Books trace my trajectory through life—here are a few.
When I was in third grade, The Little House in the Big Woods series by Laura Ingalls Wilder began my infatuation with reading and writing. Regular people could write about their own lives—someday I would write about mine.
A few other formative books: Heidi by Johanna Spyri, Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, and Watership Down by Richard Adams.
* * *
A diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder at the age of thirty-six brought relief, insight, and questions. Books, especially Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction, became a source of information for my mental disorder.
I’ve also read The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang, Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin, and A Mind Apart by Susanne Antonetta.
* * *
During my three years in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, I read some fifty-seven books and completed two manuscripts in support of my MFA degree, earned in 2021.
To name only three (an almost impossible task): House Built on Ashes by José Antonio Rodriguez, Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan, and Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir by Deborah A. Miranda.
* * *
Currently I’m reading books on everything Armenian as I revise and expand my MFA thesis into a book-length work about my Armenian family and the genocide they rarely mentioned. I highly recommend There Was and There Was Not by Meline Toumani.
