Days of dissonance, the Freedom to Read, photos & poems, new writers-in-residence at Porter Square Books
New England Literary News
Dear all,
These days of dissonance. The regular rhythms and concerns unspool — I need to buy toothpaste, I’ll walk with Kim along the river, there’s the moon — and behind it all, below above around it all, grave and growing darkness.
The other night, four days after a new war had begun, I walked home from Boston. Across the Salt & Pepper Bridge, through the biotech jungle, and along Mass Ave through Cambridge. And all the bars were full of people and all the restaurants were full of people, there in the golden light through the windows, there with each other, with their pals and loves, talking and laughing. A couple chopsticked tangles of noodles to their mouths; two boys laughed as they jammed their rental bikes back into the docks near MIT. Here we all are, I thought, out and living and it made me so happy and it made me ache.
We breathe in the dust and smoke from buildings bombed, a catch in the throat, a bit of grit in the eye. That air is this air. We breathe in the dust from detention centers built covering acres of American land. It is the same world. And somewhere in the hollow space behind dreams, the sound of parents crying, of children crying, men making wagers on war and wads of money ripping pocket seams. It can be hard to love the world. And what can we do? In this exhausting dissonance of life as it is and darkness as it is. What can we do? Buy the toothpaste. Walk along the river. Stir the soup again. What can we do? Think about where we spend our money. Love each other well (time is so short). Remain un-numb. Despair’s deep pit can be alluring. Don’t let yourself be tricked down into it. Do not let the darkness go unacknowledged. Nor the beauty.
What can we do? I don’t know. I’m standing on the corner flinging my little dose of the local literary scene your way, and holding you close as I do. Thank you for receiving it.
The frozen moment in poems and photos
“Cameras capture / the unutterable,” writes Stephanie Blair Mitchell in her debut poetry collection, Viewfinder (Finishing Line), which pairs her poems with photographs, her own and ones that have defined the times. Mitchell went to Wellesley and studied at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, and is now the Director of Photography at Harvard. She’s been making photographs since she was ten, taught by her art professor father who had a darkroom in their home. Her poems capture the “small intimacies,” and serve as history lessons, too. There’s a photograph of Jessie Tarbox Beals, the first female photojournalist, high up on a ladder aiming camera at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. We see Dorothea Lange’s famed Migrant Mother (1936) and Eddie Adams’s visceral Saigon Execution (1968), and Gandhi at a spinning wheel by Margaret Bourke-White. Mitchell writes of the frozen moment in photographs, “their stillness / their moment of pause / immortal,” and laments content, engaging instead with images that “shook the course of culture.” Implicit in each poem is the power of photography to alter the world as it captures it. “Moments inspire movements — / History is not changed / by being content.” She’ll be reading from the book tonight, March 8, at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge. For more information, click here.
The fight against book banning
In Massachusetts, a number of local authors have had their books banned across the country. Booksellers are reporting more instances of bullying and harassment at readings. And challenges to library collections, displays, and events have more than doubled since 2023. People, young people in particular, need access to a variety of points of view, need to see their lives reflected and celebrated, and need windows into how other people live and feel and think. Mass Freedom to Read is working against book banning across the state. And this Tuesday, March 10, is the Mass Freedom to Read Advocacy Day at the State House, with an aim of getting lawmakers to pass a law that helps prevent politically motivated censorship. The day includes meetings with legislators, a book fair, and a press conference urging legislative action on H.3594, ‘An Act Regarding Free Expression.’ As the New England Independent Booksellers Association notes, “Independent bookstores are often the first place that young people discover the magic of reading, and censorship of any kind has no place in this process.” The advocacy day takes place Tuesday, March 10 from 10 am-4 pm at the State House, 24 Beacon Street, in Boston. For more information, click here.
The 2026 writers-in-residence at Porter Square Books
Porter Square Books recently announced its 2026 writers-in-residence. The store started the program in 2018, selecting two writers, one writing for adults and one writing for young people. The nine-month residency offers the writers access to the Cambridge store’s offices on nights and weekends to use a workspace; a 40% store discount; access to advanced review copies; and the opportunity to write staff picks. This year’s writers are Elizabeth Gonzalez James and Fin Leary. James is a screenwriter and author of the novels The Bullet Swallower and Mona at Sea. Leary, a transgender and autistic author, was a 2024 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices Fellow for Young Adult Fiction, teaches writing at Emerson and GrubStreet, and is the editor of the science fiction anthology Future States of Stars. Residents are required to do three introductions or “in conversation” events for other authors; be present on Independent Bookstore Day in April; and expected to use the space for five hours a week or more. For more information on the program, click here.
Books of note out this week
I Was Alive Here Once: Ghost Stories edited by Sarah Coolidge (Two Lines).
On an Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes edited by Michael Welch (Belt).
The Traitor by Abe Kōbō, translated from Japanese by Mark Gibeau. (Columbia University).
Booksellers’ best: Staff picks from New England independent bookstores
Lesley Cousley of Elm Street Books in New Canaan, Connecticut, recommends Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (Dial): “In this deeply personal memoir, Belle shines a light on her marriage and the shock of her husband of 20+ years walking away from it. With details of her upbringing, the generations of women before her, her husband’s upbringing, the life this privileged couple built together, you follow along as Belle comes apart, doubts who her husband really was, and slowly puts it all back together. A true story of resilience, doubt, security, love and perseverance.”
Thank you for your opening lines, which so beautifully give words (again) to what I think many of us must be feeling these days -- the toothpaste, the walk, the friends, and the daily disasters ...("And what can we do?..."). It happens that I read this poem earlier today, which your words seem to complement, so I couldn't resist sharing: "Arguments for Peace"
https://onbeing.org/programs/oksana-maksymchuk-arguments-for-peace/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Using *chopstick* as a verb: 💯