Reading this weekend at NYC Poetry Festival!→

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“Bed of Dragonflies” by Claudia Amuedo, courtesy of wearegrimoire.com

“Bed of Dragonflies” by Claudia Amuedo, courtesy of wearegrimoire.com

NYC POETRY FESTIVAL

I’ve been in New York City for a little over a year now. It’s been a lot, hence some radio silence, but the summer is shaping up magically.

I am reading poems THIS WEEKEND at The New York City Poetry Festival! If you’re in town and feel like taking the ferry to Governor’s Island, you might see me:

  • Reading with Litbreaker on the Chumley’s stage at 2:00 pm

  • Selling chapbooks and swag at the Sweet Action merch table at 4:00

  • Reading with Sweet Action Poetry Collective on the Chumley’s stage at 5:00 pm

Full schedule for the festival is here.

SOFT SKULL AND CATAPULT

In other news, I am now the editorial assistant at Soft Skull Press and get to spend my workdays surrounded by books!! Since last July, I’ve also been soliciting fiction and the occasional essay for Catapult and have published these gems:

PUBLICATIONS

My recent and forthcoming publications, since last update:

“Of all the classes of people who ever lived” and “THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF CHIVALRY” — erasure poems in the forthcoming anthology Erase the Patriarchy (University of Hell Press), edited by Isobel O’Hare

“Guided Meditation with Inner Mother” — poem at Grimoire

"Temperance" and "Becoming the Magician" — tarot medicine poems at Yes Poetry

"The Empress" and "Poem about My Uterus" — poems at FORTH magazine

Preorders open for THEY SAID from Black Lawrence Press!

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Image courtesy of BlackLawrence.com

Image courtesy of BlackLawrence.com

Happy National Poetry Month! I am pleased as punch to show you this beautiful-weird new cover for They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing—and more pleased than punch to announce that preorders are now open!! 

Poet-friend Isobel O'Hare and I co-wrote a poem that appears in here. You can read about our process in the back of the book once it makes its way to your hot little hands. The full list of contributors, advanced praise (including from the editors of ZYZZYVA—I swooned), and order link are in today's BLP announcement.

Image courtesy of younginklings.org

Image courtesy of younginklings.org

In other Poetry Month news, Society of Young Inklings interviewed me as their resident poet for their monthly newsletter, the Ink Splat. You can read about me writing poems for online communities as a teen, gushing about Matthew Zapruder, and being inspired by young writers here.

Publication announcement: "Cosmologies" in Vine Leaves anthology

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Image courtesy of vineleavespress.com

Today is the official release date for this handsome coffee-table book, Vine Leaves Literary Journal: A Collection of Vignettes from Across the Globe. It includes "Cosmologies," a vignette I wrote some years ago in a creative writing class with Kate Evans.

The prompt was "you are an astronaut," and while many in my class wrote madcap sci-fi adventures, I thought about how children can believe they are anything. I wrote from the perspective of a mother recognizing that she can still create magic for her young son, but she won't always be able to.

The book of vignettes and photography is available to order at various sites here. If you, like me, are obsessive about adding books to the "to-read" list in Goodreads, you can find and add it here.

Annnnd stay tuned for another book-related announcement soon!

Rumpus retirement, Dream Pop publication, and a sweet newsletter shoutout

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After four years working on Rumpus Original Fiction, I've decided to step down to focus more on my own writing. Upon ROF's inception in 2013, I served as an Assistant Editor briefly under Andrew Foster Altschul and then under Jessy Goodman before stepping into the role of Editor in 2015. ROF first ran as a feature in a phone app called The Weekly Rumpus, then ran stories on the site and in a monthly newsletter called the Book Report, and now runs solely on therumpus.net.

I'm proud to have showcased such thought-provoking, funny, touching, bizarre stories over the years, and to have published so many first-timers in the fiction world, including PEN Award-winner Amy Sauber, C. A. Carey, Kamil Ahsan, Lauren Friedlander, Siobhan May, and Jason Phoebe Rusch. Thank you for trusting me with your words and visions.

I'm grateful to Rumpus staff, particularly Marisa Siegel and Lyz Lenz, and to all of the slush readers I've worked with. Very excited to see what Karissa Chen—the new Fiction Editor—and Dennis Norris II (Karissa's assistant and a host of Food 4 Thot, one of my favorite podcasts :P) have up their sleeves!

“The sea of red is violent and sensual; the surrounding text a well-known tale of overt and overly masculine narratives that do little good in the name of women; the poem, a small thread, rising from these backdrops and finding its own self, unapologetically. ”
— Andrew Sargus Klein

In writerly news, two of the erasure poems from my On the Road series are up at Dream Pop Press! All of Issue #2 is up here, with a direct link to my pieces here. There's a nice write-up about "she apologized" up at wildness, an imprint of Platypus Press. The full article is available here.

Poet/memoirist/novelist/BinderCon founder/everything doer Leigh Stein featured me in her newsletter, The Finishing Touch, this week: "How to write even when you're not writing." Leigh's letter is all about strategies to both produce and finish creative work. I talked about editing by hand and priming my subconscious to revise for me during the day while I drive, do other work, and live my life. I'm not sure if it's possible to get in on the letter that just went out, but if you're as jazzed on creativity strategies as I am, you can subscribe for future letters on Leigh's website.

Anthologies Launched This Summer

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Inklings and Catapult.jpg

The weather is getting colder (and hopefully bringing rain to put out the outrageous fires raging over my entire state, holy moly), which means Summer is officially over. Before the seasons fast-forward any more, I want to highlight a couple of anthologies that launched this Summer, ones in which I was fortunate to be included! 

Inklings Book 2017

The annual Inklings Book is the culmination of the annual Society of Young Inklings contest for young writers in first through eighth grade. Winners get editorial feedback from a grown-up writer, and share their thoughts on the revision process in interviews included in the book. Each Inklings Book serves as an entertaining anthology of short stories and poems for children and educators, and "Dear Reader" letters from mentors encourage anyone to try revision techniques on their own.

I wrote a letter on "Building toward a Twist" in poetry, and how my delightful young poet turned his already-wonderful poem into something with an extra punch. I also copyedited the anthology and did the interior and cover design (featuring an illustration by Lea Lyon). If you are a writing teacher for K-8, a parent of a writerly child, or simply a children's writing enthusiast, you can grab a copy from the SYI Book Store, or on Amazon. 

PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017 

This is a brand-new anthology series by Catapult, featuring the twelve winners of the (also brand-new) annual PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Prizewinners had their first-ever fiction publication nominated by the editor of the magazine/journal that published it. In my case, I had the honor of nominating Amy Sauber for her hilarious, heartbreaking story, "State Facts for the New Age," and writing an introduction for it in the anthology. Nab it at Catapult's store, or basically anywhere.