So I've spent time and I've written about imagining what life was like for him as an Indigenous man in the 1970s.”

Each chapter in this story focuses on a different person in Ruby’s relationship web: boyfriends, husband, girlfriends, adoptive parents, biological parents, therapist, social worker. The chapter about her father Leon is, I would say, the most visceral and tragic of all.

This back and forth in time and between perspectives can be confusing, but with patience we come to see that it offers readers a broader, deeper view of Ruby than she can ever present for herself.

For me, this created a profound sense of intimacy. Ruby became more than even a three-dimensional character. She materialized.

It wasn’t until I began to write this that I realized the brilliance of the title: Probably Ruby. By the end, I’m quite sure I have a picture of who Ruby is. Yet Ruby herself still has doubts. And how can I really claim to know her, a character? Or anyone for that matter?!

Maybe you’ve experienced this in life too? I have Someone forms a definite picture of who we are when we ourselves may still be wondering, exploring, becoming. And all too often we think we know exactly who someone is when all we can ever know is a sliver.

Regardless, from all I saw, I adored Ruby. Her "royal, attention-getting laugh" is weapon, defense and release. She knows the power of it, too: she uses it to draw others to her and mask what she really feels.

As fallible as she may be, Ruby is a tender and loving mother who tries to give her kids what she did not have: an extended family. Heartbreakingly, she puts up pictures of random indigenous people and invents stories about these kohkums, and moshums, and cousins.

Above all, I admired Ruby’s self-awareness. And I related to the crushing contradiction: just because she knows herself doesn't mean she can change her behavior.

As a white Canadian, I can never truly know the pain of Ruby's loss and sense of abandonment. Yet Lisa Bird-Wilson presents the emotional truth so powerfully and perceptively that I recognize elements of it in my own life.

It’s the mark of a brilliant novelist to portray the human connection between character and reader. It’s the brilliance of a novel that allows us to see the human connection between us all, whoever and wherever we may be.

Will you put Probably Ruby on your TBR list? Share your experience of the book if you already have or when you do? As always, I’d love that.

My thanks to Random House for the review copy, and to you for reading this recommendation.

~Lisa

P.S. Our Afternoon Delight is coming up next Friday, May 13 at 12 pm ET, on the theme of Peace. Pencil it in your calendar? Post and link to attend coming your way next week.

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

Do you have a story to tell? Let me help you write and publish your fiction or non-fiction. I still have space for a new book coaching & editing client in May. Book a chat or hit reply to share more about your project and discuss options!

Oopsy daisy! My apologies if you received two Afternoon Delight posts this week. Human error. My most human error. I'm sorry if I cluttered your inbox!

I had meant to send this letter, so hope you'll read on...

(The Zoom links are the same; click on either one to attend.)

It's time for our monthly gathering, and this time the topic is creativity.

It's a word that can inspire trepidation, if not downright fear. (Or maybe that's just me? Hmm. I doubt it.)

Recently, I've been playing with the idea of creativity, trying to soften it, not put expectations on it, expand the idea of it. I set an intention to be mindful of opportunities to be creative, in unexpected ways, in all ways, all of the time.

One day, as I was writing a letter of support for a friend’s grant application, I was looking at her art, had just been listening to a podcast about self-care and care for others, and my pencil was pulled to write a poem. In the end, it can be read as two separate poems or one interconnected one, read in at least three ways. That was creative!

On Easter weekend, we had decided not to attend large family gatherings, so I wanted something different, simple, bright, enjoyable to lift my spirits. I cooked or baked something new each day. That was creative. And delicious! :)

Another day, I saw a really beautiful piece of art behind someone on a Zoom call. I attempted something similar using the watercolors I bought last year to play with when recovering from surgery. My attempt was pathetic —no really, I'm not just saying that— but gosh I had fun swirling the brush on the palette and page! That was creative.

The more I explored, the more I was reminded that creativity, to me, is a life force, a channel, a flow that's open to me at all times. But I have to open to it. I have to be light with it, not restrictive or controlling. And it will play in a myriad of ways.

I might also say that, to me, creativity is the yin to balance the chaos of life that is yang.

What is creativity for you? And how does it play out?

Maybe you sew. Or bake. Paint. Pile rocks on the beach. Stack wood. Dance. Sing. Arrange and decorate your home. See solutions to problems in your mind's eye. Take photographs. Arrange flowers. Garden. The expressions are limitless!

The call to be creative with others, to join forces, to play and explore is what led me to start these Afternoon Delights. (And I dream of much more...)

Writing is my thing, so that's mostly the sandbox we play in. We'll take a prompt, each explore it in our way and share, both the creation and what we discover through the act of creation.

