Happy Saturday, friends.

Here's what we've been up to this week:

Our book review on Monday was Brian O'Neill writing about I Remember Fallujah by Feurat Alani, translated by Adriana Hunter, and published by Other Press. Reviews editor Diane Josefowicz writes,

Brian's done a lot of writing for us, especially of work in translation, and he's also got a wonderful blog, Shooting Irrelevance, where he writes about books, ideas, and, above all, baseball. This last he does in a way that makes me long for the bad old days of the Red Sox, when they lost game after game all season long and the only constructive thing a fan could do was wax lyrical about the game. Here's Brian on the White Sox, opening day: 

If Tim Anderson starts out with a 3-1 count leading off today, I will already be giddy about the patience of the team and how they are balancing a mature approach with their frantic enthusiasm. A loss makes me ready to write off the season. This goes on all year. ... Baseball, more than any sport, lives in the liminal. It lives in the instant of possibility.

Baseball isn't our usual purview but like Diane I'm a long time Red Sox sufferer, and living in "the instant of possibility" is very much what Necessary Fiction and literature and art are about, I hope.

Authors Sarah Freligh and Cameron Walker explored those possibilities in Tuesday's conversation about their recent books, Hereafter (Ad Hoc Fiction) and How To Capture Carbon (What Books Press). 

And on Wednesday, our October series of Dangerous Creatures continued with "The Watcher" by Taneka Thompson, a writer we're honored to publish for the first time. Fiction editor Lacey Dunham writes,

This week's piece, "The Watcher" by Taneka Thompson, lives in that uncertain space between what we know and what we refuse to know, look at, or acknowledge. Rich territory indeed! In the story, Jade is overwhelmed by the challenges of mothering a newborn, frequently left alone with the child while her spouse is on business trips, and she occasionally struggles not to see her own child as a creature leeching her away from herself. I love how this story sets up the danger as both inside and out. 

Finally, I'm wondering what you're all reading — if there's a recent work of fiction you'd like to recommend in a couple of sentences (especially fiction in translation and/or from small presses!), please send it along and I'll try to include it in an upcoming Saturday update.

Until next time,

Steve Himmer