Congrats!

My dear friend Sarah is one of my favorite writers.  Ever.  Her voice and imagery are vivid and refreshing, and her storytelling has a magical, transportive quality, where you slip into the pages and find yourself immersed in her world.  

These last several years, as she's been pounding away on wrapping her memoir featuring her life in Japan as first an exchange student then an English teacher, I've had the immense privilege of reading her drafts.  And they've moved me to laugh, to blink back tears, to be whisked away on her journeys with her in her storytelling, always grieved the last words have been read, and always wishing for more.

I'm feeling much like a proud little sister after she sent me the link to one of her stories, "Zithering Away," published this September in a Hong Kong-based literary journal, Cha.  It's one of my favorite pieces from her memoir that I've read to date, so perfectly told, so gracefully conjured, and a most lovely work of art.  It's a profound joy to see all her hard work come through to fruition.

Omedatou, Sister.  I'm thrilled for the rest to come!