Rivals surround the court like ninefold mists

That obscure my view . . . all that I can do

Is imagine the moon above the clouds.

—poem from The Tale of Genji

Last year, he was the most trusted advisor to the world’s most powerful man. His compound is filled with consorts and children. People pore over his aphoristic writings and envy his wealth.

I’m not talking about Elon Musk but rather the eponymous hero of The Tale of Genji, the thousand-year-old novel written by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of the Japanese court. The book’s hundreds of pages of prose and poetry comprise the cornerstone of the Japanese literary canon. The Tale of Genji is arguably the world’s first novel and depicts what may be the first antihero. Murasaki Shikibu authored it at the height of the Heian era (794–1185 AD) in the vernacular language, part of a lush flowering of great women writers, who outpaced the men still fettered by the use of classical Chinese.

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I was extraordinarily surprised to learn that one of my essays has been selected for the Best Canadian Essays 2026 anthology! The collection will be published this November by Biblioasis Publishing, one of Canada’s most prestigious small presses and publisher of Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Poetry as well. Many thanks to the editors of Prairie Fire, the literary magazine in which “I’m Childless, Not Kinshipless” first appeared.

I am stunned to be able to announce that a short story of mine titled “Koro-Koro” will appear in the spring 2025 print issue of Ploughshares! Ploughshares was definitely a bucket-list publication for me.

This story will be the first chapter of Age of Blossoms, a Rashomon-like historical-novel-in-progress about the Japanese population of Mayne Island, British Columbia, from the early 1930s until their expulsion in 1942. The story plays with onomatopoeia in English and Japanese and celebrates the wild landscape of the Pacific Northwest as it chronicles the thwarted romance between a Canadian girl and her nikkei friend.

I collect Belle Époque postcards of actresses, dancers, and courtesans. I thought I’d share a few here.

Belle Époque postcard. Image of a beautiful brunette in Marian blue, her hair a bouquet of curls and daisies.

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Trigger warning: This episode talks about suicide. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. 

Last July, my therapist told me that I sounded exhausted. I needed not just a few good nights’ sleep but an old-fashioned rest cure—without the toxic William Morris wallpaper. Also, it was high summer, which meant that I had to sequester myself in dusky rooms thanks to lupus and my vampiric photosensitivity. So I ended up spending time on Reddit.

For about a decade, LinkedIn had been the only social media site I frequented; anything owned by Mark Zuckerberg, I figured, was bound to induce nightmares. I’d signed up for a Reddit account but had never really used it. Yet a few days after my therapist’s prescription, it hit me: Reddit was cluttered with cats, along with bottomless discussions about books and fashion and cooking and Twin Peaks, some of my favorite things. I dove down the r/abbit hole.

Within the protective cloak of anonymity, I found that what was valued most by most people was wit, good sense, and kindness. In a highly partisan visual culture peopled by would-be influencers, that discovery was refreshing.

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What better way to celebrate the year you turn 50 than to be chosen by Prairie Fire, one of Canada’s most prestigious magazines, for their 50 Canadian Woman Writers Over 50 issue? (Over just by a few months, but still.) I’m honored and thrilled that my essay, “I’m Childless, Not Kinshipless,” will be featured in their fall 2024 print issue (45.3) this October.

Prairie Fire is also fundraising through a tote bag inspired by the issue:

For the first time this year, I looked forward to May’s Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) Awareness Month. That’s because we’ve reached a crossroads that could lead to a revolution in how we conceptualize and care for BPD.

I once thought the stigma against BPD would kill me. When I fought BPD in the late 1990s and early 2000s, evidence-based treatments were just beginning to be widely disseminated. The few therapists and psychiatrists willing to work with me after hearing about my suicide attempts just doused me with medications indicated for other psychiatric conditions. I tried to kill myself eight times and turned to drugs to cope with surviving.

BPD afflicts 1.6% of the population, and common symptoms include unstable relationships, recurrent suicide attempts, and erratic moods. During my worst periods with the disorder, I whipsawed between euphoria and desolation. A therapist friend of mine described us as spinning tops that can be knocked over by a flower.

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Kuma the Bengal traveled the world, but he preferred to be curled up at home with his human parents. He was born in South Florida, lived in Poland and Japan, and retired on Vancouver Island.

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I’m happy to share that I have a short story — actually, three interlocked short stories — called “Nesting Boxes” in the upcoming print issue of The Antigonish Review. The story was inspired by Joseph Cornell’s Taglioni’s Jewel Casket, pictured above, and a delivery service for foraged edibles called the Wild Box.

