Sabir

What I Learned From Kristi Yamaguchi (Published 2016)

it’s very difficult for me to reread old pieces of mine, but I am sharing this for the Olympics, for nostalgia, for Asian American women of a certain age, for little Asian girls everywhere

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Still Talking: Stories Stories

There's a new Lore Segal collection of short stories coming in March! Ladies Lunch was so funny, and heartbreaking, and such a tender and wise look at aging.

bookshop.org/p/books/stil...

‘The goal has been to demystify’: how a colonial Nairobi library was restored and given back to the people Once a whites-only enclave, the grand McMillan Memorial library is one of three in the Kenyan capital that have been transformed for the community

Lovely piece about Book Bunk, an organisation restoring colonial-era libraries in Nairobi and making them free, accessible spaces for children

We are thrilled to announce that today, the Board of Trustees of PEN America named two proven leaders and champions of free expression and literature, Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf, as our co-Chief Executive Officers. pen.org/press-releas...

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Books in Translation We're Looking Forward to Reading in 2026 Literature in translation invites readers into a global literary conversation. We are brought face to face with cultures and lives outsides of our own.

Literature in translation invites readers into a global literary conversation. And in the months ahead, many new conversations will be sparked by some highly anticipated releases.

Here are just some of the translated works we're most looking forward to reading in 2026: bookshop.org/lists/books-...

It’s brilliant!

ICE just showed up at our house for the second day in a row. Four cars yesterday, today five. They rolled up slow, then got out to taunt us, and take pictures of the house. They want fear to overwhelm us, to project a fantasy of power meant to intimidate, isolate, produce obedience—not happening.

ICE and MAGA really did bet the farm on all of Minneapolis’s white people going “oh yes, please take away our disgusting, evil non-white-foreigner neighbors, oh thank you so much.”

it’s beautiful that they’ve been proven incredibly wrong about that - may the rest of the country do the same.

This is 10th-grader Arnoldo Bazan.

A citizen.

Immigration agents grabbed him and put him in a chokehold.

"We're from the United States bro!' he screamed.

Agents took and sold his phone

And when he finally got home hours later, his shirt was ripped, he neck had angry, red welts, and he sobbed.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro finds novel way to reduce 27-year sentence: reading books Former president convicted for coup plot to take advantage of law that knocks four days off jail term for each book read

"Bolsonaro ... is unlikely to appreciate the approved reading list. It includes Brazilian works on Indigenous rights, racism, the environment and the violence meted out by the country’s 1964-85 dictatorship – a regime Bolsonaro openly supported."

Brazil, you're doing amazing. This is inspired.

That you can pick up something say an inch thick and be transported to another world between its covers? Incredible. Books are incredible technology.

The Minneapolis non-profit A Book Of My Own is collecting books to be given to families who are afraid to send their children to school because of ICE.

You can buy and donate a book they need through their wishlist;

bookshop.org/wishlists/05...

An Elegy for My Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good Fellow poet Danez Smith memorializes the Minneapolis mother's call to witness

www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/feat...

This 😂

“War, then. Our country had transformed itself into Cronus, and was beginning to eat its own children.”

From Nino Haratischwili’s The Lack of Light trns. by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.

A steal!

A 1986 mass market of Octavia Butler’s Dawn! Unfortunate fact - publisher’s used to represent characters of color with white people on the books’ covers so they would appeal to white readers.

A first edition of Joseph Beam’s In the Life - an anthology of 29 black gay writers in the 80s. The cover art!

The devaluation of black art is bad. And I got these for a steal I am not angry about.

1st Edition Signed copy of Toni Morrison’s Jazz. Offensively affordable. & that’s what her signature looks like 🤯

The South: A Novel A Novel

Swooning, swooning over Tash Aw’s The South. His sentences are lovely. Lush and ever reaching outward. The story, intimate and grand. 😍 Read it. Buy it. It’s incredible.

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

This is slave labor.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is so good!

World AIDS Day Reading List: Writing Through Crisis, Stigma, and Institutional Neglect Documenting lived experience is central to defending free expression. These writers write through crisis, stigma, and institutional neglect.

For the first time since 1988, the US government is not recognizing #WorldAIDSDay.

William Johnson, our PEN America Florida Director, put together his own literary-based recognition of the day with a list of essential books about the virus. pen.org/world-aids-d...

Translation, Politics, and Solidarity In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Michelle Hartman discuss how the conceptual framework of solidarity raises important questions about translation, what it means to share (or not share) political commitments with an author, and ways of making co-translation equitable.

Translation, Politics, and Solidarity

In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Michelle Hartman discuss how the conceptual framework of solidarity raises important questions about translation, what it means to share (or not share) political commitments with an…

Nice review! I’m going to check it out!

Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody have surged. A prison guard describes rampant abuse TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The number of Palestinians dying in Israeli custody surged to nearly 100 people since the start of the war in Gaza, according to a report published Monday by a human rights gro...

Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody have surged. A prison guard describes rampant abuse

apnews.com/article/isra...

Using Science Fiction to Write About Grief, Marriage, and Memory In this PEN Ten interview, Aja Gabel discusses Lightbreakers and writing literary fiction that utilizes sci-fi elements.

In our new PEN Ten interview, Aja Gabel discusses how she has developed as a writer with her new novel Lightbreakers (@riverheadbooks.bsky.social, 2025) which follows the story of a husband and wife grappling with loss. Read more: pen.org/aja-gabel-th...

Love Marilyn Hacker!

YouTube video by RebaMcEntireVEVO Reba McEntire - Why Haven't I Heard From You (Official Music Video)

I’m in a full on Rebaissance;

m.youtube.com/watch?v=-d7v...