Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: What Happens Next

Aloha! Six months since the publication of The Atlas of Reds and Blues. It’s so hard to believe. I’ve loved every moment since the whirlwind began on publication day — a cool Tuesday in February. I’m so grateful for the warm welcome my debut has received, and for all of the support it continues to get. I’ve been so lucky in the past six months, with the publication, too, of other work, including:

— an essay, “The Wild Blue Yonder is Actually Gray,” published in Scoundrel Time. It discusses reading Kiese Laymon‘s important essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, while trying to re-enter the United States from Mexico.

— poetry,  “Taking the Poem From the Poet,” – on poets.org’s poem-a-day. It discusses racism and its consequences on black and brown bodies in the United States.

I’ve just finished a book-length poem, tentatively titled Aftermath. It’s a hybrid work of poetry that delves into the devastating events of May 2010, when my husband was racially profiled by his former employer in Georgia; and the effects of the lies and racism and how they ripple to this day. I’m looking for a home for this work.

I’ve headed back to Book 2, Shadow Gardens. This is the novel I was six weeks from finishing when the state police raided my house and me, at gunpoint, in May 2010 – (the state police confiscated my computer; although a state judge in Georgia dismissed all of the baseless charges against my husband in late 2016, most of our belongings have yet to be returned) It is an ethnic retelling of Virginia Woolf‘s Mrs. Dalloway as it intersects with Michael Cunningham‘s The Hours.

I hope to finish this book before the end of 2019. I hope to find a home for this work as well.

Mahalo.

Author: Devi Laskar

Poet, photographer, soccer mom, VONA & TheOpEdProject alum, Columbia MFA, former reporter, debut novelist!