My poem, “Louisiana Disaster Recovery 3.0,” appears in the latest issue of Gulf Coast. I’m so grateful that it found a home in a journal so close to my hometown because it’s about the floods my family and friends suffered in the greater Baton Rouge area last fall. The poem is written as a Venn diagram in two… Read More New Poem in Gulf Coast
I’m chairing the SFPA’s poetry contest, this year, and it opens today! First, second, and third place prizes will go to the best speculative poems in each of three length categories. All forms and styles of speculative poetry are accepted. You can read more about the contest rules on the official contest website. This year’s judge is… Read More SFPA Speculative Poetry Contest Opens Today!
I received my contributors’ copies of Cimarron Review in this afternoon’s mail. It’s an honor to have two poems from the full-length poetry manuscript I’m working on appear alongside work by Karen Skolfield, Sidney Wade, and Edmund White. Highlights for me, in addition to work by the above-mentioned poets, included Katherine Kaufman’s prose poem, “The Foxes,” and Miriam Cohen’s wonderfully… Read More Two Poems in Cimarron Review
Wolf Skin had its premiere performance this week at the Baltimore Composers Forum concert with the original score by composer Elizabeth Skola Davis. Watch the video below to see the performance by Joseph Regan, tenor, and Tim McReynolds, piano! The lyrics originally appeared as a prose poem in the Los Angeles Review and as the title poem in… Read More Wolf Skin at Baltimore Composers Forum
I’ve been remiss in not writing about my wonderful experience at Frostburg Indie Lit Festival in October, where I was invited to be part of a panel on Fairy Tales Reimagined by Sarah Ann Winn. I stayed with a fabulous group of writers at a beautiful cabin in the mountains outside town, where the view on my morning runs… Read More Frostburg Indie Lit Fest, Jackalope-Girl, and two poems in Rose Red Review
I’m excited to share the release of the latest issue of Border Crossing, the online journal I co-edit with Jillena Rose and Julie Brooks Barbour as part of our work with the Lake Superior State University creative writing program. As fiction editor, I’m especially eager to share the work of the featured fiction writer this year, Saramanda Swigart, who writes the most fabulous–and feminist–historical… Read More New Issue of Border Crossing
I was excited to receive my contributor’s copies of Southern Humanities Review, today, featuring “The Birds,” first in a series of essays I’m working on about my parents’ and brother’s deaths–this one focusing on my father–and one of the most generous personal notes I’ve ever received from an editor. It is a very good feeling,… Read More New Essay in Southern Humanities Review
Below is the short film, which I produced collaboratively with Lloyd Eddy (visual artist) and Joshua Legg (choreographer and dancer). It premiered at the multimedia concert, movement/text/image, on April 1, 2016 at Lake Superior State University. Such an amazing experience to collaborate with artists in other disciplines! Text: Fragments from the Alchemist’s Handbook You’ll need the stone… Read More Film Premiere at Movement/Text/Image
It’s been a whirlwind semester, so far. In addition to reading and editing fiction submissions for Border Crossing with two wonderful interns, I’ve been teaching two courses for the first time: a course on Responding to Writing for future teachers, and an intermediate creative writing course for majors and minors that is specifically designed to help students take risks in their writing, to… Read More The Alchemy of Teaching Writing
Last summer, I started editing poetry for Faerie Magazine, the lush quarterly edited by Carolyn Turgeon, which was just profiled in the Style section of the New York Times. If you haven’t heard about Faerie yet, you should check out this article, which examines the magazine’s “gossamer pleasures” and calls it “wonderfully curious and deeply weird.” I have to say, it’s been a delight to read all… Read More The Gossamer Pleasures of Faerie Magazine
I received news yesterday that my debut poetry chapbook, Wolf Skin, won the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2015 Elgin Chapbook Award! The award honors the best speculative poetry chapbook published in 2013-2014. I was honored to be nominated, and I’m just plain thrilled to win! I’ve been writing speculative poetry since I was a kid, and I’m amazed to have… Read More Wolf Skin Wins 2015 Elgin Chapbook Award
I was excited to find the latest issue of Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism in the mail today. This issue includes two of my poems, “Instructions for Letting the Stranger into Your Bed” and “Ahab’s Sister-Wives,” along with poems by Ki Russell and Gregg Murray, a story by Stephen Langlois, and more! Phantom Drift is always delightfully… Read More Two Poems in Phantom Drift
I have been traveling on and off, since early May, so I only just got the chance to be amazed by this wonderful new review of Wolf Skin in the latest issue of American Book Review! Huge thanks are in order to Saara Myrene Raappana for her insightful close reading. Here’s an excerpt: Reaching beyond the simple retelling or recasting… Read More New Review of Wolf Skin in American Book Review
The latest issue of Ninth Letter features two of my poems, “The Sleagh Maith: A Nocturne,” part of my series on folklorist Robert Kirk, and “Open Letter to the Frog Princess,” a poem retelling the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, The Frog King or Iron Heinrich, popularly known as The Princess and the Frog. Also in the issue… Read More Two Poems in Ninth Letter
I just finished a month-long writing residency at Vermont Studio Center, where I spent each day writing in a beautiful studio with a view of the Gihon River and attended readings, slideshows, and talks almost every night. Especially fascinating was visiting poet Sherwin Bitsui‘s seminar on translation and the way language carries culture, and visiting novelist Matt Bell‘s talk on revision, which was exactly what I needed… Read More Back from Vermont Studio Center