Most often, it's a case of creating "alone together."

Israeli writer Etgar Keret says, "Writers can't jam."

Alphabet Soup

Writers Can’t Jam

There are so many good things to say about writing. No one can dispute that we writers are lucky bastards, but just because you have things good doesn’t mean you can’t be envious. As a writer, I’ve always envied musicians for their natural ability to collaborate with each other. I like to picture myself sitting in a poorly lit bar with a handful of tale…

Read more

4 years ago · 9 likes · 2 comments · Etgar Keret

It might not be quite like a musician can jam, but as a writer, Keret jams with others regularly! In the piece above, he and an illustrator joined forces.

In fact, he does that regularly with an another illustrator:

Alphabet Soup

Streets of Rage

Twenty-seven years ago, a soldier named Asaf Hanuka contacted me and said he was drawing a comic strip for the Israeli army’s official weekly magazine, and he wanted to adapt one of my short stories. Having recently finished my own compulsory military service, and still carrying a lot of unpleasant memories from my time as an inadequate soldier, I was s…

Read more

4 years ago · 19 likes · 8 comments · Etgar Keret

Keret also jams with readers, who can submit ideas, situations, opening lines, photos or drawings, and he'll attempt to write a story. How fabulous is that?!

And translation is absolutely a writing jam! Sondra Silverston and Jessica Cohen translate most of Keret's posts, and books.

The expressions of creativity are limitless!

Now, with all of this, are your creative juices flowing? Can you let them run (a little) free(r)?

Share some words or a photo of your creative expression in a comment? I would love that so very much.

And please do come this Saturday, April 23 at 1 pm ET to riff on the theme of creativity, share your thoughts, tell us about the path of your creative river, where it desires to flow. And yup, we'll play with a little collaborative creation in words.

Join the Afternoon Delight

Meeting ID: 892 5282 6610
Passcode: 778007
Confirm your local time here!

Reminder:
There's no cost. No RSVP required. Simply click the link above to attend.
Come exactly as you are, with an open heart, curious mind, paper and pen(cil).

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

Schedule of Afternoon Delights

Friday, May 13 - 12:00 to 1:30 pm - Peace
Sunday, June 19 - 3:00 to 4:30 pm - Light

Pencil them in your calendar!
(All times Eastern. Confirm your local time here. Email reminder with the link will be sent a day or two ahead.)

Did you know you can choose which posts you get by email? If you’re not interested in Afternoon Delights, click on the “Unsubscribe” button below, then turn off the emails you prefer not to get. The creative choice is yours! (I hope you don’t unsubscribe from all, but that choice is yours too, of course. :)

My daytimer includes a quote at the top of every weekly page and recently it was:

There are two ways to be the light: the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

-Edith Wharton

I copied this in my journal. I wrote it at the top of a page where I listed several topics that I want to explore with you here.

Then I had trouble even finding a smidgen of light. Life presented challenges (as it does) that had me questioning my path, my worth, my abilities. You know those times?

Could I adequately, convincingly hold up a candle bright enough to illuminate what I see as the brilliance of global literature, to advocate for it not only as entertainment and education, but as a way to see our shared humanity, to highlight reading as a path of contemplation, illumination, personal and global transformation?

A mirror is more my style, yet could I really share what was honestly going on? That I’ve been struggling to read? Have been challenged by every book I try to read?

Caught up in my own well-worn story loops, it seemed best to sit quietly in the penumbra for a while. As the stories settled, I was called once again to hold up a wee flame, a shard of mirror, in the hopes that one or two or many of you might see something new or recognize your own reflection…

We’re reading Defenestrate, by Renée Branum, in Wayfarers Book Club this month. I read it first last fall and was re-reading portions to write the Armchair Guide to accompany it. Falling is the theme of this debut novel: the desire to fall, being pushed, falling from a great height, falling for the stories we’re told.

This time around, every page was torture: circuitous, pessimistic, painful.

It was too much like life.

And the torture multiplied because the Wayfarers might be feeling tortured by this read too!

Ah, but there’s another story that sometimes loops in my head: that my experience of a book is universal. It is not. (Duh.) After more than two years, I have witnessed how every single book in both of my groups is perceived differently by every person, every time.

That’s the beauty and the power of books: they are open to our interpretation, based on our lived experience and our current circumstances.

As I began to edge back into the light of springtime, I could see that Defenestrate is also about landing and the grace that arises when we find our feet under us again... A whole different perspective.

So, I can hear you asking, was this a “good” book?

Only you can judge, if you decide to read it.

