Author Abroad #1
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Greetings, friends!
I’m excited to begin this journey with you. For those of you I have not yet met, I am an American expat, currently residing in Bangladesh, who has lived abroad for almost three decades. I’m also the debut author of The Golden Land, a novel inspired by the six years I lived in Yangon, Myanmar.
Author Abroad is my newsletter on books, writing, and life abroad. I plan to publish new editions about once a month, but that could change as we go.😊 This is my first time trying a project like this, so please ask questions and let me know what you’d like to hear more (or less) about. I look forward to seeing where this takes us.
Writing
What a rollercoaster ride these past several years have been—each stage of the writing-publishing continuum filled with its own ups and downs: The initial buzz of writing that first draft several years ago. The long, winding stretch of revision while obtaining my MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. The thrill of learning that The Golden Land had won the 2021 AWP Prize for the Novel and was going to be published!!! The tedium of the publishing process. The awkwardness of book promotion. So many contradictory emotions in the lead up to publication day. And now, suddenly, here I am, a published author! 🥳🎉🍾
Writing a novel is an intensely personal experience. As The Golden Land now makes its way into the hands of you the reader, I feel as if the inner workings of my mind have been strung out on a clothesline for all the world to see. I am both nervous and excited to see what you will take away from the book. My hope is that you’ll become as enchanted as I am with the history and culture of Myanmar, and that The Golden Land will help raise awareness about the situation there today. (Please see the Myanmar page of my website to learn more.)
I’m ever so grateful to those who attended my virtual launch, hosted by Cambridge Common Writers, the wonderful alumni association of my Lesley University MFA program. I was touched to see so many friends and family in attendance, and can’t think of a better way to have launched The Golden Land into the world.
For those of you in the Boston area, I hope to see you at my in-person book launch on March 16 at Porter Square Books, where I’ll be in conversation with Michael Lowenthal. RSVP here.
Life Abroad
My husband and I moved to Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2022. Although we’ve lived in many different countries over the past 25 years, this posting is different in important ways. The first is that our two daughters no longer live with us, which is disorienting, to say the least. In previous postings, my life revolved around theirs—helping them get settled in their new schools, building a community where they could grow and thrive, and sharing spontaneous and unlimited moments of togetherness with them. Nowadays, I have to negotiate an 11-hour time difference just hear their voices and 24 hours of travel to wrap my arms around them. 😞
On a more uplifting note, this is also the first posting where I’ve begun to introduce myself as a writer. Although I’ve been writing for several years, not being published made me shy about calling myself a writer, let alone an author. This was silly, of course. Anyone who devotes their life to putting words on a page is a writer! But I’m not gonna lie—the validation of being published feels pretty good, too.
My first impressions of Bangladesh are mixed. Arriving at the tail end of the rainy season, I found Dhaka unexpectedly charming at first. The infamous haze had not yet begun, and the city held a certain appeal:
Since then, the pollution has steadily increased from “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy” to “hazardous.” Dhaka also turns out to be the noisiest city in the world according to this recent news article. And then there’s the lack of women out and about on the streets, which will always make me uneasy. As a hearing-impaired woman who likes to walk for both exercise and mental health, I’m finding these aspects of the city particularly challenging.
On the flip side, the Bangladeshi people I’ve had the opportunity to meet and spend time with have been extremely welcoming, eager to introduce us to their food, history, and culture. Bangladesh also has a vibrant arts and literature community, which I’m excited to learn more about. I’ve especially enjoyed participating this past weekend in the Dhaka Lit Fest, where I had the opportunity to meet and speak with such illustrious authors as Amitav Ghosh, whose novel The Glass Palace was one of the inspirations for The Golden Land, and Shehan Karunatilaka, whose novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida just won the 2022 Booker Prize.
Books
Since moving to Bangladesh, I’ve begun collecting novels and other books about the country. The first one I read is called Golden Bangladesh at 50: Contemporary Poems and Stories edited by Shazia Omar, who also happens to be my yoga teacher! This remarkable collection of writing by Bangladeshi writers from around the world celebrates Bangladesh’s 50 years of independence by exploring moments of everyday life from the 1971 Liberation War through the 2020 pandemic.
I also enjoyed reading A Golden Age: A Novel by Tahmima Anam, the first of her Bangla Desh trilogy, about a young widowed mother living through Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War. (We seem to have a golden theme going here🤗) I’ve already learned so much about the history and culture of Bangladesh through these two books and look forward to reading and learning more. On my list for next month are Books 2 and 3 in Anam’s Bangla Desh trilogy, The Good Muslim and Bones of Grace, along with several new novels I picked up at this weekend’s Dhaka Lit Fest.
Thanks again for subscribing. I wish you all a happy, peaceful, and fulfilling 2023!
Liz