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Monika Sengul-Jones

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RELAXING INTO TENSE

Materials | Hugo House | Write-O-Rama | Skye | May 2022

tense_hugowriteorama_2022 Download

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My days are quotidian. Day job. Family life. Domestic chores. #barre classes. Early morning writing groups. Weekends in the mountains. To counter my flurry of #awpfashionfeed #awp conference photos, here’s a snapshot of my #workfromhomefashion. I appreciate the unusual and the community that comes from a packed schedule. When I’m out, I’m often mistaken for a raging extrovert, but I cherish my time alone. I think there should be a category of #extrovertedintrovert (maybe there is?). Thank goodness for ordinary days. #writinglife #divineinmyeveryday

It’s raining so I traded the bird dress for something with more coverage. I haven’t bought new clothes in long time. The blazer is second hand from a shop in Fremont from that year I had a very fancy job in a high rise downtown. It’s good to repurpose things. I think that’s what I do in my writing, too, remake what I have into something that makes sense for now. Definitely, I am a work in progress, and happy to be able to own that. But socializing after spending so much of my life behind a screen does wear; my jaws were so sore this morning I couldn’t fully open my mouth. Grinding my teeth, I was, apparently. I did enjoy being in the audience for panels about folk tales, community, diaspora, numbers, and agency representation, so I don’t really mind. I want more conversations about missed opportunities, turning the narrative around, reframing the story, desire and materiality, and the fact that—let’s be real—impossible things are happening all around us, to paraphrase the fabulous @pchza and realism is the farce. #awp23 #seattle #divinityandme #womenwriters #readwomen #awpfashion #writersofinstagram #bookfashion

What I ended up wearing today (borrowed boots, thanks @vanessajonesgosseen, borrowed dress from my mother, photos by @nihatsengul and children). Colorful coat, cup, and good vibes are mine). You’ll have to forgive—or prepare to indulge in—what may be a whirlwind of writing conference posts🤓 #awp23 #awpfashionfeed #seattlewriters #divinityandme

Conference must-have #awp23 #awp, business cards stating the obvious and how to find me, mask, snack, notebook, hairband, charger, and not pictured, my messy list of panels and events to attend, starting off with a session spearheaded by Jason Magabo Perez, San Diego Poet Laureate in conversation with radical Filipinx writers in the diaspora. #jasonmagaboperez #poetry #seattlewriters #sandiegopoetlaureate #sandiegopoetry #idoillustration #radicalwriting

Oh hey there, if we’ve met on the socials, or in real life but it has been a while, this is what I look like! Hi! And this is what I’m planning to wear to #awp23 this weekend in #seattle. I’ve been writing fiction and teaching writing at @hugohouse for nearly two years now. But I’ve never met irl many of the people I know in this world, so I’m SO stoked to be at my first writing conference! Tho to be honest, I’ll probably have a mask on, and—given the wet and cold forecast—may pull a giant brown fleece and pink raincoat over these outfits and trade the heels for waterproof boots. (I’ll post a photo update, okay?) Today, it’s just fun to get excited and visualize myself finally out of my remote work uniform of yoga pants, leg warmers, and oversized sweatshirt. My conference outfits are extra nerdy, from left to right, they actually contain cheesy metaphors marking my intentions. Waves for going with the flow, glasses for documenting the experience, and birds for getting that view. Please come say hi! And let me know—do you have a panel, book fair booth, or offsite event I should attend? Please tell me about it! I’m attending to be a loving reader and lift up and expand my growing literary community. #bookstagram #readwomen #seattlewriters #writerscommunity #writerssupportingwriters #awp #divinityandme

I stayed up late—my pulse racing, my heart in my throat—to get here, to the end. To where the acknowledgments begin. I wanted to know the answers. (I actually read these first, and @rebeccamakkai , author of I Have Some Questions For You, invites readers to buy the book from an independent bookstore. I did, @griffinbaybookstore is great, and decided to be cute and make an Instagram post since I haven’t in a while and yada yada, you know the excuses). But oh, this book. This book! Oh my god, I’m still reeling with the sinewy strength and razor-sharpness of it. I felt it was especially written for me. Perhaps other women who came of age before social media, before #metoo/online shaming, will feel the same way. I felt seen on what we endured. What we accepted. What we protected. What we ignored. What we kept secret. I saw how hard it is to draw lines. The book is a burning flame. It’s bright, warming, and it hurts. A riveting confessional. There’s a podcast host. A boarding school. A murder. A mystery to solve. It’s both of our time and a 1990s period piece. And cleverly, painfully feminist and anti-racist. In the end, I want a resolution, and it was there, in the story. In my story, the resolution is in the deeply contradictory ways movements (like feminism, like anti-racism) are messily expressed through our complicated technologies of living. Thank you, RM. #ihavesomequestionsforyou #rebeccamakkai #bookreview #readwomen #readfiction #feministnovel #institutionalracism #believewomen #griffinbaybookstore #bookstagram #bookreviewersofinstagram

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