That’s the candle portion of today’s meandering reflection:

There is no one single arbiter or criteria for a book to be labelled “good” or “bad” – no matter what the establishment might want you to believe. There is only your experience of it. And your experience may well change over time.

That’s just life, and that’s part of its beauty, wouldn’t you agree?

~Lisa

P.S. Our next Afternoon Delight is coming up on Saturday, April 23 at 1 pm ET, on the theme of Creativity. An email with the link to attend will be sent in advance!

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

Welcome to new BookLove Letter subscribers! My thanks go to every single one of you here, whether you’ve been accompanying me on this journey for days or years.

I’m so excited about the move to Substack, the platform I’m using now. It allows for more interaction, something I missed greatly when I moved from writing a blog to a newsletter.

At the top or bottom of this post, you can click on the heart to like it or on the comment bubble to share your reflections. You can also always reply to me directly. All interactions are heartily welcomed!

Speaking of light and mirrors and grace… I want to include a special shoutout to two fine writers this week.

Nancy Julien Kopp – I met Nancy seventeen years ago on a blog tour, and she became a dear writing critique sister, mentor and friend. Nancy has offered an essay, poem, reflection, writing tip, book review or other gem on her blog almost EVERY DAY for YEARS. Recently, she kindly hosted my review of Walking the Bowl: A True Story of Murder and Survival Among the Street Children of Lusaka, by Chris Lockhart and Daniel Mulilo Chama. (It’s a slightly expanded version from the one I posted here.)

elinap – Creator, author and illustrator of the Mira(cle) Doodles, every Monday morning Elina pops a delightful, insightful doodle featuring her character Mira into my inbox. When I take a moment with it, it can shift the whole tone for my week. I recently helped Elina complete her non-fiction book proposal so Mira can come to us all in book form! Cross your fingers. (And get on her mailing list now.) 😊

Do you have a story to tell? Let me help you write and publish your fiction or non-fiction. I have space for new book coaching & editing clients in May. Book a chat to tell me all about your project!

In this episode of the Intralingo World Lit Podcast, I offer a short reading from the book Walking the Bowl: A True Story of Murder and Survival Among the Street Children of Lusaka, by Chris Lockhart & Daniel Mulilo Chama.

Below, I offer a whole lot more about it, what I took from it, and what I hope you might too.

From the publisher:

For readers of Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Nothing to Envy, this is a breathtaking real-life story of four street children in contemporary Zambia whose lives are drawn together and forever altered by the mysterious murder of a fellow street child.

This book is nothing short of a dedicated miracle.

Over a period of years, the co-authors, a graduate student and a team of four former street children lived and worked in the vast slums of Zambia’s capital city, getting to know a cross section of the population, taking hundreds of pages of notes and over a thousand hours of recordings.

When a young boy, who became known as the Ho Ho Kid, was found murdered at the city dump, the team dedicated their efforts to following the investigation in real time and discovered a connection to many of the children they were already in contact with.

Lusabilo, a self-titled “chief” and waste picker at the dump finds the Ho Ho Kid’s body and is forced to assist the police in their investigation. Along the way, he is led to Moonga, a recent arrival who has turned to begging, become hooked on sniffing glue and dreams of going to school; Timo, an ambitious and ruthless gang leader; and Kapula, an exhausted brothel worker who is saving to get out of the slum.

The connections between these four kids, who each eke out a brutal existence, and the murdered child is told unflinchingly, unsentimentally, yet with emotion and compassion.

Knowing they wanted to reach the wider public, to tell a very specific story that would humanize these individuals, rather than perpetuate the tropes or appeal only to a small circle of insider professionals, Lockhart and Chama cowrote these intertwined stories as a work of narrative non-fiction.

I felt a stabbing pain at how every one of these kids had been abandoned by family and society, left to survive on their own in unimaginably unforgiving conditions. And every time I felt compelled to DO SOMETHING, the authors reminded me how well-meaning but utterly ineffectual foreign “aid” often is.

Lockhart, an American medical anthropologist who has worked in Africa for decades, and Chama, a Zambian social worker who himself was a street child, hold nothing back. They expose what seems to be an unsolvable tragedy of poverty and corruption, helped little or even made worse by Western notions of “development.”

And yet they present a story that is ultimately one of hope.

In their preface, they say:

“If you were to ask us what we hope you learn from this book, we would say we hope you learn a little bit about the day-to-day lives and realities of street children and a great deal about the power of the smallest good.”

Walking the bowl—offering what little you can to another—is at the heart of this story. It’s a tale the Outreacher shares with every kid in the slums and with the White Man.

(And it’s the reading I offer here, in this podcast episode.)