Happy new year! I hope yours is filled with joy, well-being, compassion, and self-discovery.

This April, I will be launching an interview podcast called A Real Affliction: BPD, Culture, and Stigma. It will explore how we live with, treat, advocate for, write about, and conceptualize borderline personality disorder, as well as common co-occurring challenges like complex PTSD and substance use disorder, all of which I’ve experienced. My guests and I will also discuss how literature, film, television, art, philosophy, the history of medicine, feminist and disability studies, nature, and bioethics reflect, illuminate, and impact the experience and cultural perceptions of BPD. If you have experience or expertise that would fit the podcast’s focus and would like to be interviewed, please feel free to reach out to me at cynthiagrallabooks@gmail.com.

I read so many wonderful books this year, including new-for-me authors like Cao Xue, Tan Twan Eng, and Vanessa Onwuemezi as well as old favorites like Italo Calvino (The Castle of Crossed Destinies). I read books that I enjoyed and others that showed me something new, and some that did both. This list includes those that did both, but I understand that other readers might find some of my entries hard to love.

Fiction

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li: Something about Li’s voice tends to grab me and not let go. This book has smart things to say about the harrowing intimacies of girls’ friendships and the absurdities of fame.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding: Harding writes gorgeous prose, including a boatload of muscular, one-syllable verbs: birl, shim, reeve. While some readers may not appreciate the perspective shift in the middle section nor the sense of glimpsing history down a long, dark tunnel, I loved it.

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I’m excited to share that Ms. recommended Adventures in Bodily Autonomy, which is now on sale:

Congratulations to Ellis Amdur for winning first prize in the mainstream/literary fiction category for Writer’s Digest‘s self-published book awards! Little Bird and the Tiger is a historical novel about a real-life woman warrior in Meiji Japan. I was lucky enough to edit and blurb this searing novel, and I highly recommend it.

I occasionally take on book editing projects, so if you have one that you think I’d be a good match for, please contact me at cynthiagrallabooks@gmail.com.

A few months ago, I started using Reddit. At first it was to see what the online BPD community was like. But I was surprised to find a fairly positive social media site. So I signed up for subreddits related to cats, books, Twin Peaks, fashion, dance, cooking, lupus, and endometriosis. I have a gift for puns, which found appreciation on the cats sub in particular.

This morning, a woman on the cats sub asked, “If I leave a suicide note, will someone take care of my cat?”

I didn’t even read her entire post because I rushed to answer it. But I saw that she lived on the street with her disabled cat Kafka, that she’d tried to get a shelter to take him because she’d used her last money to feed him, that they wouldn’t accept him because he was disabled, that she had a history of being sexually abused.

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My copy of Adventures in Bodily Autonomy arrived! It should be available for purchase on Amazon soon.

Theatrical. Teasing. Tantalizing. Tanda. Together. Timing. Turning. Twisting. Tableaux.

Argentinian. Ad-lib. Angsty. Arched. Angular. Artful. Ardent. Always-almost. Again.

Nevertheless. Nonchalance. Negotiation. Niceties. Noir.

Gallant. Gentle. Genteel. Gusto. Gancho. Graphic.

Oblique. Overacted. Offering. Orchestra. Ocho. Oh.

This will be an ongoing list, I fear.

Are the mood swings, suidical ideation, and depression I’m experiencing in perimenopause worsened by my biological penchant for mood dysregulation and my history of BPD? Why are there no peer-reviewed articles about perimenopause and/or menopause and BPD? Continue reading →

I’m proud to be part of this anthology. Proceeds go to NARAL Pro-Choice America to support bodily autonomy.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781619762503

You can pre-order a copy at Amazon here.

I’m thrilled that a creative nonfiction essay of mine will appear in the “Ghosts” issue of Room, Canada’s oldest feminist journal. (It’s almost as old as I am.) It will be available in bookstores and online in mid-September.

This piece is very important to me because in it, I write about Lara Gilbert, a woman who died by suicide at age 22. The University of Victoria houses her archives, including 3,200 pages of a trenchant, stunning, and heartbreaking diary. I spent months exploring it, and this essay responds to some of its implicit questions about memory and abuse. I’m especially excited that it will appear in Room as Lara’s mother, artist Carole Itter, has also published in the magazine.

I would be honored if you’d read it!

Unfortunately, the Facebook author page in my name is no longer under my control. It was an offshoot of my husband’s Facebook page, which was hacked a few days ago. So if, heaven forbid, Neo-Nazi propaganda starts to appear on my author Facebook page, it was not written by me. My LinkedIn profile is still mine.