She closes her eyes and in bright darkness glimpses the face of her beloved.
I've just learned that the Taiwan-based journal of art and ideas, WHITE FUNGUS, will be translating my newly-revised and expanded 8,600-word essay / story / prolegomenon "The First Woman on Mars" into Chinese and publishing it side by side with the English version in their next issue, due out in April. The piece begins as an essay and passes through multiple rhetorical modes before turning, in its final quarter, into fiction. After decades of thinking about its themes, and several weeks drafting it in the fall of 2011, and another five days and two all-nighters revising it last week, I'm happy to say that as a piece of writing it is very close to being what I've long wanted it to be and hoped it might be. It's not often that I can say that.