Kimberly Hirsh

Hello Internet! I’m having a vampire night due to migraine. I’m going to get up and take my morning medicine so I can wait an hour and then have coffee, food, and pain meds.

I’m really enjoying reading a lot.

How are you?

Want to read: Strange and Secret Peoples by Carole G. Silver 📚

Want to read: The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz 📚

Want to read: Fabulous Creatures, Mythical Monsters, and Animal Power Symbols by Cassandra Eason 📚

Want to read: Northumberland Folk Tales by Rosalind Kerven 📚

Want to read: The Good People by Peter Narv‡ez 📚

Want to read: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies by Anna Franklin 📚

Want to read: Tolkien on Fairy-stories by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 📚

Want to read: Fairy Lore by D. L. Ashliman 📚

Want to read: Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature by Nicola Bown 📚

Want to read: Dictionary of Fairies by Katherine Briggs 📚

Want to read: The Fairies in Tradition and Literature by Katharine Mary Briggs 📚

Want to read: Handbook of Fairies by Ronan Coghlan 📚

🔖📚 In a Raft of New Books, Motherhood From (Almost) Every Angle by Parul Sehgal (The New York Times).

Recent books on motherhood, however, frequently and sometimes unwittingly, illustrate a different phenomenon: how motherhood dissolves the border of the self but shores up, often violently, the walls between classes of women.

🔖📚 Read The Stranger Guest: The Literature of Pregnancy and New Motherhood by Lily Gurton-Wachter (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Another old bookmark.

How will having a baby disrupt my sense of who I am, of my body, my understanding of life and death, my relation to the world and to my sense of independence, my experience of fear and hope and time, and the structure of my experience altogether? Dr. Spock is silent on these topics.

By the time a new mother has the time (or free hands) to write again, the most extreme experience is beginning to fade from her memory.

🔖📚 Read Why are we only talking about ‘mom books’ by white women? by Angela Garbes (The Cut).

I love Angela Garbes’s writing. This is another old one.

🔖📚 Read Art or Babies.

you can make your art without being an art monster: You can do it as… an art mother.

🍿 Want to watch: Tully.

📺 Want to watch:

• SMILF
• Catastrophe
• Motherland
• The Letdown
• Workin' Moms

🔖📚 Read The books that help define motherhood – for mums everywhere to read

Is it ever possible to reclaim yourself without endangering your child?

I don’t know. Because for me it’s been more about reconstructing myself rather than reclaiming myself.

🔖📚📝Read Is Parenthood the Enemy of Creative Work? by Kim Brooks (The Cut)

That’s one of the major things parenting is teaching me, the balance between letting go in writing and practicing craft, the balance between being ferocious with my imagination and rigorous in my practice. Shape and chaos. Learning to shape chaos.

🔖📚 Read Ladies of Leisure.

This one bummed me out. I think it sells Dept. of Speculation short.

Finished reading: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow 📚

This one took me a little while to get into but once I was in, I was all in. Super fun while also dealing with all the ways our stories can be garbage. Highly recommend.

Want to read: The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler 📚

Want to read: The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton Critical Editions) by 📚