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#LazarusRisingGiveaway

November 17, 2020

Lazarus Rising***PRE-RELEASE GIVEAWAY***
November 14 & November 21, 2020

Enter to win a pre-release hardback of Lazarus Rising and paperback reissue of In the Shadow of the Bridge both by acclaimed author Joseph Caldwell. Books will be shipped* to you free of charge direct from @DelphBks.

*free shipping is limited to addresses within the USA.

Lazarus Rising tells an unexpected love story. Love, kindness, and the journey to health sometimes have unanticipated consequences. Loss isn’t always what we imagine it to be.

It’s easy to be a part of this moment.

TO ENTER: tag someone you love in the comment box below our announcement on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter then feel free to check our other offerings at DelphiniumBooks.com.

You may enter as often as you wish. Each unique tag will count as a new entry.

Each week, one participant will be picked at random and announced on the following Monday morning.

We hope to bring attention to WORLD AIDS DAY: Unite in support of people living with and affected by HIV and to remember those who lost their lives to AIDS. @WorldAIDSDayUS

If living in a world with COVID-19 has taught us all anything, it’s that it takes COMMUNITY EFFORT to keep EVERYONE SAFE. Be informed, Be safe, Be kind.

This promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc., FaceBook, or Twitter. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Delphinium Books, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter of responsibility, and agree to Instagram, FaceBook, or Twitter’s terms of use.

Filed Under: General

I’m Speaking. I’m Writing.

October 21, 2020

 

By Bina Shah

Last week during the American Vice Presidential debate, the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris said five magical words in response to Mike Pence’s constant interruptions during her responses: “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking.” There were no apologies; there was no equivocation. Kamala Harris was clear she had the mic and she was not going to be interrupted. Every woman who has had the experience of being overridden, shouted down, or simply ignored because of her gender, clutched these words to her chest and cheered. It’s no wonder this moment went viral as it plucked a resonating chord in the hearts of so many women who have, all their lives, been longing to be heard.

Women’s writing is an extended version of Kamala Harris’s statement. When a woman writes, she is speaking. Her voice must be listened to as you read her words. There is no question of interrupting, of mansplaining, of telling her that you know better than she does. She is the authority; the story is her domain. I’m reminded of this as I think back on three pieces of women’s writing with voices so authoritative, so self-assured that all I could do was listen and be astounded.

The first is last year’s Booker winner Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. This book, about contemporary life in the United Kingdom for Black British women, is told from many women’s viewpoints and yet the voice speaking is always Evaristo’s, warm and witty behind the scene. How inspiring to read as a woman masterfully controls a narrative which is made up of many women’s and nonbinary voices: a polyphony that delights in a world where so many men’s voices dominate.

The second is The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste. This novel, shortlisted for this year’s Booker, tells the story of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Again Mengiste’s voice is the authority: her central characters include Hirut, a young woman who takes up arms in the rebellion. Mangiste centers the women’s experiences of war in her story. There is even a Greek chorus that speaks at various points in the book commenting on the violence visited upon the Ethiopian people. In my mind, that chorus is made up of women.

The third piece of writing comes from an unknown writer from Kashmir called Saba Mahjoor. I recently read two short stories published online. “How to Love Militantly – Or How to Make Gulkand” is about a young girl who loses her first love to the violence committed by Indian armed forces. “On the Exorcism of a Married Woman,” describes how women subvert tradition and cultural constrictions surrounding fertility and childbearing by using their indirect power. I was exhilarated to read stories from a young Kashmiri woman when most of the recognized and established authors from this region are men. Her voice, quiet and melancholy, but completely assured and truthful, was speaking from the page right into my ear.

Such is the maliciousness of patriarchy that whenever a woman speaks or writes, on some level these activities are perceived as acts of resistance when they should be as natural as when men do it. Consider that women are our first storytellers: they tell children bedtime stories and sing them lullabies; they are the keepers of folklore and the traditions of their cultures. So many women are scared into keeping silent but women’s writing manages to uplift their voices, in song or verse or prose that shakes with its own strength. History is filled with women writing secret diaries, writing poetry or manuscripts published under masculine names, and even an entire language in rural China spoken only by women.

As a woman who writes there is no greater joy than the possibility of 300 pages in which my voice is allowed to achieve full throttle. This is why women push to be published and why it’s important for their writing to be read by both men and women, not banished to the questionable world of “women’s writing” and “chick lit.” The world is not a fair place when half its population is expected to remain silent and submissive. Its full potential can only be reached when this restriction is deliberately, purposefully lifted by the gatekeepers of publishing, but more importantly, challenged by women themselves in all forums.

Image: DDIworld.com/blog/intersectional-feminism, 10-21-20.

Filed Under: General

Putting the Finishing Touches on My Second Story Collection

September 28, 2020

You Would Have Told Me Not To

When I first submitted this manuscript to Delphinium, it looked a bit different. It was titled Big Guy (after the closing novella), and it contained two stories that were a little shorter than some of the others, but which I felt fit with the book’s primary theme at the time: the effects of toxic masculinity on men and women alike. They were both grittier and more abrupt than the others, and both featured male protagonists. Joe Olshan liked the book, but rightly identified that those two stories weren’t—well, they weren’t as good as the others. They didn’t go into particularly complicated emotional territory. That was what I needed to hear, honestly, and it was a clear sign that Joe was the right editor for this book.
Joe asked me to make a couple of big changes before publication. First, he wanted to change the book’s title to You Would Have Told Me Not To, after the title of his favorite story. He also wanted me to write two new stories that would replace the weaker ones. What I came up with were the stories “Her Kind of People” (about a young woman in an uncertain relationship who’s working as a server at a wedding reception, where she overhears two of the guests discuss the regrets they’ve had about their own marriages); and “This Will Come as a Surprise to You” (which begins with a new mother in her 30s unexpectedly encountering her abusive ex-husband, and then learning that he’s both sober and engaged). These stories came about in part because of the change of the book’s title, which allowed me more thematic room. “This Will Come as a Surprise to You” in particular was a surprise to me; I’d originally wanted to tell the story from the ex-husband’s perspective, but whenever I did, his ex-wife Lisa—with her knowledge of all his bad behavior—became a kind of antagonist, a threat to his new marriage, which is absolutely what I didn’t want. I came to understand that I’d have a much better and richer collection if I could find a way to tell the story of their marriage through Lisa’s eyes, and to show that—no matter what steps her ex has taken to reform himself—Lisa still carries enormous damage with her, damage that guides the way she lives her second husband and infant son. The book became less hyperfocused on men and their regrets, and became more clearly a book about how damage ripples through a variety of relationships over time. I’m very proud of both those new stories, and grateful to Joe for pushing me to make each better and deeper as he looked at them in draft form.

Filed Under: General

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