Quick scribble of news

Notes for the new year

Paying subscribers recently received essays on repoussage, tempering, and woodcarving, among others. Somewhere in the next several paid essays, depending on timing, you can expect bladesmithing and Neil Postman—not together, and not necessarily in that order.

News et cetera

• In December, Makoto Fujimura graciously invited me to the All Saints Forum on Faith and Life, part of which I described in the December essay. An edited transcript of our conversation can be found here.

• On Saturday, January 18, I will be signing books at Silverdale Barnes and Noble from 12 to 5pm.

• You can find a signed copy of Break, Blow, Burn, & Make at the 5th Ave B&N in NYC, downstairs in Religion, or at the Marketfair B&N in NJ. The latter location also has a signed copy of On Fragile Waves. Both books are on the signed editions rack by the registers. (This information may be slightly out of date.)

• Richard Weems on Break, Blow, Burn, & Make for North American Review: “Yu’s faith may be jarring to the contemporary secular mindset at first, but the aim is true without being self-righteous or exclusionary... [H]er conclusions touch on the kind of artistic process found in centuries of thought on the creation of art, and without sentimentality…. [S]he touches on an artistic vision that feels honest and important to remind ourselves of and continue to act on.”

• Alex Mattingly on Break, Blow, Burn, & Make for Radio Free Book Club: “Beautiful meditations on writing, God, and the act of creation. Like the work of Thomas Merton or Thich Nhat Hanh, the depth of Yu’s writing is such that anyone, regardless of religious belief, will find a great deal of wisdom here worth contemplating.”

• Marguerite Sheffer on Jewel Box for Electric Literature: “Stunning.... Yu writes deftly about politics, power, and fragile hope.”

• Paperback editions for both Jewel Box and Break, Blow, Burn, & Make have been delayed, the first one indefinitely, due to low hardcover sales. A pity, since those would have been the corrected editions, but with any luck they’ll be worth the wait.

Much gratitude to those above and others for their kind words.