Something I thought about:

  • Pandemic anniversaries — my last trip was exactly a year ago. I went to Boston for a conference and saw friends and family and attended a book event. I’m working on the same ideas, although I’m further along. It’s hard to write about a person who traveled while under such constraint, especially when Bishop’s new home was Brazil, which has been so devastated by the coronavirus.

Something I did:

  • Set up WhatsApp groups for my oral fluency course and send an exercise via chat.
  • Read Bishop manuscripts.
  • Too much admin.

Something I read:

  • Quiet in Her Bones by Nalini Singh. This book was a break — from both work and my usual reading as it’s a thriller and those usually stress me out too much for escapism. It’s also an Indian diaspora novel set in New Zealand, and I realized I’d never read a book about an Indian family set outside of the US, UK, or India before. The book was both very New Zealand and very Indian, and that was such an interesting combination.