Yumna Kassab’s Parramatta dictionary: Extension #1
Below is a digital-only extension to Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory (Giramondo, 2026), written by acclaimed author Yumna Kassab. As Kassab writes in the first added entry, ‘imagine this dictionary is a house and a writer can keep adding to it, extension after extension, so that it is a project ongoing and endless.’ Kassab was the inaugural Parramatta Laureate in Literature.
A Sequence of Ons
The temptation with a structure as open as a dictionary is to keep adding to it.
Imagine this dictionary is a house and a writer can keep adding to it, extension after extension, so that it is a project ongoing and endless.
The last fragment in the dictionarywas written on the 17th of October, 2024.
There have been instances in the intervening eighteen months where I have thought just one fragment more but I resist and turn my attention elsewhere.
Permit this weakness today of a few fragments more that serve as a mini-extension and forgive me if I indulge the temptation of addition once more.
On Two Promotional Stories
Reading about Helen DeWitt turning down the Windham-Campbell Prize due to promotional obligations.
Reading that Mario Levrero was prickly about interviews. There is one in the Believer where he interviews himself.
Reading reading reading, not speaking and actually writing.
On Parramatta
60,000 words have been written. Enough, I would think.
On Escaping
You won’t escape. Don’t even try. The best title is No One Gets Out of This Alive.
On Protesting
Over a genocide, we’re expected to be silent.
On Genocide
Two and a half years and such reckless violence and the sensation of being adrift.
On Coming of Age in the War on Terror by Randa Abdel-Fattah
This book is a chef’s kiss.
On The Western Terrace
It is the curatorial spirit of Eleni Christou which has created the warmest place to gather over stories, weaving, dance, all types of art, and food.
This series held at PHIVE is beautiful and to Eleni I tip my hat.
On Frankenstein in Baghdad
How I wish I had read you in 2024 so I could’ve included this book by Ahmed Saadawi in the dictionary.
On the Giant Tasmanian Vampire Rabbit
Once upon a time a vampire that could shapeshift into a rabbit was discovered wearing flannel in the forests of Tasmania.
Some days the vampire was called Chris, some days it went by Missel.
On Obscurity
Much of life is shadows. Accept. Submit. The End.
