Notes from the Future
More details about our upcoming reading and a fundraiser for Transit Books
Next weekend we have our reading coming up with Tom McAllister, Athena Dixon, and Juliet Diaz at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. In advance of the event, we’ll release a podcast episode with Tom on Wednesday, and you can take a listen to our two episodes with Athena from the archives here:
Some details about these authors:
Tom McAllister: Tom’s 2010 memoir Bury Me in My Jersey explores his relationship with his late father through their shared love of the Philadelphia Eagles. Partially inspired by Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, it touches on the nonsensical dedication of intense fandom and its role in a person’s relations and life. His novels How to Be Safe (2018) and The Young Widower’s Handbook (2017) were both well- and widely-reviewed. His newest essay collection, It All Felt Impossible (2025), contains an essay for each year of his life, painting a picture of his life through snapshots of memories across time. Most of these essays were previously published in various literary journals.
Athena Dixon: Athena’s 2023 memoir in essays, The Loneliness Files, explores the isolation caused by our collective online existence and exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Sometimes contemplating news stories of individuals who died alone and went undiscovered for a length of time, Athena explores her personal experience of living alone in an apartment during the years of lockdown and social distancing while tying that experience to broader society. Her previous essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman (2020), details her experience recovering from the dissolution of a marriage.
Juliet Diaz: Juliet just released the second edition of her bestseller, The Altar Within. Her book aims to guide individuals towards their inner truth and liberation while confronting power structures. After the success of the first edition, Juliet reclaimed her own language that had been altered during the editing process and released a version that better reflected her own voice. She is also a literary activist and founder of the Literary Craft Society, which she runs with TW’s Neva Kares Talladen, an open and nurturing community for writers.
After the event, the writers and organizers will also be meeting up at the Tired Hands Mt. Airy Biergarten to hang out and talk to any folks who want to continue the conversation from the reading.
Another episode coming down the pipeline is with Joanna Walsh, author of Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters. On October 24th (this Friday), one of her US publishers, the Bay Area’s Transit Books, is hosting a fundraiser to help them secure another ten years of publishing experimental literature. As part of the fundraiser, Joanna is offering a manuscript consultation via their silent auction, which ends on October 25th. Here are the links for information and tickets:
The full episode won’t air until January, but here is a clip from her interview talking about the publisher and fundraiser.
Please note the correct dates above, as she doesn’t get a chance to confirm the date while talking and mentions October 30th as the closing date for the auction.