So glad I got to chat with Beth Macy about PAPER GIRL for @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social. Talking to Beth is like talking to a neighbor back home. <3

"What has happened to home? What has happened to us? And where do we go from here?" Neema Avashia interviews Beth Macy on her latest release, “Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in Fractured America.” @avashianeema.bsky.social @bethmacy.bsky.social pghrev.com/talking-abou...

"Baby writhes on the changing table, furious at this momentary loss of bodily control, until she catches sight of the bangles glimmering on my wrists..." @avashianeema.bsky.social, on the artifacts that tether us to our culture: past, present, future.

Join us for our reading featuring guest faculty members @avashianeema.bsky.social‬ and @egjames.bsky.social‬ and 3rd annual Spotlight Poet @@mrmack88.bsky.social‬ on July 14 at 7:30pm ET at Lasell University in Auburndale, MA. Livestream available: lasell.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #SolsticeMFARes

Finished such a good book this morning. Thanks for your artistry, @avashianeema.bsky.social. Here are my thoughts. rachelrosolina.com/blog/another...

🌈📚 Keeping it Queer ✊ 📖 Another Appalachia - Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by @avashianeema.bsky.social Bookshop Affiliate Link: bookshop.org/a/100590/978... Library: search.worldcat.org #queerbooks #lgbtqia #booksky #memoir #biography

A little light to look toward in the midst of so much darkness. We're excited to have Neema Avashia at Furman next month. The reading is open to the public. @avashianeema.bsky.social #WritingCommunity #Appalachia

"Scale down. Talk with friends. Not over digital platforms, but face to face. What will big issues look like in practical terms where you live? How can you find out? What can you do about it?" Read this wisdom from Madeline ffitch over at @literaryhub.bsky.social. lithub.com/a-way-of-liv...

Tofu shawarma + tomato browned butter + sumac onions + romaine + labne + pickled cuke on a Wednesday night. Because it's that kind of January.

Arresting kids at school because they’re undocumented turns out to be wildly unpopular apnews.com/article/immi...

Just zoomed into a Rural Anthropology class at Dartmouth College. TA was from Huntington, WV. One student's dad was from WV. Whole bunch of other students from rural spaces who got all the leave/stay complexity. So many fantastic questions. I think rural anthro folks might be my people. <3

For the first time in 12 years, I will be teaching high school students (co-teaching an early college course called Introduction to Urban Education with @avashianeema.bsky.social for @bostonschools.boston.gov students at the Ruth Batson Academy) and I am so excited! courses.umb.edu/course_catal...

Can't wait to hold generative space for folks over at the Makery. 2nd Saturdays, January-June. 90 minutes for words and warmth and community. Come join us! hindman.org/events/gener...

This. This. This.

You can hear me on your public radio station this week, or on The Moth podcast next week, thinking about grief rituals for losses that go unacknowledged in the world at large. themoth.org/radio-hour/t...

Trying to follow more people here. If you’re a past contributor or workshop attendee, or in community with us some other way, say hey! 👋🏽 And if you’re hoping to be one of those things, let us know so we can follow you, too!

Finished @avashianeema.bsky.social’s Another Appalachia today. So many thoughts and feels as a Guju woman who grew up in suburbs of ATL. But the biggest one is that this is a must read. #FridayReads

Unfortunately, the national election results mean that www.educationwarsbook.com is more relevant than ever. Friendly reminder that @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social and I will drop in on your book club if you register on our site.

I’m looking for new place to teach, to host my zoom classes, and college classroom visits in 2025! Please share!

did y’all know that bookstores make a third of their money between Thanksgiving & New Year’s, & most ship nationwide 💌 personally I find this to be an excellent way to figure out any holiday gifts

<3 <3 <3

TRANSPHOBIA LOSES ELECTIONS

Say this!!!

Quoted on a sign in Hazard, Kentucky. Another Appalachia, indeed.

Virginia friends, this is us. 👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾

Amherst area friends, I'm reading at Amherst College next Weds at 7pm. Come on out if you're around! www.amherst.edu/news/events/...

What’s really shocking when you first realize it is the degree to which the death penalty really is concentrated in no more than a dozen COUNTIES nationwide that account for the huge share of death sentences — not even states at large. It’s like a few DAs like this here and there filling death rows.

I've got new words up over at Salvation South about what it means to love your home, and fight for it, from away. It's been a slow year for words (parenting seems to radically reduce my brain space), so I'm especially grateful to see this piece in the world. www.salvationsouth.com/fight-from-a...

“Staying in one place doesn’t have to be a source of shame. . . .Rootedness feels to me like the deepest form of resistance.” @avashianeema.bsky.social's new essay at Salvation South is 🔥 www.salvationsouth.com/fight-from-a...

Giving a keynote next Saturday to a bunch of young writers about my own writing journey. Which, ultimately, is turning out to be an extended love letter to Appalachian writers and books, to my Pittsburgh writing aunties, to Hindman folks, to my Boston writer friends, & to my desi writer group text.

Paging every Pittsburgher I know...

We can't pin posts over here in the sky, so we'll just have to repost over and over (*sorry*): we're open for essay collections, memoirs, and nonfiction-hybrid book manuscripts through December 1, and we'd love to read yours! splitlippress.submittable.com/submit

That deciding to buy banned books for your own personal shelves doesn't even come close to solving the harms done by book banning, and actually we'd rather you show up and speak out at your school board and library board meetings and also help elect better candidates - or run for office yourself.

I'm pretty sure that this baby has given me rocking chair tendonitis in my foot, and both the desi and Appalachian parts of me are absolutely horrified, because our feet are built for rocking and swinging, and how could this have happened?

Interviewed the lovely Raj Tawney about his new book, COLORFUL PALATE, over at Bomb Magazine! bombmagazine.org/articles/raj...

Above the fold, page 1, in color in the (Saturday and) Sunday paper. Can't want to be home for the WV Book Festival!

Baby's first two words are "hi" and "dog." Which means that our days are full of "hi hi hi" and "dog dog dog", which is actually quite lovely when you live in city neighborhood where there are lots of humans, and lots of dogs!

Paid parental leave should exist for everyone. Glad to get to talk about why for this piece over at WGBH. www.wgbh.org/news/educati...

New Tyler Childers on repeat? Yes yes. All day.

Last night in just an hour with Shepherd College students, we talked extractive industries, SUD, mass incarceration in Central Appalachia, the failure of electoral politics, what it means to be Fabulachian, how to disrupt the "stay/leave" binary, and more. All of it is right on the surface, always.

“a prison does not belong in a just transition framework, on basic principles of economic, racial, environmental justice.” kentuckylantern.com/2023/09/05/q...

Currently reading this book of excellent essays, Another Appalachia by @avashianeema.bsky.social