Dear Matterhorn Readers,
Happy New Year!
As this post publishes, I am flying somewhere over icy Canada on my way back to Japan. We had a lovely, busy time with family in Boston…all that precious downtime to catch up with reading has been slightly postponed to January evenings and weekends. A perfect time for hibernation! I also have just the right space for this endeavor — our traditional tatami room, laid with bamboo flooring and empty save a folding table, Muji lounge cushions, and a velcro dart board.
I have a wonderful TBR pile, partly from books I picked up here. I’m excited to read Clancy Steadwell’s The Big T in full, a previously serialized novel which I started reading on Substack and ordered to greet me in Boston, and Anne Michael’s Held, a recommendation from Kate Jones. At an annual visit to one of my favorite bookshops — the Concord Bookshop (Massachusetts) — it was Uketsu’s Strange Houses and the third installment of Solvej Balle’s brilliant Groundhog-Day-esque On the Calculation of Volume that piqued my interest. I also picked up Zadie Smith’s latest collection of essays as a gift to my husband…let’s see who gets to it first.
More pressingly, though, are re-reads of Pride and Prejudice and The Unbearable Lightness of Being for some upcoming teaching. Perhaps these will be completed before landing…home.
A physical home — for me — keeps changing, and I do think that going back home to my parents’ house where I grew up and then boomeranging to Fukuoka is helping me adjust to what this particular new home is and means to me. How it connects to my roots and my present and my direction is somehow explored in this connection or this time and space of reflection. The dawn of a new year also inspires me to settle into new types of routines and mindsets, or slight adjustments, that allow me to keep evolving.
This coming year is one that I plan to start publishing more again — hoorah! I’ve missed it over the past year or so. I’d like to share with you here just a glimmer of a few projects I’m working on or towards —
A triptych of novellas that includes the finished, slightly more sinister and surreal, The Man from Brooklyn. The two other stories take place in Paris and London and are in various stages of drafting. I’ll look to share some snippets soon.
A second newsletter that moves back to essays and cultural studies through the arts but in a new way, drawing on my experiences living internationally, and offering something more practical and educational at times, such as related workshops and a sub-strand for teachers. I’ve been working with a designer and am excited to envisage this taking shape. Look for a launch sometime this spring!
Continuing the Creative Lab and Encounters series here; keeping The Matterhorn as a playground of exploration for fiction and literature.
Short stories inspired by moments of everyday life that experiment with stylistic or philosophical concepts.
Finally, thanks very much to some recent interest in my writing from Substackers Ian DM Taniels and Matthew Long. Ian had me as his guest on a new podcast about writing and publishing, specifically focusing on self and indie publishing. We had such a great conversation that he had to cut it into two episodes! You can listen here: Part 1 / Part 2. Matthew is a voracious reader and recently included An Interpreter in Vienna in his vlog review and reading discussion. It was wonderful to be in such good author company.
Feel free to share any of your projects in the comments! Hope your year is off to a wonderful start.
Plenty of things going on for you, I see, Kate! One that caught my eye was the third instalment of On The Calculation of Volume in your TBR list. I myself loved the first two, and I will sooner or later tackle the third one (my TBR list, as you surely can relate, grows by the minute). I have some serious catching up to do with your work too. Happy new year!
It was great having you on the show & I look forward to discovering your new projects 💓