@arjoonlal.bsky.social
Writer. Social worker. Mother. Poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications and two anthologies. charmainearjoonlal.wordpress.com.
This was just posted by @tbretc.bsky.social on another platform. The Chicago Sun-Times obviously gets ChatGPT to write a ‘summer reads’ feature almost entirely made up of real authors but completely fake books. What are we coming to?
20.05.2025 11:04 — 👍 13077 🔁 3871 💬 788 📌 1901
A graphic shows my book cover framed by a black device: it reads Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear, by Eva Holland, and then there's a quote from the New York Times in teeny tiny font: "An intimate and wide-ranging look at fears and how we overcome them." To the right of the book cover/tablet are the words EBOOK SALE THIS MONTH. And there's a little red sticker that says "only $2.99."
Heya, if you're a Kindle user in North America, I've just been informed that the U.S. edition of my first book is gonna be $3 on there for all of April. That's like half the price of a latte!
04.04.2025 21:25 — 👍 27 🔁 11 💬 3 📌 2
Thankye brilliant Editor Nolcha Fox for publishing these two poems. Delighted. chewersmasticadores.wordpress.com/2025/02/25/2...
25.02.2025 18:21 — 👍 10 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Periodic reminder, amidst the mayhem, that my new nonfiction story collection NO SLEEP 'TIL FAIRBANKS is in stock at Halifax's @kingsbookstore.bsky.social - and they ship!
11.02.2025 19:30 — 👍 62 🔁 11 💬 2 📌 1"When I rode the school bus to high school, a teenage boy regularly spat at me, his spittle hitting my jacket and slowly gyrating to the floor. Every school day my stomach lurched when I climbed the bus steps and stumbled to my seat."
—Charmaine Arjoonlal
"I looked up to see a short man trying to be tall, wearing cowboy boots. I felt a tingling I had never felt before. It felt funny but it was a nice kind of funny. He’s the laughing Buddha, I thought." - Charmaine Arjoonlal in @reckonreview.bsky.social
#cnf #essay
reckonreview.com/of-curry-and...
I write the majority of my poetry by myself, usually late and night, and mostly they are inspired by life situations. For instance, I might feel slighted about something and it provokes a poem about something else entirely. However, certain life situations, such as travelling, inspire my husband and I to craft together. Often, we write a poem or Haiku instead of taking a photograph.
CHARMAINE ARJOONLAL Wild Abandon My cloud-hands part the water bugs and I sink into the frigid depths of a floating patchwork quilt its blues and emerald greens fray into lime greens like squished kiwi— its seeds, knowing eyes. Arms slice the forest shimmer my reflection ripples in half-light, we merge, my submerged gasp swallowed like shamemy birth mother steadfast in her shamefastness my body, her outcast temple. Her shame, replicated, an X intertwined in skin, muscle, sinew, bones a beacon-the flash-yellow brilliance of lost sunshine inherited silence, safer than speaking to the air, of freedom.
inherited silence, safer than speaking to the air, of freedom. Ducks quack human voices: a school bus filled with teens, white boy spits on brown girl, globs of goo slides off her skin, my skin to pool ... hate swirls metal rivets like bullets. Heart pounding, the frolic in needle-slow water, frenzied half-swim back to froth-rimmed shore, sharp stones, reddish brown bare feet sink in half-snow-muck, stinging, stamping, hopping. But something happens in a Yukon Lake in October, skin tingling like euphoria, like release, pings of joy— goose bumps slide, slough genetic sin. I lose something, I become whole.
Charmaine Arjoonlal joins our interview series today, sharing her poem ‘Wild Abandon,’ how she writes & revises her work, & the inspiration she finds in the world around her. Thanks for sharing your work & time with us Charmaine!
read the full interview: pinholepoetry.ca/an-interview...
"We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."
- Lynda Barry, WHAT IT IS
Thanks to Editor Thomas Page!
academyoftheheartandmind.com/2025/01/13/p...
Happy New Year. Wishing everyone laughter and joy and most of all, peace, in 2025!
01.01.2025 19:29 — 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
"Around age 60 I finally discovered my ideal role: writing obituaries. I’ve now written more than 1,000 of them. I never tire of exploring how and why people take (or choose?) one path or another in life." - James R. Hagerty in Oldster Magazine.
oldster.substack.com/p/this-is-68...
Nobody will ever have a cooler NYT obit photo www.nytimes.com/2024/11/08/b...
28.12.2024 03:49 — 👍 149 🔁 20 💬 3 📌 2
I’ve been hanging out here for a day now, so let me introduce myself. I’m a Ugandan-Canadian writer of short stories, CNF, journalism. My debut novel comes out April 22, 2025 (House of Anansi). I’m working on a memoir-in-essays. Here’s one in The Walrus: thewalrus.ca/losing-my-fa...
17.11.2024 20:19 — 👍 43 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 0
I'm delighted to have "Catharsis" included in Issue 19 of The Inflectionist Review!
Warm thanks to editors John Sibley Williams & A. Molotkov for selecting my poem!
www.inflectionism.com
Thanks Ravens Perch for publishing my CNF story, "Love in the Air"! @theravensperch.bsky.social
10.12.2024 02:34 — 👍 13 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0Had a good conversation with Stephen Quinn on the CBC Early Edition today about the fall of the Assad regime in #Syria
www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...
In the 1920s, dentist Samuel Aykroyd regularly hosted séances. Samuel’s son, Maurice, was a Bell Telephone engineer who tried to contact the dead via radio. Maurice’s son, Peter, wrote the book 'A History of Ghosts'. Peter's son is Dan Aykroyd, writer and star of Ghostbusters.
06.12.2024 14:56 — 👍 2475 🔁 300 💬 46 📌 29Thank you Anmly (EIC Sarah Clark) for first publishing my CNF story, "SNAPSHOTS" and for Memoirland for including it in Memoir Monday! @anmlymag.bsky.social mag @saribotton.bsky.social @sarahclark.bsky.social
23.11.2024 20:47 — 👍 15 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
