Life in Málaga—All about books
It’s been a particularly literary and bookish month. La Feria de Libros Antiguos had a two-week run on Alameda Principal. Booksellers from various Andalucian cities displayed rare, used, and new books for sale. I wandered over every day to browse. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I wanted something to catch my eye, to…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Hey, look at me!
It’s been the month of Carnaval, the month of new connections, and the month that begins the hey-look-at-me prelude to the release of my new book. Let’s start with hey, look at me! My new book, my fourth book of fiction, comes out September 29, 2026. That’s eight months of me saying pre-order my book!…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Mujeres
I belong to a group of women that meets every couple of weeks to converse mainly in Spanish. Diana, the group’s originator, is the only one that is fully bilingual having been raised in a Spanish-speaking family and spending part of her life in Colombia. The rest of us can claim functional bilingualism since we’ve…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Namedropping, Boxing Day, and travel recap
I’m a name-dropper here in Málaga. A couple of months ago, I tagged along with my friend Fiona to a book discussion group where everyone described a book they’d read recently. The mention of one book generated mentions of others and at some point, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s book The Sympathizer came up. It’s one of…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Bilingual baby, books, and fall
It’s a walk in the park, a stride across an empty street, as easy and pure as a toddler pushing a toy stroller. It’s my granddaughter’s unconscious switching between Spanish and English. It’s what I envy and delight in as I continue my daily, ongoing, and never-ending Spanish acquisition process. Our daughter Natalie, who became…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Crying while learning Spanish (and triumphing)
Learning Spanish has always come with an emotional element for me. But I hadn’t cried while learning Spanish until this month. I took the insane step of signing up for a creative writing workshop at the local library here in Málaga. I’d written some short pieces in Spanish, usually essays, for my online teacher Nathalie…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—with jaunts to Brussels, Paris, Nantes
September brought another opportunity for travel, starting with Brussels, where in addition to ogling the sites such as the Grand-Place above, I attended the European Writers Salon yearly conference. I went because I wanted to be in a physical space with other writers. Also, I’d never been to Belgium. I’ve never been to a lot…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—A retreat, France, racism. Oh, and Feria.
August in Málaga means Feria, when women don traditional Flamenco dresses and accessorize with flowers, fans, and shawls, when countless bottles of the sweet Cartojal wine are poured, and song and dance, both planned and spontaneous, fill the streets of the Centro by day and the fairgrounds by night. And it happens during some of…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—A Book, a Movie, a Friend, a Retreat
It’s the end of July and I’m posting this from northern Spain in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the weather is cool and rainy—a nice change from the high temperatures in Málaga, where I spent afternoons indoors reading or writing, or in a movie theater sheltered from the heat. At the beginning of the…
Read MoreLife in Málaga—Birthday, Book Fair, and Pub Date
Birthday I turned seventy-two this month. It’s weird being an age that seemed light-years away when I was thirty, forty, even fifty. But here I am. Seventy-two years can seem like a long time. It can also seem like not enough time. Nothing is promised us in this life, but I can still want. More…
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