To Heal in the Autumnal City

September (though not yet over) was full to bursting with activity. I tried my best to keep up with it.

I spent much of late August and early September convalescing from some health issues I've been dealing with all year (no, I don't want to talk about it, sorry). Un/fortunately, I had made all sorts of plans for myself in mid-September that I desperately didn't want to miss. By the beginning of September I was worried I'd have to cancel everything and spend the entire month at home on the couch wallowing.

Thanks to my excellent doctors and the support of my dear partner, I managed to get back on my feet. Back to work, back to writing, and back to the many exciting things I had planned for myself when I had the energy to do so.

First up, a workshop at Trust in Berlin on political fiction. We talked about the history of AgitProp and the propaganda form, through memes, Bertolt Brecht, and Lilo & Stitch. We crafted stories about the art world, terraforming Mars, and selling your cognition to data centers. I had a blast, and would love to do more workshops next year! For 2026, though, I'm pretty worn out.

Next was perhaps the highlight. Earlier this year my friend Mary-Audrey Ramirez told me about her upcoming solo exhibition at Number 1 Main Road for Berlin Art Week and asked me to write some lore for the show. All I had was the pitch: a séance gone wrong, and the summoners become a snack for the demons they call. I went a little wild with this prompt and wrote an extremely gory spacefaring short story.

This collaboration was so incredibly fun, and I loved seeing how it all turned out. One of the highlights of my year, certainly! The show is on view in Berlin at Number 1 Main Road until the 11th of October. It's the only place you'll be able to view this spooky tale and hear my voice narrating it, until it someday gets published! Maybe? We'll see!

Last up was my appearances at Flights of Foundry. I had such a wonderful time on the eco-fiction panel, talking to Rem Wigmore, Sarena Flanigan, Cristina Jurado, and Tehnuka about the influence of our changing planet on the fiction ecosystem. But holy sh*t, this panel absolutely exploded my TBR list. I got way too many great recs for books to read, and now I don't know when I'll get the chance to read them all. I also got to read my story from Fusion Fragment Issue #27, "Digital Love Spell - 78% Effective!" to a small crowd of listeners. I hadn't revisited this work in a while, so I was really pleased to discover I still love it.

And that's a wrap on my September! I am still attempting to take it easy, which doesn't come naturally to me, but I'm discovering more and more that I have my limits and can only cross them at great expense. Forcing myself to sit down, to rest, to say no, to not cram the maximum of productivity out of each day, is a lesson in humility and resistance to the capitalist mechanization of our bodies. I'm doing my best to learn it.

With love,

Kate