Of the Week: It's Almost My Birthday

Want to preorder my zine? Plus what I'm reading, writing, and cooking

I’m not one for clickbait-y titles but what the heck, I have a zine to promote.

My first illustration where I’m reimagining the Irish salmon of knowledge legend. Instead of a salmon eating hazel nuts, it’s a bonytail chub eating mesquite pods.

In June, I’m wrapping up work on Desert Pookas, my zine of Irish fairy tales adapted into current day Arizona accompanied by linocut print illustrations. This zine is a long time in the making, with my interests cohering enough last June to apply for and get a grant to finish the project. Thanks to my friend Charissa for encouraging me to apply again (I’d been rejected twice) and to the Arizona Commission on the Arts for deciding in my favor this time. (Note: If you live in Arizona and are interested in applying to the grant I received, the deadlines for this year are June 20 and October 24. I’m here to answer questions if you have them about the process.)

The Salmon of Knowledge via

I was awarded just under $1500 (the maximum amount for this grant) and I used the funds to learn about printmaking from Dempsey Keenan of Serpentine Hearts and bookbinding from Angie Dell of Shut Eye Press, as well as to purchase supplies, tools, and help with printing from Paper Jam + Print. If you’re local I encourage you to apply, or look around for what your state or city offers by way of grants.

Bookbinding tools

The zine is filled with short stories, clips from books I read while working on it, and studies of the Sonoran desert’s flora and fauna. Alongside the words, illustrations — a novelty for me! The zine is also about my estrangement from where my ancestors are from (Ireland), my desire to make a home in a place I don’t belong (Arizona), and my experience of desert nights as a thin place.

Ireland has a history of solidarity with Palestine, and recently carried that tradition on by officially recognizing a Palestinian state. At the same time, the country I was born in and where I’ve lived my whole life sends more money and weapons to Israel. The grief of belonging to a country I don’t share values with is heavy. With that in mind, all the money I make from online zine orders I’ll donate to the Arizona Muslim Alliance’s Gaza Efforts. I’ve been part of their phone bank for a few months and I’m so grateful for the work they do.

The zine is priced on a sliding scale ($10-20) and if you can’t purchase it no worries, you can still support my work by sharing this newsletter or posting about the zine online.

Reading

A list of the books I’m reading and referencing as I work on Desert Pookas:

• A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestinian & Irish Hunger Strikers by by Norma Hashim and Yousef M. Aljamal (seems to be sold out most places)

• Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland by W. B. Yeats (you can find a lot of the stories online if you search around)

• Ireland’s Green Larder: The Definitive History of Irish Food and Drink by Margaret Hickey

• Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger; or An Excursion Through Ireland, in 1844 & 1845, for the Purpose of Personally Investigating the Condition of the Poor by

  Asenath Nicholson

• Compassionate Stranger: Asenath Nicholson and the Great Irish Famine by

  Maureen O'Rourke Murphy          

• Sonora by Hannah Lillith Assadi

• A Full Life in a Small Place and Other Essays from a Desert Garden

  by Janice Emily Bowers

• Sonoran Desert Food Plants and Wild Edible Plants of Arizona by Charles W. Kane

• An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers: Marginality and Memory in the Conservation of Biological Diversity by Virginia D. Nazarea

• The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in O'Odham Country by

  Gary Paul Nabhan

• The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide edited by Eric Magrane and Christopher Cokinos

• Alt-Nature by Saretta Morgan

Writing

My interview with Julia Hannafin was published last week in Write or Die and I’d love if you gave it a read. Julia’s novel Cascade (published by Great Place Books) is immediate and lusty and also so sad. It writes into the complexity of grief, love, and drug and alcohol use, set in a marine research group on the Farallon Islands of the San Francisco coast. I really enjoyed our conversation and loved reading the book.

Cooking

Fried eggplant sandwich with pepper jack, chopped spicy pickles and cilantro, romaine leaf, on Noble sourdough from Monsoon Market (shoutout to my Dad for picking some up). No pictures because it was late in the evening and I got over-hungry. Earlier in the week I made peanut noodles following Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe and ate it for a few days with kimchi, roasted carrots, and sautéed kale on top.

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The Good Enough Weekly comes out every Friday, alternating an essay with Of the Week. I also take on freelance editing and writing projects. Reach out if you’re looking for help in those departments — I’ve worked on everything from zines to textbooks. More info here. My zine of adapted Irish fairytales, Desert Pookas, is available for preorder now!