It’s March and as of this post, I’m not committed to anything other than working on my zine!
The cover is by the lovely Iman Geddy which turned out great. I really wanted to incorporate a fellow Somali in the project and I’m a huge fan of Iman’s work (check out her Instagram account!).
My best pal, Angel Cruz, was gracious enough to act as editor on this zine. It’s a combination of 1) cleaning up the essays without altering the place and time they were written in and 2) editing the new stuff like the introduction.
I also reached out to Lara, whose work I’ve loved since she drew the great Batman ever, to contribute interior art to accompany the essays. You can find her work here.
My 2019 February reads:
- The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli
- The Caged Queen by Kristen Ciccarelli
- A Black So Black by L. L. McKinney
- When I Arrived at the Castle by Emily Carroll
- The Afterward by E.K. Johnston
- Shut Up You’re Pretty by Téa Mutonji
- The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad
- Hereditary Blue by Oubah Osman
Time to check-in on my reading resolution and see how I’m doing so far. I’ve cheated a bit and included books that I finished in the first two days of March. All of the books I’ve read have been written by women. Not something I’ve done intentionally but a happy surprise!
No translated books this month! I’m starting to realize this goal requires a more active approach to it. I’m not naturally stumbling onto translated titles.
I read one comic this month and it’s by Emily Carroll. I love her horror comics so much and so far, I’ve been pretty good about reading comics from different genres.
I’m still in the process of listening to The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty on audio. I’m not including this in the list above because I’m not done yet but I still wanted to mention it because I’ve already read the book and this counts as a re-read.
I’ve read a book by a Somali writer! More specifically, I read a poetry chapbook by Oubah Osman who I got to meet through my job. Anstruther Press had a book launch on March 1 that was celebrating the release of their winter titles from six poets. What’s great about Oubah’s chapbook (aside from being great) was the acknowledgement of another Somali poet who mentored her: Ladan Osman.
Looks like my process overall has been great. I did have a moment where I regretted not reading more Black women since February was Black History Month…but then I remembered that I read Black writers regardless of the month!
Till next time…
Ardo Omer 