On Sinéad

And taking up space in the apocalypse

On Sinéad, and on making an anthology

I was on vacation all last week, a long-planned and suddenly well-timed escape from the darkness enfolding the United States. In Mexico, life was good, and social media was scarce. No one seemed to care about our election, and if they were worried about what dangers Trump 2.0 might pose to their own security, or that of their compatriots, it wasn’t evident. When it did come up, folks just laughed.

I’m really grateful to have had the privilege of this momentary escape, because upon returning home I’ve been sort of flattened by deferred despair. While I was on vacation my brain sparked with creativity, avenues of inquiry, expressive possibilities to explore. My body felt great, in the sun and salt water. Now at home, I huddle under a blanket as it snows outside, my shoulder coated in a mentholated film of Biofreeze, as I watch old episodes of ER, a show about how good-looking, capable experts manage crisis in an era before the internet.

A few rays of light have penetrated the gloom far enough this week, though, to remind me that the future can hold the promise of something other than rule by a cabal of rapists, racists, and quacks. Soup & Bread, the community meal project I started 16 years ago, revs up again in December, and I’ve been heartened by the joyous response from regulars and newcomers as I go about recruiting volunteers for the coming months. Many years ago I pitched a personal essay about Soup & Bread to a glossy magazine, and the editor’s response was (loosely), “You can’t go just writing about the same thing over and over again.” But the beauty of projects like Soup & Bread is not their novelty but the fact of their endurance — and evolution — over time, and I’m never going to apologize for being redundant on this front. (If you’re in Chicago, join us!)

Also, after three days of barely leaving the house, I roused myself to go to class Wednesday night and, as ever, it loosened my tense muscles and lifted my soul. “You are a DANCER Martha,” my teacher said, at one point. “You got this — now just go and DO IT.” The following night I took a class at a circus gym here in the suburbs, and that felt good and explorative and novel in all the right ways. And tonight I’m heading into town for a ballet twofer: This evening I’m going to a class that’s part of Tuli Bera’s ongoing “Ballet Unboxed” workshop series, which I wrote about earlier this fall. Tomorrow morning I’ll be participating in a class led by Anna Wassman-Cox, the founder of the Onco-Ballet program of free ballet classes for cancer patients and survivors, which I wrote about last December. The class is at the Joffrey studios and being filmed for a documentary about Anna and her work, so I feel quite fancy to be included.

And, finally, starting to plan and strategize for the release of NOTHING COMPARES TO YOU next year is giving me life. Earlier this week my coeditor Sonya Huber published a wonderful essay on the origins of this project, how it went from concept to reality in record time. It’s linked at the top of this page, but I’ll link it again here just because you really should read it. I also won’t bury the ask: If you are a member of the media and would like an ARC, or if you have a bookstore/literary festival/random event that would like to host a book talk, please fill out this handy Google form. We have contributors all over the country (and in Ireland), and Sonya and I are willing and able to travel.

While I was in Mexico a friend texted to say they were cancelling their paid subscription to this newsletter and not to take it personally, they just didn’t want to pay “Nazi-friendly websites” any more. I did not take offence (and in truth I wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t told me because I actively ignore such things). I get it. I’m of the opinion that nothing is pure, but that we’re all allowed to make choices to spend our money/resources in ways that align with our values. I was one of the quarter-million people who unsubscribed from the Washington Post last month, not because I think Jeff Bezos will ever change his stripes but because it made me feel a little better. Call it self-care.

But it put me in mind of the eternal conundrum in publishing, which reared its ugly head again last week (?) when Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette, announced the launch of a new conservative imprint, Basic Liberty. Authors and Hachette employees were/are up in arms. But, in fact, every Big 5 publishing house has an imprint catering to conservative/reactionary readers - including our umbrella publisher Simon & Schuster, whose Threshold Editions has published multiple books by Donald Trump.

“Sinéad wouldn’t have gone with Simon & Schuster,” someone remarked in jest (but also not) when I shared the news of our book deal earlier this year. But we needed the resources of a Big 5 press to secure a modest advance so that we could in turn pay our contributors. Still, as a longtime employee and champion of small and independent publishing, I cringed in shame. Would she, I wondered?

It turns out that Sinéad’s own memoir, Rememberings, was published by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, whose Broadside Books imprint publishes fun guys like Christopher Rufo and Vivek Ramaswamy.

How then, to reconcile the legacy of this radical woman, who followed her own glorious voice and stuck a middle finger in the eye of Big Music, with the fact that we’re all swimming in and swallowing from the same polluted pool of money and power?

The day after the election, I received a bulk email from Alessandra Bastagli, the publisher of One Signal, the Simon & Schuster imprint we’re on. In it, she acknowledged the complicity of the publishing industry in platforming bigots and liars, S&S included. But, she concluded:

Thankfully, Simon & Schuster has seen the value of making a similar concerted effort and investment in progressive ideas, placing the same muscle and money behind One Signal, as a dedicated imprint for authors and books that debunk those lies and challenge that toxic worldview. One Signal may be one little imprint among giants, but we have been given the mandate and the resources to speak truth to power by a publishing group that has vast reach.

This landed with me. The title of this newsletter is a reminder to encourage readers to extend themselves, to stretch, to take risks and to take up space. Publishing this book with a large corporate publisher is, for me, all of whose books have been lovingly published by small presses, another experiment in taking up space, on a larger stage than I’m used to.

That we were somehow (miraculously) able to divert a small bucket of money from the polluted stream to support the artistry of the writers collected in our book and to get this collection of powerful, vulnerable writing in front of a wide audience, has gone far to get me out from under the blanket of despair. Because putting our money where our mouths are, sending those small stipends out via Venmo and Paypal and Zelle from the distance of a warm and foreign country last week, turned out to be the best self-care of the month.