Catapult Staff Picks

This week we’re reading books by Masha Gessen, Carmen Maria Machado, CAConrad, and more.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado knocked me over from the first story. That this collection is STUNNING isn’t news to anyone, but I have loved Machado’s writing since I discovered it in the Watchlist collection we published last year, and have sought it out wherever I could find it.

I also wanted to mark an important personal anniversary by rereading the story collection Cowboys and East Indians by Nina McConigley. The story “Curating Your Life” serves up a huge slice of humble pie for me, but returning to Nina’s writing just reminded me what a searing observer of human behavior she is, and how aptly she captures a feeling of being in-between communities of belonging.

—Jennifer Abel Kovitz, Associate Publisher

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I’m reading Ru by the Vietnamese-Canadian writer Kim Thuy. It’s translated from the French by Sheila Fischman.

On refugee parents:

“For us, they didn’t see the blackboards they wiped clean, the school toilets they scrubbed, the imperial rolls they delivered. They saw only what lay ahead.”

—Megha Majumdar

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The Future is History by Masha Gessen,

—Morgan Jerkins, Contributing Editor, Web

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Every so often, I go on a binge of Russian-themed works, usually by immigrants from the former Soviet Union or first-generation Americans who are exploring this aspect of their identity. I recently finished Natasha and Other Stories by David Bezmozgis, a short story collection about a family of Jewish immigrants from the perspective of their young son.

I also recently picked up Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. I actually already watched the film (twice), so I’m really excited to finally read the book. Another upcoming read is Yiyun Li’s Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life. I originally read an excerpt from this book in The Best American Essays 2014 and was enthralled.

—Hannah Rozenblat, Intern

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I’m looking forward to reading Scott McClanahan’s The Sarah Book this weekend. (And not just because of the title!)

—Sarah Baline, Events Coordinator

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I just read the new edition of Richard Chiem’s You Private Person, reissued by Sorry House Press. It’s cool when you reread a book that you loved when you were young and stupid and find that now that you are a little less young and—hopefully—a little less stupid, the book is just as good as you remembered, if not better. I remember reading “Sociopaths,” which is the first series of linked stories in the collection, over and over again the first time I read the book. This time around I did the same thing.

I’ve also been reading Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl and CAConrad’s Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, the latter of which includes the following brilliance:

you said too much poetry
I said too much war
the biggest mistake for
love is straining
there was a
door marked
MISTAKE we
entered
you said too much fooling around
I said fuck off and die

—Allie Wuest, Editorial Assistant, Web

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The Bitter Southerner recently published one of the most chilling and interesting ghost stories I’ve ever read. It’s called “We Salted Nannie.” It’s full of surreal ghosts like a two-dimensional man who disappears into walls, a human-sized column of smoke, and a warped old lady who smiles at the tenants of the house from the doorway of the kitchen. Here’s the line that stuck with me hardest: “Other outside things, not readily identifiable as human, moved around the perimeter of the house counterclockwise.”

—Kelli Trapnell, Production Associate