We're back again in the KBOO studios with guest Zaji Cox, author of the new book Plums for Months: Memories of a wonder-filled, neurodivergent childhood, from Portland’s Forest Avenue Press.
Zaji’s been writing fiction since her first short story at the age of nine. She went on to self-publish a fantasy/adventure novel, Journey Into ArJarelia, in 2011, when she was 13. And another self-published work, the story collection Musings, in 2016. Her work has appeared in Pathos Literary Magazine, Entropy Magazine, The Portland Metrozine, and Cultural Daily, among others, and she’s a contributor to the anthology 2020: The Year of the Asterisk from University of Hell Press.
Plums for Months is a memoir in brief essays of Zaji’s childhood, moving from the desert of New Mexico to the rain and greenery of Portland, Oregon. We follow Zaji as she adapts to her new home, her challenges growing up mixed race and neurodivergent, her years as a competitive gymnast, then as a dancer, and always as a writer, of both prose and poetry.
In the words of author Lidia Yuknavitch “Zaji Cox has given the world the profound gift of re-imagining. By rendering reality in fragments, glimpses, lyric reveries and narrative pulses, she has opened up her own experience—with tremendous generosity and compassion—to illuminate how difference is a place of endlessly generative passion. This book is a poetic lovesong as big as the cosmos. This book brings me back to life."
Zaji will be launching the book, in conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch, at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland, on Monday, May 15th at 7pm PDT.
Author photo courtesy of Neu Perspectives Photography
- KBOO