It Was A Year...
Plus some news about what's coming.
It was a year.
A year of ripping away from consideration and compassion, descending into shouting madness, daylight armies disrupting daily routines, weapons drawn on the weak, disappearing the surplused from the streets, the suburbs, the deserts and seas, rubbling homes and libraries and places of common leisure and pleasure, as they pumped flaccid economies with stimulants to manic highs like they don’t know what happens when the seeders and the harvesters, the keepers and the creators are all killed.
It was quick and brutal. And now here is the reprehensible Marjorie Taylor Greene — already on a victimized redemption tour — perfectly articulating the reigning ethic:
How we pry the world free from its captivity to fear — the least honest, most obdurate counselor — is the question of now.
And yet, I’m still convinced the universe can’t tolerate this imbalance for long. As I went out into the world I was humbled time and again - humbled everywhere by family and friends, long-missed and newly met, whose compassion, brilliance, and laughter always left me alive in the knowledge that as long as we have each other we will not simply survive, we will win.
So with a heart full of gratitude and a mind focused by sadness and rage, I prepare to take my place alongside you as we face whatever this new year may bring.
Here were some of the highlights of 2025 from my edge of the world...
Welcome, Water Mirror Echo!
2025 was the year that we finally brought Water Mirror Echo into the world. Writing is still a solitary art, and one gets used to the idea of working without the instantaneity of response.
So it’s always a surprise and a bit overwhelming to learn that some else has actually read even a portion of something you’ve produced. And it’s even more mind-boggling to hear that someone has had a reaction — good, bad or in between — to this doorstop of a book.
So I’m flabbergasted by all the recognition the book received — thank you Publisher’s Weekly, NPR, Alta, the SF Chronicle, the Times, and everyone else who read and let me know. But I am even more thankful for all of you who came out to commune with us on tour! You all give me hope.
The book gave us reason to have some of the conversations we’ve all been wanting to have.
Here were just a small number of them:
• The role of a writer in the time of polycrisis with Cathy Park Hong, Terisa Siagatonu, and Colleen Lye. Thank you fam, and the UC Berkeley Asian American Research Center!
• The emergence of the Asian American actor in Hollywood with Katie Gee Salisbury. Thank you Katie and the Center for Brooklyn History & the Brooklyn Public Library!
• They Call Us Bruce’s 300th episode with Jeff Yang & Phil Yu, thanks guys!
• How Seattle Made The Bruce Lee We Know with Shannon Lee, Doug Palmer, and Sue Ann Kay. Thank you friends, and the Wing Luke Museum and Town Hall Seattle!
Thank you to everyone who got in front of a mic with me, it was an honor to hang and learn from you.
Thank you to all the bookstores, museums, universities, community centers, libraries, festivals, and their warm staffs who sponsored these events — I think you all know how much we love you.
Thank you to all the TV, podcast, and radio hosts who invited me to parlay. We’ll be compiling these and posting these on the watermirrorecho.net website as time allows.
The events were so much fun and mind-expanding, maybe Trump will try to ban them. (And yes, much more coming on the book bans in future newsletters.) We will be doing lots more public events around the country in 2026! Catch us if you can.
Last but not least, thank you to my agents, Victoria Sanders and Bernadette Baker-Baughmann, Rakia Clark, Megan Wilson and our incredible team at Mariner/Harper Collins, and most of all, my team Gabrielle Zucker, Jay Katelansky, and Sze K. Chan! We did it!
Edge of Reason Returned For Season 3!
This year, art’s function as both mirror and hammer seemed as necessary as ever.
On Edge of Reason, a podcast I’ve been hosting for Atlantic Re:Think and Hauser + Wirth for three seasons, we explored how artists help us see the world below its false surfaces by plunging into its inner truths, and how they help us to see a world we may still forge together.
We spoke to the artists Firelei Báez, Uman, Anj Smith, and María Berrío, and discussed the legacy of Louise Bourgeois. We were joined by the likes of Edwidge Danticat, Nicole Dennis-Benn, Hamza Walker, Siddhartha Mitter, Zoe Whitley, Frances Morris, Jamieson Webster, and Henriette Huldisch.
Each of them had so much to say about the current moment — about questions of resistance, trauma, censorship, and resilience. Here’s an invitation to check out the entire season now. You can listen in here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Notes from the Edge: The Podcast Version!
This year we also launched a new series and podcast on the people’s station KALW, one with the same name as this newsletter, Notes from the Edge.
In these times, when the nation feels perched at the edge of division, despair and disaster. But it’s here at the edge where we can also look, listen and imagine what’s next.
With this show we hope to cut through the noise, to look at our rapidly changing world from a different angle, with visionaries who might see things in those shifting tides that we can’t, who might be able to tell us where the currents are taking us.
In 2025, we launched two episodes:
Everything about this project has been exciting, fired by the same kind of grassroots energy that took me back to my early days in SoleSides and the indie hip-hop movement.
As the project came together, we immediately found our community, too. Folks like you lifted us up by becoming founding supporters. With your generous donations and a grant from the Ford Foundation, we’re coming back in 2026 with six new episodes! I’ll be going deeper around the episodes in future newsletters with more reads, music, and more. And we will have some surprises in store, too.
If you haven’t yet, tune in to the first two episodes of Notes From The Edge here and wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2026, We’re Launching the Merritt Dialogues!
Lastly, I wanted to let you know about the Merritt Dialogues, a new public discussion series presented by the wonderful team at the Bay Area Book Festival.
Join us on Wednesday, January 7th as we pick up where we left off with the last Notes From The Edge of Artificial Intelligence and take up the question: Can we control what we create?
This event will be live at the New Parkway Theatre in Uptown Oakland at 7pm. We’ll be beaming in Rumman Chowdhury and Roman Yapolskiy to speak with us about the realities of the present and future of AI and AGI.
Before the talk, the amazing Ryan Nicole will be rocking us Town-style. Afterward, you are invited to stay for a community conversation on the questions Rumman and Roman raise.
Please don’t fret if you can’t be there in person with us — we are offering virtual tickets for a live feed. Either way, you won’t want to miss this!
And is there a Merritt Dialogue/Notes From The Edge super team-up in the works? Oh yes!…Stay tuned.
Take care of yourselves and all you love. Wishing you a wonderful New Year!