I recorded the podcast this month in Den Bosch, in the Netherlands, while my daughter did some work experience at Antigif branding and design studio.

For the full interview with Dr. Anjana Khatwa, tune in to The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Here are the recommended reads for August.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979)Dana's 26th birthday celebration ends when she's ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor—because without him, she'll never be born. Every trip back grows more dangerous. Dana feels the lash, wears the chains, endures the daily terror that defined millions of lives. She can't just read about slavery's horrors—she lives them, bleeds from them, nearly breaks under them.

The Past by Tessa Hadley (2015)Three sisters and a brother, complete with children, a new wife, and an ex-boyfriend’s son, descend on their grandparents’ dilapidated old home in the Somerset countryside for a final summer holiday. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past—their mother took them there to live when she left their father—but now, they may have to sell it. And beneath the idyllic pastoral surface lie tensions. As the family’s stories and silences intertwine over the course of three long, hot weeks, small disturbances build into familial crises, and a way of life—bourgeois, literate, ritualized, Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (2019)I received this from the Big Green Bookshop’s Book Club.

1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives—their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes—emerge through a panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction.

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

If you’re in London on September 13th, come along to the Story Feast Lit Fest celebrating ESEA (East and South East Asian) stories and authors. It’s at SOAS University of London and tickets are free.

Mslexia’s 2025 Adult Novel Competition is open until September 22nd. Send the first 5,000 words and be ready to submit your finished manuscript if you get longlisted.

The Outland Publishing Fair, which represents a curated selection of self-published titles by Chinese and Sino-diasporic practitioners, was meant to be in September but it has been postponed. I’ve applied for a space at a shared table there. Look for @outlandpublishingfair on Instagram for the new date.

👣 My moseying

I did not win the Developing Your Creative Practice grant from the Arts Council. However, I’ll apply again in the next round.

My short story collection, Staring into the Sun, was a semifinalist in the Autumn House Press 2025 Nonfiction Prize!

Big news: I’ve signed the contract to publish Staring into the Sun with Ten16 Press in May 2026 (Asian American and Pacific Islanders month in the U.S.). The book links memoir and narrative nonfiction about my Chinese American family. Spanning 1895-2015, look out for a millionaire, a magician, and a model. Ten16 Press will publish the paperback and ebook. With the same release date, I will self-publish the audio book, narrating the four memoir chapters.

Kate Hammer

will narrate the historical creative nonfiction chapters and Anthony at Mercury Calling Audio will produce it. I started researching and writing this book in January 2017 and to finally have a publication deal is an enormous joy. Staring into the Sun celebrates and honors my ancestors.

If you can’t wait until next May to read the stories, subscribe for free on Substack to get them sent to your inbox every Saturday through the end of 2025. More info, links to each installment, and sign up are here. The free subscription is for Staring into the Sun serialization as well as The Spark monthly newsletter.

I’m still writing my novel and meeting with my writing group every three weeks.

📊 Tracked on Chill Subs

Short story collection submissions to small presses & awards⏱️ 4 pending🚫 11 rejected↩️ 3 withdrawn🥉 1 semi-finalist🎉 1 publication offer!🟰 20 total

Novel prize submissions of my work in progress⏱️ 2 pending🚫 2 rejected🟰 4 total

🎙️ Author interview with Dr. Anjana Khatwa

I met Dr. Anjana Khatwa at the Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers, founded by Natasha Carthew. The event was held on the stunning roof terrace of Hachette in London.

Dr. Anjana Khatwa is an award-winning earth scientist who has worked for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the National Trust. Dr. Khatwa has contributed to and presented TV programmes for the BBC as well as ITV. She has been given the Geographical Award for public engagement by the Royal Geographical Society, the RH Worth Award by the Geological Society of London and the Halstead Medal from the Geologists' Association. In 2021, she received a National Diversity Award in recognition of her work to champion inclusion within earth science and natural heritage, and the same year was longlisted for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing. She lives with her family in Dorset in a house filled with rocks and fossils collected from all over the world. The Whispers of Rock is her first book.

In The Whispers of Rock earth scientist Anjana Khatwa asks us to think again, and listen to their stories. Boldly alternating between modern science and ancient wisdom, Khatwa takes us on an exhilarating journey through deep time, from origins of the green pounamu that courses down New Zealand rivers to the wonder of the bluestone megaliths of Stonehenge, from the tuff-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, to Manhattan’s bedrock of schist. In unearthing those stories and more, Khatwa shows how rocks have always spoken to us, and we humans to them. She delicately intertwines Indigenous stories of Earth’s creation with our scientific understanding of its development, deftly showing how our lives are intimately connected to time’s ancient storytellers.

Through tales of planetary change, ancient wisdom, and contemporary creativity, The Whispers of Rock offers the hope of reconnection with Earth. With Khatwa as your guide, you won’t simply hear rocks speak; you, too, will feel the magic of deep time seep into your bones.

Anjana can be found on Instagram, Bluesky, and on her website, anjanakhatwa.com.

Photo credit: Rob Coombe.

Tune in to the The Spark podcast for the full interview.

📙 Where to find my writing

Staring into the Sun on Substack, weekly through the end of 2025.

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, The Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.