Nasim Marie Jafry's Blog

Seeingthe light     by Nasim Marie Jafry

She slept with two hot water bottles,one on either side. In the early hours, she’d kick them out. They lay on thefloor like cold, flabby animals.

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She was relieved to wake up. She’ddreamt a black horse wearing a turquoise blanket was on fire. She made coffeeand checked the fridge light, closing the door slowly until she could no longersee the light, then slowly opening it again, her cheek pressed against the metaledge, until the light came on. ...

Was very interested to be alerted to this reading of my 2008 novel  in Etudes Ecossaises: Temporalities in Nasim Marie Jafry's The State of Me. It is gratifying to see such a close reading of one's work, especially so many years after publication.

A friend came across this, a nice review of The State of Me from 2021 on Electric Literature. The review is included in a piece called: 7 Novels and Stories That Prove Fiction Can Grapple with Illness:

 

'Based on the author’s own experience with myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome), The State of Me is unadorned autofiction that follows the protagonist, Helen Fleet, from her diagnosis at age 20 through the aftermath of her illness. Jafry has described her novel as ...

The NHS so broken round the edges is, of course, still excellent in a crisis. I  found myself suddenly in hospital for a week in the middle of November, and  after being out for five days was sent back for an overnight. Got home yesterday. I had not been an inpatient since 1984 when I was in a neurology ward having an experimental plasma exchange as treatment for ME. This time I was in  a cardiology ward. The week was a blur.  I was mainly in a shared ward, I recall one morning, hearing a woman ...

I very much enjoyed the event with Nigerian-American writer and photographer Teju Cole at The Portobello Bookshop last night, chaired by Roxani Krystalli -- I accessed the event online. Cole is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of Creative Writing at Harvard.

He was charming and funny - and illuminating on the writing process. He talked of writing as a way of not forgetting, a sense of 'if you don't write it down it will vanish'.

I was kind of relieved when he said that TREMOR, his new novel, i...

A little good news, very pleased to have been shortlisted for Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2023. Was shortlisted a decade ago for both their short story and flash prizes. Flash is such a different discipline to writing a novel. A long text is so unwieldy, hard to keep track of, can be overwhelming, is why it takes me so long, as I polish every chapter as I go. With flash, you move words around as it pleases you, you feel very in control and realise also how arbitrary it all is, making things up....

Have not blogged in so long, everything is dislocated. My darling mother passed away eighteen months ago, it can still feel unreal. Am cheered up by a woodpecker and bullfinch in front garden and pigeons puffed up like balloons in the back. Writing sustains me, have recently gone back to my novella-in-progress. Just added ALPHONSO, a flash fiction, to blog sidebar that was published in From Glasgow to Saturn, Glasgow University's literary magazine, in 2021. I wrote it when we were in the grips o...

Everything is shit but here is a chaffinch and an impossibly blue sky on New Year's Day.

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I rest a lot in my bedroom. I read there too and also watch garden birds, I have a chair at the window. It is my meditation, my way of being peaceful, my way of 'working out'. It's restorative, I lose myself, nothing else matters. I have had a dreadful few weeks with one thing and another. Last night, I woke up around three with a brutal sinus headache, I am very prone to them and cannot use steroidal sprays because of ocular hypertension, so I swallowed a handful of Sudafed and Ibuprofen. It...