Jan 30, 2020
How Translating Annie Dillard Helps Me Attend to a Dying World
Dillard stalked a world just beginning its freefall into an unprecedented amount of change, and her response was to look, and to look hard.
Dillard stalked a world just beginning its freefall into an unprecedented amount of change, and her response was to look, and to look hard.
Latinidad, to me, was like a shrunken sweater. I never wanted to get rid of it, but I couldn’t imagine how it would possibly fit.
What I’d been looking for at the convent, I could find in reading and writing. If other writers could channel their desires, I could use it, too.
When my students finished a draft, all I wanted them to do was sit inside of it for longer than was comfortable. To acknowledge and celebrate what they’d accomplished.
Writing was just something I thought happened to people naturally, that whatever wasn’t written was eventually forgotten. And I wanted to remember everything.
Despite how fruitless both nursing and writing can feel, I choose to engage with both.
These worlds I dearly love, with science-fiction that supersedes the science in our reality, deserve Smart Drives and automatic doors and disabled heroes, too.
There are far more writers ringing up your groceries, writers pulling your daily espresso shot, writers in the laundries of hotels and security tagging jeans at the mall and filling your prescriptions and pouring your beer into a clean cold glass.
Writers, take note: A submission says, please pick me, I’ll be waiting. A pitch says, catch me or you’ll miss the ball.
You loved his talent first. You hope that he will not love you less, for all that you do not now achieve.
Will my face betray me when it’s time to talk about my book in public?
I wasn’t looking for pretty stories. I wanted messy, ugly, honest secrets.
I thought I was the exception to every rule about writing being a hard living. I got exactly what I deserved.
“No one had told me to prepare myself for this—for wanting what someone else had.”
My vision of a writer has always been someone quiet, someone introverted, and—especially—someone white.
Acoustic-rich spaces feel enlivening and the echoes they produce sound like life.
Debut author Naima Coster on working with Morgan Parker, the whiteness of publishing, and literary self-determination.
“I trusted him, as students must their teachers, and he betrayed my trust.”
“I want you to believe every single word I say, but don’t be fooled—I’m using lies to convince you.”
“The problem with fame is not its rarity; it’s that it is out of our control.”
