An interview with Natasha Trethewey and fiction by Shayne Langford
Dear Readers,
We see you there, sitting at your desk, typing in your little spreadsheet or writing some useless email, stealing glances out the window at the bright blue sky and brilliant sunshine. You can see the trees blowing softly in the breeze and, if you close your eyes, you can feel the sweet wind tapping gently against your cheeks. It would be heavenly to be outside on a day like this… but it’s only 2pm and there’s no way the boss is letting you leave early, not again, not in this economy.
But we have the solution, a way you can stare at your screen and yet transport your soul to another world — it’s called the magic of literature, and have we got some treats of the imagination for you today: a video of a reading by acclaimed poet Natasha Trethewey and incredible new fiction by Shayne Langford.
So let Air/Light to whisk you away from reality — you’re gonna love where you end up!
✌️
The Editors
The Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation Distinguished Speakers Series Presents An Evening with Natasha Trethewey: Natasha Trethewey Interviewed by Danzy Senna
On November 1, 2022, the Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation Distinguished Speakers Series welcomed Natasha Trethewey to the University of Southern California. In conjunction with USC Visions & Voices, Trethewey appeared at Bovard Auditorium where, after reading from her memoir Memorial Drive, she discussed race, identity, literature, and loss with Associate Professor of English Danzy Senna, an Air/Light editor-at-large.
Air/Light is pleased to present a video of this interview.
“Big Plans,” by Shayne Langford
The courts were forcing Cal to live with his mother, sending him to her house in Reno, where the mountains stopped and the high desert stretched out empty like a life where any sense of hope was missing. I hadn’t seen my own mother in years, since she left me with my father and took off, but I knew what Cal was feeling, and on his last day in town, we drove deep into Feather River Canyon, below the hydros and the town of Belden to the bottom, where the high peaks feathered into oak-dappled foothills and the river leveled out in long, deep draws broken up only by boulders that had cracked off the canyon walls and formed pockets in the water where trout held.
Cal parked on the side of the highway and we hopped out, taking our gear from the truck bed and sliding down the steep scree field to the gravel bar below, holding our Shiners and fly rods in the air as the loose rock carried us downward, to keep the beer from spilling and to keep the rod tips from breaking off. Our rods were already rigged, and when we reached the bottom of the hill, we stepped into the river immediately, fishing a deep run across from a tall granite cliff. On Cal’s second cast, he hooked into a huge fish that rolled up out of the water so we could see the size, both of us yelling loud as the trout shook its body in the air, smacking hard back into the cold water and diving deep, clinging to the bottom and bending Cal’s rod low so I thought that the tip would snap.