July light, a call for art inspired by a book, short stories of trouble, a queer bookstore in VT

The sun was a dead orange eye as it set and rose this past week. The light was sick. The mood was wrong, in the city, in myself, an antsy, restless malaise, where are the shadows, where is the wind, please let the rain come to Canada. We’re all breathing the same air and our bodies know what the light should be, what the air should and should not feel like on our skin, in our nostrils, on the surface of our eyes. In a backyard last night, music and stories, people sharing their work, on Shakers, on the moment a child learns that they can cause pain, a song for Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, and I felt opened to all of it, glad to be on the grass with people I did and did not know. The air is strange, the players will breathe it in this afternoon as the world watches, go Messi, go Spain, go all of us, go wind and rain and song and story. This is all over the place, I guess that’s how it is right now. July gives its raspberries, its tomatoes, its thick heat, and I’m giving you the literary news. Here you are.

Breaking through the looking glass of the obvious
“I turned twelve on the twelfth of March, with cake, lemonade, and noisy games in the backyard of our blue split level,” writes Kai Maristed, who lives on Cape Cod and in Paris, in her new collection of short stories, The Age of Migration (WTAW), first winner of the annual Kevin McIlvoy Book Prize. Maristed writes well-cadenced realism; the stories bring to mind short story master Andre Dubus II (who Maristed gives generous nod in her acknowledgements), for their excavations of the human heart, its thumping needs, its fears, its longing to beat in union with another’s. The stories bounce across the world — Paris, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Newton Heights — and Maristed’s characters share a yearning, dancing between chasing trouble and running from it (“I cheated on lovers and exams”), sharing the urge to “break through the looking glass of the obvious.” To be a small town doctor, to be in love with a friend, to tell the truth, or not, to hear the truth, or not, to be able to see beyond the obvious, here’s what Maristed explores, with precision and depth. A virtual launch takes place this Thursday, July 23 at 8:30 pm. More details right here.

Call for art inspired by literature

Dorchester community arts space/shop/gallery the Local Hand is teaming up with indie bookstore justBook-ish for their “Pages to Palette” program, in which they invite artists to make work based on a piece of literature. This iteration is calling for art based on the Ruben Reyes Jr.’s acclaimed short story collection There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven. Selected artists will be included in a gallery show at the Local Hand in September, with an event with Reyes in October. The deadline for submitting work is August 15; artists will be notified by September 1; artists selected will receive a $500 stipend; and you can buy the book at justBook-ish. For more information on how to submit, click here.

New queer bookstore and community space in Vermont

When you can’t find something you’re looking for, sometimes the only answer is to make it yourself. Vermont couple Tamar and JJ Chalker had long been searching for queer spaces in their community and weren’t finding what they were looking for, so they’re doing something about it. This fall they’ll open Sylvia Drake’s Books, a bookstore with a focus on LGBTQ+ books, named after a 19^th century queer Vermont woman who ran a tailor shop with her partner Charity Bryant. Along with books, they’ll also offer coffee, pastries, and a makerspace. They’re planning monthly movie nights, “Vinyl & Vino” listening parties, book clubs, art classes, and a variety of other events. “We believe bringing people together, creating and learning together, can be truly revolutionary,” they write. They plan to open in Hartford Village this fall. You can help support their Kickstarter here and follow them on Instagram here.

Books of note out this week (or last)

Living Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection edited by Samantha Paige Rosen (Beacon).

Bedlam by Jennifer Higgie (Verso).

Capital from Zero: Reading Marx in the Age of Climate Catastrophe by Kōhei Saitō, translated from Japanese by Brian Bergstrom (Astra House).

Booksellers’ best: Staff picks from New England independent bookstores
Steve at Charter Books in Newport, Rhode Island, recommends The Bombshell by Darrow Farr (Penguin): “Inventive and surprising, this debut novel follows the political and sexual awakening of a brassy, bratty teem in Corsica in the summer of 1993. Like a Gen-X Mediterranean Patty Hearst, she becomes the very face of her kidnappers guerilla cause. I thought I knew how this would end, but the high stakes violence and intensity of the final chapters shocked me.”

Thank you as always for being here. Thank you for being part of this. You’re helping keep the literary ecosystem healthy. If this work matters to you, if you appreciate what I’m up to, please help me keep it going with a paid subscription. With my gratitude always, and my warmth to you wherever you are in your summer.