Kimberly Hirsh

The postpartum experience isn’t just expensive; it can also be one of psychic trauma and creative crisis. Someone who was a person becomes a mother. “You’re not a person. You don’t have a name,” says Zambreno. This feeling of erasure is a current that runs through her work, reaching peak intensity in “To Write as if Already Dead.” “I need to restore myself after being made into a ghost,” Zambreno says. “I always feel like writing the most when I’m being made invisible.”

Kate Zambreno on her new book "To Write as if Already Dead" - Los Angeles Times latimes.com

🔖🖥️ Elizabeth and Gav promised in this week’s The Rec Center that 1992: Silverwolf would be the most engrossing post I’d read all week and it did not disappoint.

Career Advice for PhDs Websites and Professionals: You should use ImaginePhD! It will help you identify a good post/alt/non-ac career for your interests and skills!

ImaginePhD: Hi Kimberly. You know what you’d be really good at? Being university faculty.

Me: sigh

🔖📚 Read Together As We Burn: On a Complicated Maternal Bond and Intergenerational Love. A heartbreaking excerpt from Ashley C. Ford’s memoir, Somebody’s Daughter.

🔖📚 Read Stories and Hormones Shape Our Lives by Elanor Broker. Beautiful essay weaving together personal experiences of trans matrescence and the books Detransition, Baby and The Argonauts.

🔖📝 Read Finding Time to Write About Motherhood… While Parenting During a Pandemic . The usual fragmented life of a mother is intensified by the pandemic.

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I love the way N. K. Jemisin’s The City We Became captures the spirit of the five boroughs of New York here in a way that is legible to non-New Yorkers. This book recasts Lovecraftian horror as a fight for the city’s soul. It features street artists, grad students, an MC-turned-lawyer-turned-councilwoman, a PhD director of an art non-profit, and a sheltered girl who’s never left Staten Island. If you’re looking for representation for Black, Latino, and queer characters, Jemisin’s got you. This book is a fast, fun read that imagines some of the daily horror in our world as being caused by eldritch forces from beyond our universe. Borrowed this one from @durhamcountylibrary. Highly recommend.

What’s a fantasy or sci-fi book you’ve read that helped you think through recent events?

Finished reading: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin 📚

I’ve also made my Scholarly Writing Project Audit and Pipeline Notion template available via Gumroad. It’s pay-what-you-can/want. It is based on podcasts and worksheets by @Katie___Linder and a blog post by @raulpacheco.

For #TrekTuesday, I’ll share that I spend a LOT of time wondering why we don’t see social scientists as key crew members on the Enterprise-D and the ethics of Deanna Troi’s talking to people about their feelings in front of other crew members. #StarTrek 🖖📺