Read by Kathy Fish

This. This.

Kathy Fish’s “Read”, originally published at Lascaux Review, then on her blog, and now (with her kind permission) on my blog, is one of the most inspirational things I’ve ever…well, read. It’s smart and it’s lovely (kind of like everything Kathy writes). It makes me want to fist-pump my way through this list and be a better person/writer and share it with as many people as I can.

So, okay. Here you go.

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Read

By Kathy Fish

Read Flannery O’Connor. Read Joy Williams. Read William Maxwell. Read about the universe. Read about neuroanatomy. Read “On the Origin of Species.” Read “Nine Stories.” Read Tolstoy. Read Carson McCullers. Read Edward P. Jones. Read Willa Cather. Read Yasunari Kawabata. Study atlases and maps. Read E.B. White. Read fairy tales. Remember that “fresh new voices” can come from people over forty. Find those writers and read them. Read Shakespeare. Read Amy Hempel and Lydia Davis. Compare. At least once a week, read a book published by a small press. Read, read, read poetry. Learn the names of all the insects that inhabit your backyard. Or make up names for them. Read Freud. Read graphic novels. Read prose poetry and flash fiction. Study the dictionary. Read a book about a place you never heard of from a writer whose name you can’t pronounce. Read naked.

Find and read a newspaper from the day you were born. Or any old newspaper. Learn another language, then read a novel or poetry in that language. Read “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” out loud with no children present. Read philosophy. Buy a thick notebook and write “Sentences I Love” on the cover. Fill it up and buy another one. Read collections of short stories. Read both print and online journals. Read the history of the town you grew up in. Read Jane Austen and Edith Wharton and the Bronte sisters. Read Katherine Mansfield and Shirley Jackson and Kõbõ Abe. Read Grace Paley. Read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Read long into the night until the characters walk around in your dreams. Read “The Dead” at least one winter afternoon a year. And if your mother or your aunt or your grandmother want to tell you their stories, drop everything you’re doing and listen.

 

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Kathy Fish is a fine, fine writer and you should read some of her stuff. Not like she needs the plug from me or anything, but still. Go to here: kathy-fish.com.