On the butter-yellow staircase at Poet’s House, I always take a moment to pause. The staircase leads on to a room I wish I had discovered earlier, with book nooks and wide tables overlooking the water. The building is in an unlikely spot down by Wall Street, and I got a chance to revisit only […]
Shaka – bracelets made out of shells, here shown in different stages of the cutting and carving process. Currently, I’m in transit. I’m headed to New York to speak at the Muslim Protagonist conference at Columbia University. Just three weeks ago, I was in Dhaka living an entirely separate life. And for the interim it’s […]
This week, I have a piece out in CultureStrike on transnational adoption. It’s a very personal piece and it took a lot of work to put together (thanks, Michelle!) so please give it a read. Now, back to the action. A mala (floral necklace) made of red roses, orange and yellow accent flowers. I’ve left […]
Street art on a closed sliding door; a painting of a monocle-wearing man’s face whose beard is made of letters. And now, a personal anecdote from my travel in Spain. In Madrid, the streets are narrow and sidewalks accommodate one person, maybe two, at a time. It’s hot and you’re ill and wandering around. […]
Traveling is a sensory overload. I’m winding down on my international tour through Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. In a few days, I’ll be back with family in Bangladesh trying to build a whole ‘nother life on the subcontinent (though I’m sure my compulsions — book buying, tea drinking, and writing about people in […]
The prompt for this piece was an exercise that I did at the Indiana University Writer’s Conferencethis year with our poetry teacher, Gabrielle Calvocoressi. A fan of 3 or 4 pronged projects, she challenged us to write a letter that was also a map leading to (at the retreat) a cemetery to someone we’d not […]
Being on the road lesson #1: don’t expect yourself to get as much done as you planned. I had this grand plan to write about each of the places I had visited right away, publishing a post a week, doing them all justice… alas. You’ll just have to settle for my retrospective. We’ll start where […]
Passionate about ordinary things, like how ingredients become food – that detail was included in the winning story told at the Moth event I attended last week. The detail was in reference to the storyteller’s friend (the subject of their piece), and I felt a kinship because of that choice; I too am passionate about […]
Spread of watch parts and descriptions of watchmaker industry. I’m moving out of NYC, my home of the past six years, today. I’ll be setting off for a wild and woolly adventure around the country and the globe (in case you weren’t aware of my travel plans, take a look!). I’m going to be taking […]
Who is the intimate stranger in your life? And what should you do when they reappear? A little creative non-fiction from my trip to the West coast and back. I woke up on couches and beds all the way down the West coast. Road trips were sandwiched around my best friend’s wedding – a few […]