I have been passing around Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway for a month now.

It’s a lovely little book and a very quick read.

The premise makes the book sound more juvenile than it is–you know all those old tales of children disappearing into fairy realms–and how they sometimes come back?

In this book, that happens. And then parents don’t understand–don’t believe their children. Surely their children were abducted–surely they’re repressing something.

And so many of those children wind up at a boarding school, run by another who has returned.

This story is dark in all the right ways–with longing and loss and death.

Like all good fantasies, it poses moral questions about our own world–what do we do with those who don’t fit in? Why don’t we believe our children when they tell us who they really are–that they’re asexual, that our little “girl” is actually a boy, that they long for something we can never give?

Last night, instead of sleeping, I finished Etched in Bone by Anne Bishop, the fifth book in The Others series.

My friend April first turned me on to it–it’s urban fantasy (fantastical creatures, but in our time instead of a medieval time).

This is an alternate version of our world, one in which the great spirits and creatures (vampires, werewolves, etc.) and humans exist, knowing about each other. The landmass that we call America was “discovered” by humans, and the humans made pacts with the powers that were there–sometimes trading goods for permission to live and to expand.

Except now the humans have forgotten how powerful the Others are and think they can break the compacts that have kept them from being prey.

Many fantasy stories have naive protagonists so that we can discover how the world works the same time they do.

Our protagonist is Meg–not quite human, not quite other. She is a prophet–like others of her kind, she has been caged and abused.

The first book opens with her running away and finding shelter at Lakeside–a unique community wherein Others and Humans try to coexist in the same space (the Others want to study us).

There’s a lot going on in this series–The Humans First and Last Movement sound and act a lot like our alt-right. And while the Others might both be read as Native Americans (with the power and inclination for revenge for what we stole), there are communities of intuits who resemble our idea of the spiritual Native American. There are issues of equality, power, community vs. the individual, the problems of mating, etc. The book also doesn’t shy away from the reality that human men abuse others (especially women) all the time. Reading the “savage” “animal” others judge us for our sins is necessary and sometimes difficult.

One of the things I appreciate about this series is something others might not–it’s a lot about how we make things work–how do we distribute resources equally? How many chances should a trouble maker give? When do you take a child away from a parent for its own good? How can you make a sad coworker feel better. There are a lot of conversations, misunderstandings, meetings–the things that usually don’t make for good fiction, but that add a wonderful layer of realism here.

I loved Marjorie Prime.

I went into it as a blank slate, and it’s probably best if you do the same, so this review with be brief and with as few spoilers as possible.

Marjorie Prime was written by Jordan Harrison, and is directed here in a co-production with American Stage by Stephanie Gularte.

It’s a brief, powerful play with wonderful acting and a gorgeous set.

In an attempt to avoid plot, let me pose some questions:

If you could interact with someone you lost, what age would they be?

If you could change your memories, what would you rewrite? What would you forget completely?

What if Alexa were programmed to be your grief counselor?

Do you want to see a play you’ll be thinking about for weeks?

Marjorie Prime runs through June 3rd at CapStage.

Go see it.

I, author of two books on Atwood, President of the Margaret Atwood Society, editor of Margaret Atwood Studies, creator of the Margaret Atwood Book Group, mention Atwood in my favorite author list on OKC.

This was an opening volley from a guy today:

Have you read the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood? I did go through an Atwood phase where I read a lot f her books. She’s amazing.

All I want to do is send this picture:

How much should I cop to?

My kindergarten teacher taught us an old rhyme:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?

A Conversation From My Youth:

Me: What does “dainty” mean?
My teacher: Small.
Me: A pie with 24 blackbirds would be really big. Are we saying this wrong? Should we say “undainty”?
[Long pause.]
My teacher: No one else has ever had a problem with this.

I’m sorry in advance for how awesome this is.

You see, most people can’t say that they’ve been able to take a group of university students to the Harry Potter Studio Tour as just another day on the job.

When you get there, you see this: 

And then you wander around and see so much more!

The Way to the Common Room!

Dumbledore’s staircase!

sleeping headmasters!

The Potions’ Room!

John Cleese’s head!

Size Technology!

An elusive Dante smile!

