It’s… Beautiful

Apropos of nothing…

Some annoucements:

My old short story, “A Memory of Flowers and Coconut“, will appear in a new anthology of Pan-American fiction published out of Brazil, due out in early 2009.

A newer story, “Midnight Shift”, will appear in the anthology, Toronto Noir, which is due out later this year. The book is edited by the sister of a Deonandia regular, and features yet another creative misspelling of my name.

For the second year in a row, I am a judge in the Katha Indian-American Fiction Contest, run by India Currents magazine. For those of you interested in submitting, the deadline is March 28. Don’t worry if you know me; the names are removed from the submissions, so I will be judging anonymously.

In other news:

The UK is compelling its athletes to sign a gag order before competing in the Beijing Olympics. If true, this is intolerable. No one, especially not a citizen of a supposed liberal democracy, should be compelled to hold his tongue if he has strong opinions on political matters. And for the record, count me among those who would like to see the Beijing Olympics turned into a political arena, an instrument for shining some shame upon China for its vetoing of military action in Darfur.