I’m at home past lunch hour. The adults are fed, the children are watching TV in the sitting room. I have a moment to myself, so I decide to sit outside and enjoy the warmth of the sun. I see a praying mantis resting on the fender of the car, then another joins. This is […]
About MKB
Mildred Kiconco Barya is a North Carolina-based writer, educator, and poet of East African descent. She teaches and lectures globally, and is the author of four full-length poetry collections, most recently "The Animals of My Earth School" released by Terrapin Books, 2023. Her prose, hybrids, and poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, New England Review, and elsewhere. She’s now working on a collection of creative nonfiction, and her essay, “Being Here in This Body”, won the 2020 Linda Flowers Literary Award and was published in the North Carolina Literary Review. She serves on the boards of African Writers Trust, Story Parlor, and coordinates the Poetrio Reading events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/Café. She blogs here: www.mildredbarya.com
End of the semester, near end of year and the many endings of things, which also imply beginnings and the substance of gathering.
Let me start from the middle. It was in San Francisco in July this year that I experienced life profoundly during a visit to the Minnesota Street Project, housed in three warehouses in Dogpatch district. The warehouses themselves, while they looked newly refurbished, still “betrayed” an air of abandonment from their previous lives. There was […]
George Saunders’ Endearing Fox 8, Postmodernism Fiction, Italo Calvino’s Lightness, Propositions, and so on.
I have been teaching a lot of foxes this semester and murder. I should say that by now I shouldn’t really be surprised how my workshop classes end up experimenting with murder, mystery and light-heartedness, yet still, I’m often amazed by how much beauty and brokenness emerges from the stories we read and write. After concluding […]
California Summer 2017
30 days on a houseboat in Sausalito, California The word that sums up my time is Immersion, not just my work but everything around me. A few days after I arrive, I’m all in, a sweet spot to be. Wide windows bring in light, beauty and joy. I’m wrapped in light as I revise my […]
Announcing two Readings: Sausalito Library and Adobe Books, CA.
Friends and book lovers, I’m wrapping up my one-month residence in California with two readings: One at Sausalito Library (Wednesday June 28 at 7pm) and the second at Adobe Books in San Francisco (Thursday June 29 at 7 pm). See the details below. It will be my pleasure to have your presence. Looking forward to seeing […]
Power to the alternate memory of history
Do Not Say We Have Nothing, is the most ambitious novel I’ve so far read this year. Madeleine Thien’s 2016 Man Booker finalist is not only ambitious in its narrative structure but also in its memorialization and retelling of the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong’s communist regime. Lovers of fat historical novels will enjoy this book and […]
I’m not Whining, I’m just sayin’ it’s the illusion of competence
In all my blogging years, this, I think is the first blog post I’m writing from a teaching perspective. I’ll make it short. I’ve always preferred to blog as a writer, reader, book reviewer, and so on, but strange events over the past few days have made me reflect on my work as a teaching […]
Remind Me of What We Have
Today is the last day of class and it coincides with the passing on of my father. Exactly one year. I’m filled with warmth and gratitude for all the love and comforting presences of my friends and family. There’s this phrase playing in my head again and again: Remind me of what we have. I […]
Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad Invites Us to Commune with the Past
This book will break your heart then mend it and break it again. The history of slavery is a loaded cannon but Colson softens the blow without diminishing the cruel realities of that era by converting the metaphor […]
Remembering Okla Elliott
Non-stop news of death and dying this week and last week. When that starts to overwhelm I wonder why my friends are dying. Why seemingly everyone I know as a friend, family or colleague is losing a family member or friend. The air is pregnant with death I cannot wait for it to break. I […]
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MKB: Thank you so much! I would love to read yours too ...
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Brenda C Wilson: Congratulations! I hope to get a chance to read yo...
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Kwasi opoku: Why did Nana usually say that Adjoa did not know t...
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