June 2025

Hello readers,

Happy Pride Month! Are you dancing? Are you marching? Are you calling your reps? Are you letting yourself be filled up and carried away by queer joy and queer wrath in equal measure?

I hope so.

Much of my free time is being taken by the garden this month so this will be a brief newsletter, but I do have a couple things coming up that I wanted everyone to know about. Let’s get to it!

• I will be at Barnes & Noble in Enfield, CT on the 14th for a Pride book event, along with Rebecca Podos and S.J. Taylor! Swing by 1-3 pm to get your book signed, say hi, or grab a sticker. 

• ICYMI Sorcery and Small Magics is going to Italy! It will be hitting shelves there on June 24th from Oscar Mondadori.

•  I will be taking a summer break from the newsletter for July and maybe August as well. Before I disappear for a while, here is your little reminder that you can order signed copies of SASM through River Bend Bookshop!

Books: I started May by reading The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates and wow is that a hard act to follow! Packed with eloquent insight on systems of power. I don’t normally annotate books but I actually went out to buy a copy so I could underline certain bits I want to especially remember. I also really liked American Sirens by Kevin Hazzard, about the group of black men who made up the first paramedic crew in the 60s.

For fiction, I finally read He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan and oh my gawd. OH MY GAWD. I deeply enjoyed She Who Became the Sun when I read it a few years ago so I knew I would probably like this too, but seriously. This book. Do you like pain? Then read it. But also read it if you like complicated and captivating characters, sharply gorgeous prose, and all round epic vibes. I also had fun with The Maid and the Crododile by Jordan Ifueko (everyone who told me this had Howl’s Moving Castle feels was right), and Don’t Sleep With the Dead by Nghi Vo (deliciously dark visuals in this one). I enjoyed The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, which was eminently readable, even though it reinforced my certainty that academia is really not the sort of place I would thrive (magical elements not withstanding). Lastly, I returned to the Vorkosigan Saga again to read Memory. This turned out to be one of my favorites in the series so far!

Watching: In an attempt to recover from my watching slump, I switched gears a little bit last month and watched some movies. I started with In the Mood For Love, which is a visual delight. It’s not an incredibly exciting movie (not a critique) and I felt very lulled by it. It’s the sort of story that invites you to slow down and notice small details, which I liked. Next up was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I saw this movie in theaters when it came out, which was so long ago that I’d forgotten a lot. I still think it’s beautiful and the scene in the bamboo forest still reminds me of the vivid flying dreams I used to have as a kid. Switching to something more recent, I went and saw Thunderbolts*. This was the most I’ve enjoyed a Marvel movie in a while. I heard a bunch of people saying it’s their best since Endgame, but I hated Endgame (if you ever want to hear me rant, ask me what I think of Steve Roger’s ending in that movie) so I think it’s actually my favorite since…Ragnarok? Civil War? Anyway, I thought it was a good balance of feelings and fun action. And then, like so many, I went and saw Sinners. It was fantastic. I somehow managed to go in without too many details spoiled, and it was a delight to watch everything unfold. The music. The music! Highly recommend catching it in theaters if you can.

The one show that I did really enjoy in May was Hacks S4. Hannah and Debra are such a viciously funny duo. There’s so much ongoing tension between them, and it’s just continually messy. As someone who appreciates a fraught twosome, I’m always interested to see where they’re going to go next.