Toward the end of the book, Kapula tells the Outreacher:

“I wonder how different things would be if everyone did the small things you do for us every day. Even if they only did one thing in their whole lives, especially if that one thing was passed on to others—like in your story. Myself, I think it would be a very different world.”

Myself, so do I.

This book achieved its aim. I learned a little about others and a lot about how I can live a more powerful life. I was reminded that I don’t have to go to Africa. I don’t have to change the whole world. All I have to do is offer a simple kindness to another, right where I am, right here, consciously, whenever I can.

Read this book. Because it’s good for you. For us. For humanity. Because it’s beautiful. Deep. Impactful. Necessary.

But above all, walk the bowl. Please, may we all walk the bowl.

~Lisa

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

My thanks to Hanover Square Press for the review copy.

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

Our next Afternoon Delight is coming up this SUNDAY, MAR 20 at 4 pm ET, on the theme of HAPPINESS.

Image source photo by Mona Eendra on Unsplash

It might feel hard to embrace happiness right now, given the state of the world.

That’s certainly something I’ve been pondering.

And yet happy moments continue to exist, and they make dealing with everything else just a little more possible.

Some of the things we might contemplate together this weekend…

What is happiness or what does it mean to you?
Can we be happy in a complex, intense, heartbreaking time?
How?
And how/who does that serve?

I’ll share a short piece of prose or poem on the topic and of course we'll explore further with a creative prompt at the end.

Click to join the Zoom room!

Meeting ID: 892 5282 6610
Passcode: 778007
Confirm your local time here!
(Note: Here on Eastern Time, I turned my clock forward one hour on March 13th...)

Reminder:
There's no cost. No RSVP required. Simply click the link above to attend.
Come exactly as you are, with an open heart, curious mind, paper and pen(cil).

~Lisa

P.S. If you’re not able to come, but still want to ponder happiness, do share your thoughts in a comment or hit reply. I’d LOVE to know.

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

Schedule of Afternoon Delights

Saturday, April 23 - 1:00 to 2:30 pm - Creativity
Friday, May 13 - 12:00 to 1:30 pm - Peace
Sunday, June 19 - 3:00 to 4:30 pm - Light

Pencil them in your calendar!
(All times Eastern. Confirm your local time here. Email reminder with the link will be sent a day or two ahead.)

I’m late with this for a couple of reasons. One being a tech shift that took a bit longer than I expected, and the other being that I debated whether to acknowledge International Women’s Day here or not. I believe in it, don’t get me wrong. And I fully endorse in the UN motto for this year: “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow.”

Image source: Burcu Köleli for UN Women (2022). 

But what does Women’s Day have to do with what I write about here anyway?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

At the last Wayfarers Book Club meeting, members pointed out that—for the first time in 14 months of reading together—we had just read a book written by a man.

Did I intend to omit male writers? No.

Did I purposefully set out to include more women’s voices, just as I wanted to offer a diversity of perspectives based on race, country, genre, theme, culture and more? Yes, absolutely.

Why?

Among other reasons, because women are vastly undervalued in publishing. Over 80% of the most-read novels of all time are written by men and it's a similar stat for major prizes.

In “Why Are So Many Men Still Resistant to Reading Women,” Mary Ann Sieghart takes the literary gender gap even further. In this article, she shows how informal studies, anecdotal evidence and formal research all point to men reading fewer books by women, plus prevailing differences in what is considered “good” or “worthy” when they’re written by a man versus a woman.

I experienced something similar at a writer’s conference a few years ago when I sat on a panel with two men. Our qualifications were similar in terms of “renown,” number of publications and years in the industry.

(I don’t want to veer too far off topic here, but I was there as a literary translator, which automatically bumped me down a few notches on the status pole… Even though translations are far more difficult to publish, the books were already an international success and all of my titles were with major traditional publishers, which arguably equals more of a coup that should have bumped me up a few notches... But this authority gap is another topic for another day.)

Regardless, there I was, my five-foot-nothing female frame in between two significantly “larger” men, with my quiet, calm demeanor, trying to keep the puffing feathers on either side out of my mouth and nose. :)

More germane to this story, however, my perspective on writing went against predominantly patriarchal norms, and that fact slid me all the way down to the bottom of aforesaid pole.

One of the participants asked for advice on what to do when feeling blocked or disinterested in their current project. My fellow panelists’ advice was to set a daily writing goal, sit down in the chair and reach that target before he got up again.

My advice? If you’re not feeling it, if you’re exhausted or blocked or disengaged, take a break. Walk away. Acknowledge what you’re feeling and allow that to just be. Give it an hour. A day. A week. Hell, give it a month if that’s what you need.

