KATE Zambreno admits that being photographed for a magazine doesn’t come naturally to her. I don’t even take selfies," she tells me. If you look at my phone, it’s all photos of my kids." We’re sitting on the patio of a café in Brooklyn, New York, about an hour after her photo shoot for this profile. Starlings hop around our feet gleaning crumbs, and in the yard next door preschool kids laugh and holler.
During the shoot she was asked to pose at a desk in her home nearby, but Zambreno composed most of her latest book, The Light Room: On Art and Care, out from Riverhead Books in July, sitting on her sofa, not far from where her children play. We got a lot of photos of me in a flowy dress on the couch," she says, her lips hinting at a smirk. Then she changed into a buttercup-yellow sweatshirt and black jeans My gender sense of self isn’t so femme," she says) and moved to a setting that better captures both the spirit of the book and her family: Prospect Park. T showed the photographer the linden tree in the Nethermead meadow], and of course my kids were scooting down the hill like maniacs, and climbing the tree, chanting, Our tree, our tree." A wistful, relaxed look blossoms on her face. We always feel very happy when we get back to the park."
The Light Room, her ninth book, chronicles Zambreno’s life and preoccupations as a teaching artist, avid reader, and mother during some of the most intense seasons of the pandemic, beginning in the fall of 2020. At that point her oldest daughter was three, and her youngest daughter was a newborn. Along with her partner, the painter and critic John Vincler, Zambreno and the girls sheltered in their apartment in Brooklyn and, as for many in the borough, Prospect Park was a life saver, a place to breathe free from the fear of COVID-19. In the first section of the book, titled Lightboxes," Zambreno writes:
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Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
The Sea Elephants
SHASTRI Akella's poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father's violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother's unfathomable grief.
The History of a Difficult Child
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
The Sorrows of Others
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs— sometimes the first few sentences— I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matter how radical, ill-advised, or baffling to those around them, seemed inevitable and true to me.
We Are a Haunting
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy.
RADICAL ATTENTION
IN HER LATEST BOOK, THE LIGHT ROOM: ON ART AND CARE, PUBLISHED BY RIVERHEAD BOOKS IN JULY, KATE ZAMBRENO CELEBRATES THE ETHICAL WORK OF CAREGIVING, THE SMALL JOYS OF ORDINARY LIFE, AND AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD WITHIN HUMAN SPACES.
The Fine Print
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GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
