Mushroom magic, mingling Boston's art and lit worlds, a bookseller activist
New England Literary News
Dear colleagues, writers, readers, pals, all, out on the Charles River, the winners of the Head of the Charles are being announced. Yesterday, Boston Common teemed with people and the energy of hope and dissent was strong. There’s lots cooking in the literary landscape right now. A taste of it below.
Mushroom magic
María Sabina lived in a town called Huautla de Jiménez in the state of Oaxaca and there, in the mid-20th century, she led veledas, mushroom ceremonies, guiding people in their experiences with Carne de Dios, or Flesh of the Gods. An outsider arrived in the town, seeking out Sabina, took part in a ceremony, and wrote an article about it for Life magazine in 1957. And so came the seekers, the beatniks, the musicians, the misfits, the poets, the wannabe-mystics, all looking for the healer Sabina, whose life they upended. Mexican poet Homero Aridjis has written a novel of María Sabina’s life. Carne de Dios (University of Arizona) is translated by celebrated Boston-area poet, editor, translator, and essayist Chloe Garcia Roberts (whose recent essay collection Fire Eater is a beautiful mind-blower). The novel tells the story of Sabina’s ceremonies and the ragtaggery who descended into the town to experience it. Bob Dylan, Juan Rulfo, John Lennon, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg. There’s exploitation, experimentation, mind-widening, throbbing plants, jeweled skulls, theft and sex and descents. “Fixed there they gave the impression of holding lightning in their hands and in their darkened feet. Their interlaced bodies were nightened by the dawn . . . The voices of the plants slipped from green to green, through the mountain, through the water, through the breasts of Guadalupe.” It’s a vital, strange, pulsing book, revivifying Sabina and the otherworld she initiated people into.
In celebration of the book, Garcia Roberts has teamed up with Somerville’s Mushroom Shop and chef Aly Lopez for a Día de los Muertos Mushroom Dinner at Field and Vine restaurant in Somerville. That’s taking place on November 2 at 5 pm. Garcia Roberts will read, and all attendees will get a copy of the book. The price is $180 per person and you can get tickets and find more information right here.
Brookline Booksmith bookseller wins national scholarship
The Binc Foundation, a nonprofit based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which offers charitable programs to help strengthen bookselling communities, recently announced the winner of the 7th annual Carla Gray Memorial Scholarship for Emerging Bookseller-Activists. This year the award went to Kaylee Tada, a bookseller at the Brookline Booksmith, for their work in preventing overdoses in the community. The award includes a year-long scholarship for professional development, travel and hotel costs for Winter Institute 2026, the conference for independent booksellers, and $1000 stipend in support of a community outreach project. “Through my work I have been able to connect with our local unhoused community and am proud to center their voices in my project,” Tada told Binc. “This scholarship will allow us to collaborate with local harm reduction services to host a free overdose prevention event and distribute educational resources throughout the year.”
Litfesting in Maine
Way up in Blue Hill, Maine, the literary arts festival Word unfolds this coming weekend. Things kick off on Thursday with the Word.Art.Opening featuring visual artwork that relates to the written word. On Saturday, literary agent Ann Rittenberg will offer a workshop on perfecting your pitch; Melissa Goodrum will discuss speculative poems that transform the world; Elizabeth Hand will show you how to scare your reader; and Michelle Lewis, Audrey Gidman, and Cynthia Thayer will talk about “writing rural.” There’s a poetry crawl, a chowder supper, events for kids, and a screening of Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light with a conversation with O’Keeffe biographer Roxana Robinson, and a lot more. For more information, and a complete schedule, click here.
Damion Searls and mingling Boston art and literary worlds
Two other events of note, both of which I’m lucky to be taking part in. This evening, near Fenway Park in Boston, is the launch of acclaimed author and translator Damion Searls’s new translation of work by German poet (and collagist and painter and graphic designer and sound artist) Kurt Schwitters. Norway Poems and Three from England is being published by the potent Cambridge-based press Staircase Books. Searls, author of The Philosophy of Translation (Yale) and The Inkblots: Herman Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing (Crown), is also known for his translations of Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse. This evening at the launch, he’ll be reading with poets Benjamin Bellet (keep an eye out for his forthcoming collection, Cadet), Anthony Walton, and me. I’m really looking forward to it. That’s tonight at 7 pm in Boston. Email editors@staircasebooks.org for the address.
And on Tuesday evening, Lucy Rosenburgh, proprietor of Caira Art Editions, is working to integrate Boston’s art and literary worlds. To that end she’s organized an event, “The Written Word and the Visual Language of Art,” with readings by Shuchi Saraswat, Jessica Ryan Shearer, Nakia Hill, Ben Roth, and me. It’ll take place among an exhibition of the prints and editions that Caira Art Editions has produced during its first year. As Rosenburgh writes, “The invited writers will share work that engages with art as action, as something alive and that speaks from one creative form to another.” I’m really looking forward to this, too, and I’ll hope you’ll join us. That’s on Tuesday at 6:30 pm at 401 Washington Street, in Boston. RSVPs required: please email lucy@cairaart.com. And for more information, click here.
Books of note out this week
Analog Days by Damion Searls (Coffee House).
Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View by Edward McPherson (Astra House).
Time Tunnel by Eileen Chang, translated from the Chinese by Karen S. Kingsbury (NYRB).
Booksellers’ best: Staff picks from New England independent bookstores
Jacob at Papercuts Bookshop in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, recommends Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin, translated from the French by Hildegarde Serle (Europa). “As a cemetery caretaker, Violete hosts and comforts all kinds of people, offering them a warm welcome in a time of loss and grief. Reading this feels like reading a diary of a person whose ability to remain hopeful and forward-facing inspires you to live with an open heart, and to remember just how tender our lives can be.”
I’m grateful you’re here. I appreciate you reading. I appreciate you being part of this. I’m glad to do it, and it is work. If you can afford to pay, please pay.
This is the one I was trying to remember! : )
I always love reading your column.. and here on a Sunday night after a full and rich weekend. Loved reading about Sabina.. and… Blue Hill! I’m jealous.. saw the Georgia O’Keefe film last weekend ( thank you Park Theater of Jaffrey NH) and was blown away. How cool would it be to see it with Roxana Robinson. Thanks, Nina, for always bringing us the word!