(I hadn’t yet read Wintering, by Katherine May, but oh, when I did, my approach made even more sense! We can’t always be in full summer bloom.)

Mine was not a popular viewpoint. Puffing of feathers turned to loud squawks of derision from my fellow panelists, to emphasize the exact opposite view: push through at all costs.

I certainly felt disheartened and lesser-than, and then had a little laugh inside when I observed just how wrong they had to make me. I must have really pushed a button.

So, back to the pertinent question: what does any of this have to do with International Women’s Day, and what does a day meant to promote equality have to do with the stories we tell and the ones we read?

Mary Ann Sieghart argues that pervasive inequality around women’s writing has consequences for all of us.

I wholeheartedly agree. Anything that sidelines a whole sector of humanity cannot be good for humanity.

For me, International Women’s Day and the explorations here offer an opportunity for all of us to notice, reflect and perhaps reorient ourselves toward a broader view, one that encompasses a multiplicity of perspectives.

Let’s do a little experiment…

What are the last five books you read? How many of them are by women?

If two or less, let this be an opportunity to shift out of what may be an unconscious pattern and make a conscious, deliberate choice to include more female-identified writers.

Or vice versa.

Me, I’ve made a mental note to tip the scale toward balance by including more male authors. You’ll note below that I have two on my list right now.

(You can, of course, broaden this even further to include any aspect of diverse lit!)

Now, here’s to you, to the books you read, to the intention to strive for equality and a more sustainable tomorrow for all genders, in all ways.

~Lisa

P.S. That tech shift I mentioned means a couple of things for you:

1. You can now like this post, share it or leave a comment! I’m soooo excited about this. All letters, including this one, are meant to be an exchange. You know it’s no fun to write and never receive a reply. (Speaking of which, as always, you can also reply directly to me if you prefer.) Whichever method you choose, I sincerely hope you’ll engage. I LOVE hearing your perspective.

2. If you initially signed up to receive ONLY Afternoon Delight notices, please update your subscription at the link in the footer. I’m sorry you had to do this again and thank you for your patience!

Lisa Carter is Founder and Creative Director of Intralingo, helping authors and translators write and readers explore stories. Lisa brings two decades of professional literary experience, including nine books and multiple other pieces published in translation, and nearly as many years of contemplative and compassion practices to her work. Her inclusive, engaged, caring presence inspires people to share their stories, create new ones and feel truly heard.

More, for you. (On a new website! Take a peek via the links. :)

Afternoon Delights - Free, monthly online gatherings, because we could all do with a little more delight in our lives. We’ll contemplate a theme, connect with one another and get creative with words. (Next session: Sun Mar 20 at 4 pm ET. Zoom link to attend will be sent here a day or two in advance.)

Wayfarers Book Club - An opportunity to travel around the world through the pages of a book; pay what you choose, starting at $10 per month.

Wayfarers 360° Experience - An intimate, leisurely-paced, six-week group experience to a explore a novel through body, heart and mind, with curiosity and contemplation. (Next session begins April 9th.)

Book Coaching & Editing – Need help along your writing journey? I’m here to help.

What I’m reading / have recently read…

Walking the Bowl: A True Story of Murder and Survival Among the Street Children of Lusaka, by Chris Lockhart & Daniel Mulilo Chama – Oh.my.goodness. This work of non-fiction written to read like fiction is powerfully good. I’ll offer a short reading on the podcast soon and am sure to talk about it more when I’m done. (ARC graciously provided by Hanover Square Press.)

The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham – Classic sci-fi from the 1950s that is (almost scarily) relevant to today’s world.

Winter in Sokcho, by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins – Noir set along the border between South and North Korea, this is our March book selection for Wayfarers.

We often receive free books from publishers, authors and/or translators, and will always identify when that is the case. Recommendations are never paid. They are offered only when we genuinely want to share a book with you. Any links to the Intralingo store on Bookshop.org are affiliate links and may earn us a small commission on your purchase, at no extra cost to you. Bookshop is currently only available to US customers.

Schedule
Friday, February 18 - 4:00 to 5:30 pm - Kindness
Sunday, March 20 - 4:00 to 5:30 pm - Happiness
Saturday, April 23 - 1:00 to 2:30 pm - Creativity
Friday, May 13 - 12:00 to 1:30 pm - Peace
Sunday, June 19 - 3:00 to 4:30 pm - Light

Pencil these in your calendar and stay tuned for more!
(All times Eastern. Confirm your local time here.)

There is no cost to attend. No RSVP required.

Come exactly as you are, with an open heart, curious mind, paper and pen(cil).

The link to attend is sent here, via the BookLove Letter. I really hope to see you at the next Afternoon Delight!