My poetry book has been out for over 3 years by this point but somehow seeing that there’s a copy in the library system of the university where I went as an undergraduate, seeing the book beneath the image of that library where I spent so many blissful hundreds of hours face pressed into books or writing endless poems in carrels on the upper floors… It brings me over all sentimental.
What a thrill to hold in my hands my contributor copy of They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing just out from Black Lawrence Press. The names on the table of contents make my head spin. Dustin Nightingale and I are absolutely looped to have three of our collaborative prose poems appear in this anthology: “Staring Out a Window Echoing the Actual Moon” and “And Me With Only a Bottle Opener in My Pocket” first published in DIAGRAM, and “I Fear We Have Made a Terrible Mistake” first published in Two Peach. Thank you to the editors who initially published these and to Simone Muench, Dean Rader, Sally Ashton, and Jackie White for including us in this amazing volume.
(Click the poem titles above to read the poems as originally published!)
Lovely to return from vacation to the news that my second poetry book manuscript was a finalist for Sarabande Books’ Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry judged by Ocean Vuong. Congratulations to the winner Chad Bennett. Also, congratulations to my fellow finalist and fellow Indiana University MFA Nathaniel Perry!
I’m delighted to share the news that I’ll be reading my poems at Lit Youngstown’s Second Annual Fall Literary Festival, which takes place this September 21-22. If you’re in the area, come on by! The two-day line-up of readers, presenters, workshops, panels, and activities is really exciting. Early registration is just thirty-five dollars and lasts until August 15. I’ll be reading at 2 pm Friday Sept 21.
Click HERE to see the complete festival schedule and to register.
I’m thrilled to have received my contributor copies of the summer Colorado Review, which contains my poems “Smell of Wet Earth Like the Inside of My Hands” and “Shelter Awhile.” This is the second time I’ve been in the Colorado Review, since they were good enough to publish my lyric essay “Go Away and Stay Right Here” back in the Spring 2014 Issue. Such a delight to share the pages of this issue with amazings such as Ruth Baumann, Conor Bracken, Sophie Klahr, Cate Lycurgus, Lisa Olstein, Brian Simoneau, Kevin Wilson, to name only a few. Massive thanks to Katherine Indermaur, Matthew Cooperman, Donald Revell, Sasha Steensen, and Stephanie G’Schwind!
The summer/fall 2018 issue of Gulf Coast includes my poem, “If We Had a Lemon We’d Throw It and Call That the Sun.” I am over-the-moon thrilled to share these pages with the likes of Tyler Gof Barton, Jenny Molberg, Paige Lewis, Rebecca Hazelton Stafford, Mark Neely, and so many other amazing writers. Massive thank yous to Dan Chu, Chelsea B DesAutels, Aza Pace, Justin Jannise, Michele Nereim, Luisa Muradyan Tannahill, and the rest of the GC crew.
With poems out in the most recent issue of Blackbird, Pleiades, and now Gulf Coast–well, it’s been a wonderful summer!
I’m thumpingly thrilled to have received my contributor copies of the summer issue of Pleiades, which contains my poem, “I Smell the Earth All Around Me and Above,” along with amazing work by wonderfuls such as Michael S Bazzett, John Taylor, Erin Hoover, JP Grasser, Lisa Russ Spaar, Kyle McCord, Adam Tavel, Chelsea Hrechuk Dingman, Lily Hoang, and more–holy moly! Huge thank yous to Jenny Molberg, Phong Nguyen, and the rest of the Pleiades crew!
My short lyric essay 900’33” — composed of what I heard on the day of June 21, 2018 — has just been published on Ander Monson’s Essay Daily. Visit the link HERE and scroll down to find it.
Thank you to my friends and family who graciously answered the phone last Thursday to answer my question, “What’s the best thing you heard today?”
Thank you to Ander Monson and Will Slattery for coming up with this great project of having people write essays on what happened to them on June 21, 2018.
I am loop-de-loop delighted to share the publication of my poem “Anyway and Try to Stay Alive on What It Gives Us” in the new issue of blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts. It’s an honor and a joy to have my poem appear in this issue alongside work by the likes of Kaveh Akbar, Roy Bentley, Michelle Boisseau, Victoria Chang, Patricia Colleen Murphy, Iain Haley Pollock, Nancy Reddy…to name just a few. Thank you to Brandie Gray, Victoria C. Flanagan, and the rest of the blackbird crew!
Read the poem HERE.
On a beautiful Tuesday evening, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing is treated to the fabulous short stories of fiction instructors Randi Beck and Phong Nguyen.