For much of my youth, I was put off by dystopic visions. I’m not sure if this was because I was so frightened of what my own future could become, if I was horrified by the dark glimpses into human nature that dystopias provide or because I’d been frightened by a childhood viewing of an HBO special on Nostradamus, featuring explorations of a coming apocalypse that were rather hysterical (in both senses of the word). I eschewed all of the texts that would later captivate me (like Bladerunner) and settled on comforting visions of the future (like the socialist near paradise that was Star Trek). Then, in high school, there was The Handmaid’s Tale. One relative, who had not read the book, but who had heard some rumors about it, tried to deny me access, even though it was required reading. Luckily, I prevailed. It entranced me, both with its ideas and its language—which could be poetic and tragic and comic all at the same time. When Aunt Lydia tells the girls that they are rare and valued, like pearls, our narrator contemplates the metaphor: “I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit” (145)—it was exactly the type of close reading that I was prone to do.

Perhaps the text drew me in because I identified with it. Atwood wrote parts of the novel in Alabama, very near where I was growing up (in “Florbama”—the part of Florida directly underneath Alabama). Her world seemed very real to me—I was deep in the Bible belt; our world history teacher was forbidden to acknowledge that there was any history before the ancient Egyptians, as that fact offended parents who believed the Earth was only 6000 years old; abstinence only education was standard; an abortion provider, David Gunn, was murdered in my town right around the time we encountered the handmaid’s repressive society.

I was electrified. Not all students responded the same way, of course. I remember one girl complaining that she didn’t like the book because it was disturbing. And I remember the teacher’s response: “Good. It’s supposed to disturb you.”

Those are the first three paragraphs of my introductory essay to Atwood’s Apocalypses.

I’m crazy excited about Hulu’s premiere today. It’s taking all my willpower to do work this morning instead of watching. Fingers crossed that this is better than the much maligned film (with a screenplay by Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter)!

A review of the start will be coming soon.

In the meantime, are you excited about Atwood? Consider liking The Margaret Atwood Society on Facebook or following us on Twitter (@atwoodsociety)–we post lots of Atwood news there–for free!

Full membership is only $15.

Years ago, I read Jane Eyre for class while sick with the flu. It’s fitting that I had Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele to read during my week of the spinal cord stimulator test. Jane Steele‘s narrator is very much like Jane Eyre, and Faye manages to capture 19th century storytelling in a captivating way. This narrator has more spunk than the original Jane–more desires of her own and less patience with prurient males and idiots. She’s more like us, except she’s killed more people.

I also just finished (and enjoyed!) Julia Claiborne Johnson’s Be Frank with Me, about a young woman in the publishing industry who is assigned to help a famous reclusive writer pen a second novel. Helping means taking over the full-time childcare of the author’s precocious, socially awkward son.

While I was traveling to Chicago a couple of weeks ago, I started The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. I read the first novel in a day–it’s delightful urban fantasy with a great comic touch. The hero is an old druid living in the modern world–with a penchant for Shakespeare and helping people know their sprites from their fairies and their adjectives from their adverbs.

And everyone’s read Hag-seed by Atwood now, right? BECAUSE IT’S AMAZING!

We all know the ways in which 2016 has sucked.

I’ve cried a lot more this year, over the deaths of heroes, over the death of reasonable elections, over the fear of how much worse it might get.

But there were good things in 2016.

Melissa Bender and I had a book come out.

I spoke at conferences in Spain, Sweden, London, San Diego, Portland, and Chicago (twice).

I saw Love and Information, The Deep Blue Sea, The Suicide, Aubergine, Keith Lowell Jensen, Emo Philips, Blackberry Winter, Macbeth, Igudesman & Joo, Mr. Burns, Women of Will, the Cashore Marionettes, Disgraced, To Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, Frankenstein, Latin History for Morons with John Leguizamo, The Totalitarians, the opening of the Shrem Museum, and The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips.

I did guest lectures and interviews and stage talk backs. I taught courses that I love, films that I love, plays that I love, creative nonfiction that I love.

I taught 15 courses, got my first grad student through her PhD, mentored and performed with my stand-up students, got another Atwood journal out, started prepping for next year’s Oxford course, ran a program, and got chosen to run another.

I made old family favorites and tried new recipes, including my first shepherd’s pie, my first souffle, and my first carnitas. I made tons of soups and stews and proved the worth of my crock pot time and again.