Looking back at 2018, I’m particularly grateful to Tin House for selecting me as a Scholar in their Winter Novel Workshop. They invited me to coastal Oregon where I joined a promising group of writers, some of whom have become good friends since that weekend. Although this was nearly nine months ago, it came to...| Tsering Yangzom Lama
Talented writer/translator Tenzin Dickie has just come out with a new anthology of Tibetan short stories: Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from Tibet with OR Books. This collection brings together fiction from Tibetans living in occupied Tibet and those of us writing in exile. For someone who has lived apart from my ancestral...| Tsering Yangzom Lama
Everyone has a story about election night. I was in Prague as the ballots were being counted, and in Moscow as the news of Trump’s victory sunk in. As the votes came in, I had just finished a two-day pilot storytelling workshop for the Greenpeace Czech office, and was settling in at a nearby bar with my colleagues...| Tsering Yangzom Lama
This past month, I read from my novel to two very different audiences. The first was at The Rubin Museum in New York City as part of an event called Writing Sacred Lhasa. Reading there with two fellow Tibetan women writers I admire in so many ways, Tenzin Dickyi and Sonam Tsomo, was especially meaningful to...| Tsering Yangzom Lama
About a year ago, the British publisher House of Zeus reached out to me to see if I wanted to submit a piece to an anthology about Nepal. I shared some stories with them, and they selected “The Greatest Tibetan Ever Born,” which was originally published by Himal SouthAsian — a wonderful and much-needed magazine...| Tsering Yangzom Lama
Since my last post, I attended another writing retreat (this time at Catwalk), completely restructured my novel, and started a new job as “Story Advisor” at Greenpeace International. It’s a dream position in every way. I spend my days doing conceptual narrative work, teaching storytelling to activists, and also taking part in concrete campaigning to save the...| Tsering Yangzom Lama
I’ve just returned from an artist residency in rural Oregon. Arriving at Redmond Airport, I met a fellow resident (and now friend), rented a car, and drove with her for two hours until our cell phone signals disappeared. The drive to Summer Lake featured long stretches of empty desert roads flanked by enormous mountains sweeping up to the sky.| Tsering Yangzom Lama