“Glory of waterbirds, Glory
of thirst.
Glory of the Latin
of the dead and their grammar
composed entirely of decay.
Glory of the eyes of my father
which, when he died, closed
inside his grave,
and opened even more brightly
inside me.”
From Gbenga Adesina’s “Glory”
poets.org/poem/glory
it’s very difficult for me to reread old pieces of mine, but I am sharing this for the Olympics, for nostalgia, for Asian American women of a certain age, for little Asian girls everywhere
gift link:
There's a new Lore Segal collection of short stories coming in March! Ladies Lunch was so funny, and heartbreaking, and such a tender and wise look at aging.
bookshop.org/p/books/stil...
Lovely piece about Book Bunk, an organisation restoring colonial-era libraries in Nairobi and making them free, accessible spaces for children
We are thrilled to announce that today, the Board of Trustees of PEN America named two proven leaders and champions of free expression and literature, Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, as our co-Chief Executive Officers. pen.org/press-releas...
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.
Hundreds of kids are still detained.
We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵
Literature in translation invites readers into a global literary conversation. And in the months ahead, many new conversations will be sparked by some highly anticipated releases.
Here are just some of the translated works we're most looking forward to reading in 2026: bookshop.org/lists/books-...
It’s brilliant!
ICE just showed up at our house for the second day in a row. Four cars yesterday, today five. They rolled up slow, then got out to taunt us, and take pictures of the house. They want fear to overwhelm us, to project a fantasy of power meant to intimidate, isolate, produce obedience—not happening.
ICE and MAGA really did bet the farm on all of Minneapolis’s white people going “oh yes, please take away our disgusting, evil non-white-foreigner neighbors, oh thank you so much.”
it’s beautiful that they’ve been proven incredibly wrong about that - may the rest of the country do the same.
This is 10th-grader Arnoldo Bazan.
A citizen.
Immigration agents grabbed him and put him in a chokehold.
"We're from the United States bro!' he screamed.
Agents took and sold his phone
And when he finally got home hours later, his shirt was ripped, he neck had angry, red welts, and he sobbed.
"Bolsonaro ... is unlikely to appreciate the approved reading list. It includes Brazilian works on Indigenous rights, racism, the environment and the violence meted out by the country’s 1964-85 dictatorship – a regime Bolsonaro openly supported."
Brazil, you're doing amazing. This is inspired.
That you can pick up something say an inch thick and be transported to another world between its covers? Incredible. Books are incredible technology.
The Minneapolis non-profit A Book Of My Own is collecting books to be given to families who are afraid to send their children to school because of ICE.
You can buy and donate a book they need through their wishlist;
bookshop.org/wishlists/05...
This 😂
“War, then. Our country had transformed itself into Cronus, and was beginning to eat its own children.”
From Nino Haratischwili’s The Lack of Light trns. by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.
A steal!
A 1986 mass market of Octavia Butler’s Dawn! Unfortunate fact - publisher’s used to represent characters of color with white people on the books’ covers so they would appeal to white readers.
A first edition of Joseph Beam’s In the Life - an anthology of 29 black gay writers in the 80s. The cover art!
The devaluation of black art is bad. And I got these for a steal I am not angry about.
1st Edition Signed copy of Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Offensively affordable. & that’s what her signature looks like 🤯
Swooning, swooning over Tash Aw’s The South. His sentences are lovely. Lush and ever reaching outward. The story, intimate and grand. 😍 Read it. Buy it. It’s incredible.
bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
This is slave labor.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is so good!
For the first time since 1988, the US government is not recognizing #WorldAIDSDay.
William Johnson, our PEN America Florida Director, put together his own literary-based recognition of the day with a list of essential books about the virus. pen.org/world-aids-d...
Translation, Politics, and Solidarity
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Michelle Hartman discuss how the conceptual framework of solidarity raises important questions about translation, what it means to share (or not share) political commitments with an…
Nice review! I’m going to check it out!
Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody have surged. A prison guard describes rampant abuse
apnews.com/article/isra...
In our new PEN Ten interview, Aja Gabel discusses how she has developed as a writer with her new novel Lightbreakers (@riverheadbooks.bsky.social, 2025) which follows the story of a husband and wife grappling with loss. Read more: pen.org/aja-gabel-th...
Love Marilyn Hacker!
