One of my oldest friends watched her first-born graduate from college this past Sunday. Two days from now, her younger child will graduate from high school.
In about a month, it will be the 35-year anniversary of our own high school graduation. Our class’s ceremony took place at Ravinia, an outdoor concert venue in Highland Park, Illinois (Fleetwood Mac! Yo Yo Ma! - although not on the same night). It was a clear, cool evening in early June, and I remember seeing some of our teachers with tears in their eyes (at age 17, both poignant and startling to witness).
We have classmates who are now grandparents. Some are no longer alive. Some have changed so much that if we passed each other on the street, I wouldn’t recognize them.
In our individual catalog of memories, births, weddings, graduations, and deaths probably rank highest among the dates we remember.
Graduation season summons powerful nostalgia. I can’t harness it coherently right now, and to save you from whatever spongy ruminations I might record here, I’ll share instead an assortment of book- and writing-related information and tangential mental downloads.
- The Drue Heinz short story collection contest is open for submissions through June 30. There is no entry fee, but some prior publication is required—more details/submission guidelines here.
- Alice Munro, the great Canadian short story writer and Nobel laureate, died on Monday. Reading the news of her death, I know I echo others when I say that it felt like losing a close friend. She left us many brilliant story collections, fortunately, among them, Runaway, Open Secrets, Lives of Girls and Women, Too Much Happiness, The Moons of Jupiter, Dear Life, The View from Castle Rock, The Love of a Good Woman, and Dance of the Happy Shades.
- Joel Drucker published a beautifully written essay about his mother this past Sunday, Mother’s Day, on tennis.com.
- Conjunctions is open for submissions through June 1. Issue #83 (print), is ghost-themed. Non-themed submissions are also being accepted for their online edition.
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’s Substack and Otherppl podcast are consistently interesting and informative. Sarah Tomlinson was a guest on Otherppl earlier this year; she and Brad discussed her new novel The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers. She was a recent Bookish interviewee too.- I’m presently querying agents for a new novel with a teenage protagonist— classifiable, most likely, as YA—and let me just say: Not easy. (If I were a masochist, however, I’d be in my element.)
- Random moments of despair keep things rolling along—not necessarily query-related, i.e. there’s no shortage of distressing news on offer.
- This quote from Steve Almond(!): “A writer’s job is to outlast doubt.” An interview Steve and I did for ZYZZYVA about his excellent new book on the creative process, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow, can be found here. (Steve was also a guest on the Otherppl podcast earlier this month.)
A few non sequiturs (for levity):
- Today, May 17, is National Walnut Day and National Graduation Tassel Day (whaa?)
Q. Why do giraffes have long necks?
A. Because their feet stink.
- People of Pasadena and the wider world: Please stop using your #*%&ing horns so much and throwing your trash in the street which, the street recently told me, it really #*&%ing hates.
A few final notes/thoughts:
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has a new book coming in the next year-ish—The Golden Hour, and it’s ridiculously good. His most recent book, Always Crashing in the Same Car: On Art, Crisis, and Los Angeles, California (Tin House, 2021), is also a knockout.
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’s The Typewriter’s Collage - always smart and entertaining. 🤪- Sharing one of my favorite poems, Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World.”
- Warmest graduation season wishes to everyone. May the water be cool and clear, and the wind through the trees soft. 🌷
I feel you. Nothing like commencement season to make you feel...everything.
Thanks for the endorsement!