There is only so much magic in medicine.
In a season of gratitude and giving, the most joy I have to share with you comes in the form of dogs.
This week we were pleased, proud, and honored to bring you new poems from Leigh Chadwick, a new essay by Ali Bryan, and new fiction from Laurence Klavan. We also hired four new editors. No post about new books this week but we’re working on arbitrary/silly year-end book lists for next week.
Dear Identity Theory Readers,
This was a busy week at the site, and I’m struggling to focus on a narrative thread for this email. Part of that may be fallout from my recent failed experiment with decaf.
In extremely fortunate news, though, I have plenty of new dog photos to bail me out—I mean, to share.
First, meet the newest addition to my family, a yellow lab puppy named Hank who now lives with my dad in Tennessee:
My dad just picked him up yesterday.
Second, December brought a sweet #vanlife dog to our “adventure dog” calendar here in Nevada:
We often talk about getting an Australian cattle dog mix to be a companion to our corgi, but this Wallace character is as close as we’ve gotten.
And finally, we’ve started decorating for the holidays—both the house and the dog. Iroh is all in:
In a season of gratitude and giving, the most joy I have to share with you comes in the form of these dogs.
Oh, and new stuff on our website.
There is only so much magic in medicine.
This week started with two Leigh Chadwick poems. I was so excited to acquire these poems that I wrote her an acceptance on my phone while standing in line at Walgreens.
The collection starts like this, with the poem “Frankie Cosmos Is a Good Band Name”:
I always wait at least forty-five minutes after therapy before having sex. Every spring I pick up a second job planting pollen in dandelions. On Thursdays I listen to the same Frankie Cosmos track on repeat as I follow myself into the afternoon.
And here’s a bit of the second poem, “Volcano Poem”:
I have learned there is only so much magic in medicine, only so much a mask can cover, that most of my poems mention hieroglyphics and I don’t know why, and that volcanos can cause thunderstorms now, it’s a thing, or maybe it was always a thing, so says the article you read to me on your iPhone while we let our pillows do the jobs they were hired to do. It’s late into the night and the night yawns. Every leap year I dream snakes curled into fireplaces.
Rest the rest of the poems.
New Editors
On Tuesday, I officially announced the hiring of four new editors: Wilson Koewing, Jamie Guiney, Olivia Cailliarec, and Costa B. Pappas.
Wilson’s coming on as a Prose Editor, helping to finalize decisions on both fiction and nonfiction. (Our longtime assistant editor Carole Burkett is sharing that role.) Jamie is reading fiction. Olivia and Costa are joining us as assistant editors who will mostly be reading nonfiction and helping with other projects on the site.
Wilson and Jamie are veterans of the online writing world, with Wilson having published fiction and essays widely and Jamie having been longlisted for several Pushcarts for fiction. Olivia and Costa are emerging writers who have done significant editing in college and are finding their footing in the world of publishing. We were thrilled to add these four good people to our team.
You can follow Wilson and Jamie on Twitter, while Costa and Olivia seem to prefer Instagram.
Expired Dreams
On Wednesday, we published CNF about Paris called “C’est La Vie.” Here’s what Ali Bryan, the author of the piece, wrote about her essay on Twitter:
“Thrilled that my essay ‘C'est la Vie’ was just published in @IdentityTheory about expired dreams, love and going to Paris too late. Extra feels because it's the last trip I took before Covid and the last time I saw my mom.”
Here’s a clip from the essay:
It is breezy in North Paris. Stalks of lavender bend through filigree fences. A streetcar lumbers by and lifts our hair. My sister nearly steps in shit. “Who would do that?” she asks. “Who would just leave that in the middle of the sidewalk?”
We pass a Starbucks and the entrance to a mall. It’s garbage day in the neighborhood. Rats, petite and black as revolution, sprint alongside the curb. The first restaurant we come upon is a fifties-style American diner with chrome-rimmed tables and pink accents. The novelty would be appealing, if we were in Detroit. We settle on an Italian restaurant. The waiters look French enough and the chairs are velvet and mid-century green. As we head back to the hotel my sister asks, “Did that shit look human to you?”
Read the rest of “C’est La Vie.”
Repair Request
Thursday, we posted fiction from celebrated dramatist Laurence Klavan. It’s called “Repair” and starts like this:
“How do you feel?”
Lex had asked the question so many times it had become rote, yet today she yearned to know the answer. She couldn’t explain why.
The boy—man, young man, guy in his twenties, Boone, who knew or cared what she called him?—strained to lift his head from his pillow. His lean face, fair before, was now so pale it was translucent, transparent, whatever was the right word, she wasn’t thinking straight. Anyway, he looked saint-like, Lex thought.
“Better now,” he rasped.
Putting this email to bed.
I can’t come up with a better conclusion for this email, so here’s a photo of the dog snuggling up for winter:
And a reminder:
Merry Corgmas,
Matt Borondy
Founding EIC
Identity Theory