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Dec 9, 2024 | 
slate.com | Dan Kois |Sofia Samatar
It shouldn’t be surprising that my list of my favorite books of 2024 includes a number of works by older writers working out what it means to make art as a career—what their creative future might look like. After all, I’m an older writer trying to work out what my future might look like. But I was also thrilled to discover new and new-to-me writers this year, many of whom are writing brilliantly about our current moment and thinking about what everyone’s future might look like.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
geeksout.org | Michele Kirichanskaya |Sofia Samatar |Amal El-Mohtar |Max Gladstone
P. H. Low is a Locus- and Rhysling-nominated Malaysian American writer and poet with work published in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Tor.com, and Diabolical Plots, among others. They have a bad habit of moving cities every few years, but can be found online at ph-low.com. I had the opportunity to interview P. H., which you can read below. First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
countercraft.substack.com | Sofia Samatar |Kate Zambreno |Lincoln Michel
Recently, my friend Michael Barron emailed me with a book recommendation—Kadare’s The Palace of Dreams—and a question: was I still doing book recommendations on Counter Craft? I interview authors with new books out, but it has been a while since I wrote a post praising older, obscure, or translated works. I’m a little embarrassed about that.
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
newsbreak.com | Sofia Samatar
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
lithub.com | Sofia Samatar
The dream is to create a book that will also be a tonic: not a course of study but a course of treatment. “I’m beginning a new book to have a companion,” wrote Hervé Guibert, “someone with whom I can talk, eat, sleep, at whose side I can dream and have nightmares, the only friend whose company I can bear at present.” He had been reading The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon in the country. Shivering with cold, he bit into an overly salty biscuit.
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Mar 25, 2024 | 
writersdigest.com | Greg Wrenn |Carmen Machado |Sofia Samatar |Florence Williams
When I sat through my first life-saving ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru, there wasn’t just a puke bucket beside me. I also kept close a binder of research I’d printed out about the healing potential of psychedelics. (6 Types of Personal Essays for Writers to Try.)As traumatic memories surfaced in the hours-long medicine journeys, I sometimes felt for the articles in the darkness.
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Feb 12, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Victor Manibo |Sylvie Cathrall |Aliya Whiteley |Sofia Samatar
Ian C. Esslemont. Tor, $30.99 (480p) ISBN 978-1-250-78861-0Esslemont keeps the military and magical action chugging along in his satisfying fourth Path to Ascendancy epic (after Kellenvad’s Reach), which marks a return to the expansive world of his Malazan Empire universe.
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Jan 10, 2024 | 
publishersweekly.com | Aliya Whiteley |Sofia Samatar |Sylvie Cathrall
Edited and trans. from the Bengali by Bodhisattva Chattopadhya. MIT, $19.95 trade paper (188p) ISBN 978-0-262-54761-1The latest in MIT’s Radium Age series, which aims to champion “the best proto-sf novels and stories from 1900 to 1935 among scholars... as well as general readers,” is more likely to achieve the former goal.
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Nov 21, 2023 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Sofia Samatar |Kate Zambreno |Steve Martin |Harry Bliss
A fresh perspective on an elusive element of literature. Samatar, author of The White Mosque, and Zambreno, author of The Light Room, offer a lyrical, erudite meditation on the enigmatic concept of tone in literature, drawing on responses from readers in the self-designated Committee to Investigate the Atmosphere. In the eclectic works they examine, tone can take on qualities of fog, dust, rot, snow, and light; color, temperature, or sound.
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Oct 5, 2023 | 
thebaffler.com | Sofia Samatar
Some years ago, you purchased an island, where you live alone. You have a boat, but you rarely cross over to the mainland. When you do, you always feel ill at ease, wandering from place to place, sleeping in strange hotels, lurking in cafés. Compared with the busy mainland, your island—the only place you feel at home—seems insignificant, cold, dark, and even unreal. At such times, you can only lift your spirits by unfolding a map.
