And here's a more personal take on, I guess, the mind that wrote these stories and that wanted to write these stories—for my newsletter #MovableWorlds. It's about, as someone put it, "the certainty of uncertainty".

https://movableworlds.co/p/perilsofcertainty

#edwrites #deathpenalty

New on my #newsletter #MovableWorlds

A Q&A with a friend and former colleague Reb: on moving from Malaysia to the U.S. for a dream magazine job at the start of the pandemic, the differences in being a creative here and there, and not feeling the need to define home ❤️ But—

"Deep down I’m really just a suburban kid with a biblical name. Low-brow tastes tickle me, ugliness intrigues me, tacky aesthetics comfort me. My childhood in Subang keeps my feet firmly on earth."

https://movableworlds.co/p/rebeccachew

I also did a Q&A with the book's translator Mike Fu around the time I wrote this essay for my #newsletter #MovableWorlds.

Read it here: https://movableworlds.co/p/14-mike-fu-you-can-be-both-as-much

#StoriesOfTheSahara #Sanmao #travelwriting

#Sanmao, real name Chen Ping, was a Taiwanese travel writer who apparently inspired generations of young women in the Chinese-speaking world. She was born some eighty years ago today, in 1943, and on this occasion, for your Sunday reading, I’m republishing here an essay I wrote a couple of years back for Mekong Review of her collection, Stories of the #Sahara—translated into English for the first time in 2019 by Mike Fu.

Read it here: https://movableworlds.co/p/rememberingsanmao

#MovableWorlds #edwrites

Mae, a friend, wrote a guest letter for my #newsletter about coming to terms with her decision to stay in #Malaysia, after years imagining what her exit plan would look like.

It's a frank, moving piece, and it was a really lovely experience working with her on it: https://movableworlds.co/p/mabelho. Have a read ❤️

More guest letters/Q&As & personal dispatches to come. Sign up at https://movableworlds.co/welcome to get them in your inbox. Thank you!

#MovableWorlds

A new #newsletter from me for #MovableWorlds to kick off the #newyear!

Instead of resolutions or anchor words, here are some fifteen quotes that I hope will guide me, and perhaps you too, through living, writing, and embracing the world in 2023, maybe even beyond. I hope you find something in here too that serves as a handhold in these challenging, but surely interesting, times.

Read it & subscribe to receive more letters like this in your inbox: https://movableworlds.co/p/hello2023

#RobertMacfarlane on #wayfinding, across the physical world and among one another: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/07/01/wayfinding-landscapes-inside-us/

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter on #writing and #exploring the world: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings10

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

📣 I am looking to commission more guest #essays for my newsletter this year!

#MovableWorlds (https://movableworlds.co) is about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world & our personal and collective place in it.

Essay examples: https://movableworlds.co/s/thegreataffair

Please pitch me if you have an idea you'd like to explore & I'd appreciate it if you would boost this too.

For original essays of at least 1,000 words, the fee is USD150.

#callforsubmissions #writingcommunity #senseofplace

📣! Btw, I am looking to commission more guest #essays for my newsletter this year.

#MovableWorlds (https://movableworlds.co) is about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world & our personal and collective place in it.

For original essays between 1,000 and 3,000 words, the fee is USD150.

Please pitch me if you have an idea you'd like to explore!

Examples at https://movableworlds.co/s/thegreataffair

Guidelines at https://www.emilyding.me/writeformv

#callforsubmissions #writingcommunity

#AlejandroChacoff on how our digital age is costing us our ability to wander, in a piece that rakes over a brief history of #flaneuring and reflects on #AntonioMuñozMolina’s rambling narrator in his novel To Walk Alone in the Crowd.

Read it at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/30/is-the-digital-age-costing-us-our-ability-to-wander

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter on #writing and #exploring the world: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings8-2

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

#PaulSalopek on how walking and writing the world, on a journey that will take about a decade with his Out of Eden project (https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/), reveals the artificialities of conventional journalism.

Read his interview at https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-19-2019-1.5180133/anna-maria-tremonti-s-most-memorable-interviews-paul-salopek-the-pilgrim-1.5180139

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings7-2

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

Next, #LouiseErdrich on a writer's sense of place. Read it at https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/28/books/where-i-ought-to-be-a-writer-s-sense-of-place.html

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings6-2

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

Resuming this thread after the holiday season! Here's #JackHerrera with thoughts on the usefulness of journalism and activism as an approach in looking at the world, through the art of #MinervaCuevas.

Read it at https://issuu.com/columbiajournalismreview/docs/cjr-spring21-0614/34

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings5-2

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

Next up is "Sweet Bitter Blues" by #AmandaPetrusich, on her journey to find out why American Blues has a special hold over some Japanese. What resonates with me are her tentative explorations, self-consciously battling reductive distillations, testing her existing ideas against what she sees, hoping to get some measure of things right.

Read it at https://main.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/1066-sweet-bitter-blues

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings4

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

I also love this essay by #AllynGaestel on how you can reorient how you see the world by choosing where you live, which window you look out of—in her case, #Lagos, #Nigeria...

Read it at https://www.guernicamag.com/in-lagos-space-for-my-thoughts-to-fly/

More #curated #readings from my #newsletter: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings3#details

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

Next up is "To the Pavement" by #LeahSottile—on navigating #reporting #roadtrips during the pandemic.

"Typically when I go on the road, I work from the time I wake up in the morning to the time I go to sleep, jamming days with driving, interviews, scene-gathering, unannounced stop-ins. I come home exhausted, usually, but remembering why I love what I do."

Read it in her #newsletter: https://leahsottile.substack.com/p/3-to-the-pavement

More #curated #readings here: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings2

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

First up: "#Writing, #Traveling, and the Creative Act" by #SuzanneJoinson.

A line in this piece—"#Stories of human nature are linked with pathologies of #places”—encapsulates so well what I've always felt animated about that I've relied on it ever since to anchor my #explorations & my work, especially when I feel myself losing my way.

Read it here: https://lithub.com/writing-traveling-and-the-creative-act/

For more #curated #readings, read my #newsletter: https://movableworlds.co/p/landmarkings1#details

🧵 #MovableWorlds #edreads

In my #newsletter, I've been posting #roundups—increasingly digestible 🙃—of #journalism & #literature about how we make sense of a rapidly changing #world and our #place in it & how we tell its #stories.

To bring back some good reads from the archives, I'll drip here some pieces I recommended in all 15 #Landmarkings issues so far about #writing, #exploring, & #travel.

Like them? Sign up with your email for new issues in your inbox: https://movableworlds.co

A thread 🧵
#MovableWorlds #edreads