Camille Acker

Join us Friday, March 6th! This is going to be an incredible panel. You don’t want to miss it.

I’m SO looking forward to my next book tour stops!!! I’ll be in convo with @cam_acker in Philly on Sunday, and @guidetoglo Glory Edim in DC on Monday. Yay!! Do come through if you’re local - and please spread the word.🙏🏾 TO RSVP to the Philly event @booked_chestnuthill and to check out my talk with @karentaylorbass for her Soulful Sunrise show @onwurd radio, plus to read a cool profile in @chestnuthilllocal — links in bio. #memoir #loverita #booktour #womenshistorymonth

I’m thrilled to be in conversation with @bridgett_d on March 30th @booked_chestnuthill ! Bridgett has been a mentor and friend for years. I first met her as an emerging writer who had never published, who had barely finished a short story. In the years to follow, her note on a story in Training School proved to be invaluable and her advice regularly plays in my head. If you’ve ever taken a class from me, you’ve heard some of that sage advice too. In these times especially, it’s life-giving to be in creative community. Come join us to talk her fantastic new book, Love, Rita! Can it be a coincidence that my calendar color coordinates with the book?!

On December 22nd, my father died from complications of multiple myeloma. He was diagnosed in the summer, three weeks before his 79th birthday. He was a man of passions, micro, like a well-cooked piece of bacon and macro, like the modem consequences of the Civil War. He was a bibliophile, a cinephile, a jazz connoisseur, and a connoisseur of good food and drink. He was a complex man, an Alpha male of his generation, who could be cantankerous and stubborn. He was also a radical and a revolutionary, a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War whose favorite quote was Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” He was incredibly smart and brimming with dreams, ideas, and poetry. Strange to be in a world without him in it.

In the past few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “Anything is possible.” This invocation of dreams coming true. Or for some a sarcastic line when they’re sure something is absolutely not going to happen. In a year that has already had a lot of, let’s call it texture, rough patches, prickly bits, it feels like the full range of anything has been possible. The @rootswoundswords retreat was the full range, creative connection, love and care, lots of laughter, beautiful writing, and then a hurricane and its aftermath, no electricity, no water, limited food, white angst, and finally, a helicopter rescue. I’m still processing it all, or in the words of one of the fellows in my workshop @_leah_hamilton , in the process of processing the process. There’s a lot to think through, trauma, community care, how to stay tender when fear tells you otherwise, and climate catastrophe (@iamlisako ‘s incisive Memory Piece passed through my thoughts more than once). That I might metabolize this into something good, useful? That I might always feel my heart beat faster at the prospect of staying in the mountains? That I might pack this away in a compartment alongside so many other feelings in this time in order to just survive? Anything is possible.

Excited to be a part of this fall’s Roots.Wounds.Words. retreat for writers of color! Trying to work on your writing? Come join us! Applications close this Sunday. Go to @rootswoundswords for more info.

Philly and Philly adjacent folks, go surround yourself with peace, solidarity, and literary love this Saturday evening for Palestine. Co-presented by one of my dear ones, @denicefrohman Ticket info in second slide.

Tomorrow night! Come hear me, @just_islemcelroy and @mindahoney read from our work. Toying with the idea of reading from my unpublished novel, but you’ll only know if I do if you come!

Portlandia. Plus, a bonus New Mexico shot. It’s been a beautiful month. Thanks to @tin_house @lance_cleland @a.l.major for the time and support and @nafissa.thompson.spires for the porch chats. Also, for the gluten free people: Portland is our promised land. Gluten-free highlights included: the banana chocolate chip muffin @dragonflycoffeehouse , friand aux amandes @sthonorebakery , and the transcendent plantain brioche buns @kannrestaurant (Non-bread related deliciousness: the entire meal at Kann, Top Burmese, Oma’s Hideaway, 50 Licks, Pine State Biscuits). But, I didn’t just eat in Portland (although please forward all applications for eating residencies), I also got two chapters closer to finishing this novel. Summer creativity activated!

2022! Life-changing travel, amazing friends and loved ones, singular career milestones (including my mother’s face when I told her about my two book deal). And Wordle obvs. Aight. What you got 2023?

44. And with my favorite dining companion. 43 gave me a lot: buying a home with my partner, my first trip to Africa, a two-book deal, and a Pew Fellowship. Plus, new friends and drawing closer to older friends. Not that it was all joy this past year. Someone once gave me the image of our emotions as a kaleidoscope, bleeding one into another, happy dashed through with sad. But what a kaleidoscope it’s been. Here’s to more colors, more swirls of pattern, more vibrancy.

More books are on the way! And I’m so excited to be reunited with the amazing @jamiaawilson and have the support and wisdom of @ejacksontenney to make this happen. 2022 has been very kind to me.