Heading to Texas with Six Weeks of Books — and Clothes, Too, I Guess

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Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

Connie Pan is simply a writer and exertion from Maui, Hawai‘i. She earned an MFA successful fabrication from West Virginia University and a BA successful originative penning from Grand Valley State University. Her penning has appeared successful Bamboo Ridge, Carve, HelloGiggles, PRISM International, The Billfold, and elsewhere. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Instagram: @csnpan Twitter: @panlikepeter

View All posts by Connie Pan

After 4 years successful Mississippi, hardcovers and paperbacks capable the built-in bookshelves and determination implicit into the office, the speechmaking nook, my penning space, and onto broadside tables everywhere. In 9 days, the entirety of our location volition beryllium taped up into boxes and carried distant into a moving truck. Then, we’ll load our conveyance and thrust westbound to 1 of the U.S.’s biggest cities successful Texas to unrecorded for six weeks with suitcases and necessities. As our to-do lists expand, that I inactive request to acceptable speech books for our clip successful impermanent lodging sans astir of our belongings weighs heaviest connected my brain.

A batch has changed since the past clip I collected enough books for six weeks. My enactment beingness revolves astir literature, truthful my yearly speechmaking has noctilucent cloud-rocketed. During 2018, my past afloat twelvemonth successful California, I work 52 books, and I gathered 9 titles for our formation compartment stay. During 2022, my past afloat twelvemonth successful Mississippi, I work 213 books, truthful I indispensable battalion more. How much? I’m not sure.

 And Selected Poems by Carl Phillips

One certainty: A devoted poesy reader, I privation you could person seen maine and my love’s faces erstwhile we realized I would beryllium separated from my idiosyncratic room for each azygous 2nd of The Sealey Challenge, erstwhile participants work a poesy chapbook oregon postulation each August day. Even though our lives are changing, I cling to my traditions, believing they assistance crushed me. That calls for 31 poesy books, fractional rereads and fractional new-to-me — arsenic good arsenic 7 summertime titles for my seasonal poesy column. The genre is mostly sussed retired since I’ve been committing books to sticky notes for months: Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez, Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, A Shiver successful the Leaves by Luther Hughes, and Then the War: And Selected Poems by Carl Phillips.

Another change: I perceive to audiobooks regularly and work ebooks sporadically, which cuts down connected the heft of hard copies. With the abstraction that my phone, ereader, earbuds, and chargers instrumentality up, I tin transportation myriad books. Currently, I person 21 unread audiobooks and six unread ebooks.

Speaking of traditions, adjacent though poesy takes precedence each August, I privation to compression successful what prose I can. Passionate astir speechmaking challenges, I person my yearly goals to consider: my monthly trade publication positive a (hopeful) equilibrium of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

So, I excavation retired my sturdy grey retention cube and spot it successful beforehand of Goldie, my beloved room cart. I look done the integrative diamonds, wondering what to capable it with. I debar it. I drawback a representation of each that emptiness and anticipation to nonstop to bookish friends.

To gauge the magnitude of prose to bring, this Virgo references facts. In the archetypal fractional of 2023, I work 87 books. On average, I decorativeness 15 books a month, astir 8 poetry, 5 fiction, and 2 nonfiction titles. According to my speechmaking statistics, six weeks requires astir 7 fabrication and 3 nonfiction books. At this point, I reserve my devices for backup, moods, and whims. Plus, I program to sojourn the room and section indie bookstores ASAP, truthful selecting 5 fabrication and 2 nonfiction books seems safe.

Last clip we moved, I turned to Women astatine Work, an anthology of interviews from The Paris Review. During that transition, it fed maine deeply, truthful the 2nd installment, Women astatine Work Volume II, calls to me. I ponder starting it earlier our roadworthy trip. I transportation it from the bluish spinny seat by the model to our chamber to New Orleans similar a chunk of roseate quartz. I don’t unfastened it, but its beingness soothes me.

book screen  of Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward

Before my fabrication and nonfiction shelves, I take books by speechmaking archetypal sentences, paragraphs, and pages. Because I’m saying goodbye to this metropolis wherever I spent respective journeys astir the sun, I adhd a Mississippi book, Where the Line Bleeds by Jesmyn Ward, to my cube. In lawsuit icky afternoons arise, I adhd comfortableness reads and rereads, Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien and Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life by Abigail Thomas. I adhd a summery title, Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas, seeing ‘tis the season. I adhd the newest releases I ain to consciousness connected apical of things: Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton and Banyan Moon by Thao Thai.

book screen  of Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Unsurprisingly, impulses activate, and my cautious speechmaking mathematics flutters retired the model into the humid afternoon. I simply privation to beryllium adjacent to definite books. I constitute adjacent to a stack of inspiring titles and see 1 for security. I adhd my paperback transcript of Love successful the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. And what astir the go-to titles I propulsion from my poesy bookcase to work a portion oregon 5 of? I adhd Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón and Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz and Space Struck by Paige Lewis.

Room inactive remains, and my caput is present teeming with Tetris-like cunning of what other I tin acceptable successful the cube…


If you’re a publication person faced with an impending determination and are funny astir however Rioters tackle the impossible-feeling situation, work 7 Things I Learned from Sorting, Packing, and Storing My Books; 8 Tips for Moving When You Have a Ton of Books; and How To Pack Books For Moving.

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