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Since 2012, I’ve been writing about books. And the act of reading. And the importance of story and narrative. But, mostly, the underlying theme of all I write is how taking a moment to stop and digest some longform text — instead of scrolling, instead of watching a video, instead of multitasking — can be one of the most grounding things we can do for ourselves. Here’s the one-stop online home for all this writing.

You can read more about me and my work by moseying over here. Want to peruse periodic “essay drops” — excerpts from my work-in-progress essay collection about Homesickness? Here ya go.

Yaa Gyasi in Charlotte
Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon

Yaa Gyasi in Charlotte

The other week, I got to see Yaa Gyasi at the closing event for a NEA Big Read event, coordinated by the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. Hooray for a new friend who knew about it and invited me! (Too bad I didn’t know about the initiative until the end of it and too bad that I never finished Homegoing when my book club in Dublin read it just as we were preparing to move back to the US. Guess life got busy, but I will rectify that soon especially now that I have a signed copy…)

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Connecting With Tommy Orange
Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon

Connecting With Tommy Orange

I read There There by Tommy Orange soon after it was released in 2018. If you’re not familiar, Orange’s novel about “Urban Indians” in Oakland was a Pulitzer finalist and a National Book Award longlister. The historical Occupation of Alcatraz, a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz by 89 Native Americans from 1969-1971, plays a large role. (This was new history to me.) It’s richly layered, cleverly derivative — the novel’s title comes from the Gertrude Stein line “There is no there there” — and made me want to learn more about urban-based Native populations.

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Calabash International Literary Festival
Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon

Calabash International Literary Festival

“Why is it that reggae achieved global status, but very little else did?” This question appears near the end of this NYT piece about the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica, but this question — posed by Kwame Dawes, one of the founders of Calabash — encapsulates some of my own thoughts about not just literary festivals (or book festivals, or whatever you’d like to call them), but about the role of books in the greater “entertainment” ecosystem. In the case of Calabash, the festival has “strive[d] to create an authenticating pipeline for Jamaican writers along the lines of what brought local musicians international attention.” Booker winner Marlon James “was ready to give up writing” until he attended a Calabash session in 2000. (!!)

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Sam Bankman-Fried Doesn’t Read
Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon Book Culture Amy Wilson Sheldon

Sam Bankman-Fried Doesn’t Read

Booklovers went bonkers over this WaPo headline the other day: ‘Sam Bankman-Fried doesn’t read. That tells us everything.’ I shared it in stories because Matt had sent it to me with the comment that it sounds a bit “vegan-ish,” meaning people who create their entire identities as “book people” project the same sort of superiority and inflexibility that vegans stereotypically do.

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