The LONG-AWAITED 2020 writing and editing roundup
/Late to this party because time isn’t real. Before the infinite year finally ended, I did a little roundup on Twitter of everything I wrote and edited in 2020, sort of as proof? that things, small but meaningful things, still happen? and can help mark time? Like sand through an hourglass, tweets are (coarse and rough and irritating and…get everywhere?) ephemeral, so here’s the roundup again, where it’s likely to stay in one place for a while.
Essays, poems, etc. I wrote/published this year:
“On ASMR, Anxiety, Relaxation in the Side-Hustle Economy, and Being Baby,” January 2020. My first Internet as Intimacy column, on the ASMR community and how, for someone who is anxious, receiving care across time/distance can be more relaxing than in-person care.
“The Orchid’s Curse,” February 2020. This poem about Donna's monologue at Harry-the-orchid-guy was published in These Poems Are Not What They Seem (APEP Press, 2020), a Twin Peaks-themed collection edited by Kristin Garth and Justin Karcher. We had a virtual Performance Anxiety book launch.
“Podcasts and Tarot Reading Showed Me How to Be Real Instead of 'Good,'” April 2020. My second column, on how podcasts and rituals helped me unbury my emotions and start to take up more space. I'd never been more afraid to share something I’d written; all of the comments and messages I received made me feel it was worth it. To everyone who reached out, even if I wasn’t able to respond: thank you.
I wrote some dumb smut again for the revival of #shipwreckSF during a virtual “homewreck” event, April 2020. We wrecked Jane Austen’s Emma.
“Of all the classes of people who ever lived” and “THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF CHIVALRY,” July 2020. My Phyllis Schlafly erasure poems in blood were published in Erase the Patriarchy (University of Hell Press, 2020), a beautiful, full-color anthology of art-as-poetry edited by Isobel O’Hare.
“When the Internet Still Felt Like a Place, I Went There to Forget About My Body,” December 2020. My third (and maybe final?) Internet as Intimacy column, on the mortifying ordeal of having to exist in a physical form, and the powerful nostalgia I hold for the internet of the late 90s/early 2000s as I remember it. (Things I cut from this essay during its many drafts: secret sex codes in jelly bracelets, fear-mongering about teen texting acronyms, that time my face appeared in the Washington Post as an example of how well the Google Arts & Culture app works but no one noticed that I had dressed up as my doppelgänger as an illegibly “funny” prank...)
Essays and stories I edited for Catapult :
“Prenatal Nightmares,” January 2020. This was the first essay for Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s Fear and Loathing in Utero column. “If I love you, then I’ve imagined your death a thousand times.”
“It's a Boy! Whatever That Means,” March 2020. Maggie’s second column installment, on bad advice and gender nonsense.
“AREA CANNIBALESS,” March 2020. Some visceral (I’m sure I’m not the first to make this joke) flash fiction by Lauren Friedlander. “I need for you to tell them about the boy, about what I’ve done. I need them to destroy me for it.” Mindblowing original art by Christina Chung.
“Shlomo & Fanya,” April 2020. Short story by Angela Melamud, with several gorgeous illustrations by Gabriella Shery. “Blowing through fallen branches, cobwebs mask their faces. Their heels keep pace to a tempo the family knows by heart.”
“The Gift of a Guilt-Free Epidural,” April 2020. Maggie’s final Fear and Loathing column. “Getting an epidural was an option that the instructor said could be necessary, and that we shouldn’t feel guilty taking. But she said this couched in a thousand reasons not to.”
“Dying in America, or How to Become Completely Invisible,” May 2020. Essay by Bailey Cook Dailey, on navigating a lack of concrete etiquette for death and grief: “In this vacuum, the people in our lives and the people we encountered had reverted to what was easiest for them; denial, terror, avoidance.”
“Montana Boys,” June 2020. Essay by Kamil Ahsan on navigating unspoken power dynamics in queer, interracial dating. “Suddenly, I felt comfortable saying out loud that he needed to reckon, really admit to himself, that what he was really saying was that he didn’t want to be with a brown person.”
“Atrophy of the Author: In Fanfiction, Writers and Readers Are on More Equal Ground,” July 2020. Essay by Emilia Copeland Titus, on the world of fanfiction as a place to find community, hone craft, and reconsider the role of author. “The source text is almost superfluous, like a piece of art copied over and over until it is unrecognizable from the original.”
“Living in Translation, or Why I Love Daffodils, an Unpopular Postcolonial Flower,” August 2020. Essay by Aruni Kashyap on reading and writing in multiple languages as a form of postcolonial resistance. “Underneath the sheen, it is a story that begins with epistemological violence; it is about the erasure of local languages and indigenous cultures.”
“An Instrument of the Heart,” September 2020. Short Story by Nahida Nisa, on willfully ignoring trauma, and feeling/being alien. “She knew her mother’s planet must have been borne from the water and made entirely of it; she felt this is in her blood.”
“An Ode to the Great Undead Novella,” October 2020. Essay by Aruni Kashyap on how “the death of the novella” is a U.S.-centric conversation. “Where I lived and grew up, the novella was never endangered. It was, in fact, a dominant genre that not only nourished our souls but also influenced public debates.”
Catapult and Soft Skull books:
I assisted series editor Yuka Igarashi with edits for Best Debut Short Stories 2020: The PEN America Dau Prize, published this fall (Catapult, 2020). This annual anthology features twelve prizewinning debut fiction writers; this past year’s winners were selected by judges Tracy O’Neill, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, and Deb Olin Unferth.
This year’s anthology features Ani Cooney, David Kelly Lawrence, Mohit Manohar, Valerie Hegarty, Kikuko Tsumura (translated by Polly Barton), Willa C. Richards, Kristen Sahaana Surya, Sena Moon, Damitri Martinez, Mbozi Haimbe, Matthew Jeffrey Vegari, and Shannon Sanders. Updates on winners present and past can be found at the Robert J. Dau Foundation website.
I acquired my first books for Soft Skull this year, which will roll out over the next long while: WHAT TO MISS WHEN, a new poetry collection by Leigh Stein (Fall 2021); HIGH-RISK HOMOSEXUAL, a debut memoir by Edgar Gomez (Fall 2021), and MONARCH, a debut novel by poet Candice Wuehle (Spring 2022).
