Category Archives: Award

Lascaux & Desert Rat Prizes

These past few months have been busy with travel and new class preps, but I’m finally taking a moment to share good poetry news here!

My poem “On the Night We Met, My Father Gave Me Icarus” was chosen as a finalist for The Lascaux Review Poetry Prize! The finalist award also included a monetary prize and publication. I’m thrilled that this poem found a home in such good company. Congrats to Nafisa Iqbal and my fellow finalists!

I also learned that my poem “At the Bird Rehab Facility in Vermont” was chosen by Kelli Russell Agodon as a runner-up for the Desert Rat Poetry Prize! Again, my work keeps some great company.

 

Coming soon… an update about the readings I’ve done recently!

Nominations from Minyan Magazine

The past two months have been so busy that I’m behind on sharing news here!

I’ll begin with this: I was already so honored to be published in Minyan Magazine this spring, and then they went and nominated my poem “Wrestling with God” for Best of the Net in September.

Now they’ve nominated my other poem that they published, “When God Looked Down,” for Best Spiritual Literature. If it’s possible to be honored to bits, I think that’s what I am now. ❤️

You can find my poems in the company of the rest of these incredible pieces at this link.

Verse Daily & Moon Prize & Pushcart (Oh my!)

I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the good poetry news I’ve received lately, and I’m behind on sharing it here…

At the end of September, my poem “One Way to Use a Deck of Cards” from How to Play was featured on Verse Daily!

Last month, two of my poems were published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice: “After an Older Man from Church Drunk-Texts to Tell Me I Looked Good Topless in His Dream Last Night” and “What’s Something You Love That Can’t Love You Back?”

Also in October, two of my poems were published in Pirene’s Fountain: “This Poem Is about Dinosaurs” and “Choosing a Moon.” This whole issue is fantastic, and you can purchase a copy at this link.

This month, I’ve gotten some happy award news! “After an Older Man from Church…” received the Moon Prize from Writing in a Woman’s Voice on November 9, and “This Poem Is about Dinosaurs” was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize this week! I’m so grateful to these editors who’ve published and affirmed my work and to the folks who encourage me and read my poems.

Three Poems in Limp Wrist

I’m so honored to have three poems in the new issue of Limp Wrist! My poem “In Praise of Spouse” was a finalist for the 2021 Glitter Bomb Award.

Fun fact: I wrote this poem after listening to Pádraig O’Tuama read “Bone of My Bone and Flesh of my Flesh” by Ellen Bass on the Poetry Unbound podcast. I adore that poem, but Bass so quickly dismisses my favorite public term for my love, so I had to write this poem for my spouse. 

You can also read my poems “Con Pane” (named for my favorite bakery!) and “Temporomandibular Prayer” (named for my TMJ!) in this issue. Thanks to editor Dustin Brookshire for affirming and publishing my work.

Excellence in Teaching Award

I’m not sure that I have words to describe how near-impossible it’s been to teach this past year during a pandemic, but I love my students, and I’m grateful for the encouragement of receiving an Excellence in Teaching Award.

End-of-January News!

The end of January brought an unusual amount of rain to San Diego and an unusual amount of good poetry news and events to me. I couldn’t keep up with posting them all, so here’s a catch-all post for the end of January.

News
I found out on the final day of January that my full-length manuscript, Hereverent, received an honorable mention for the Wishing Jewel Prize! Congrats to the winner, Dennis Hinrichsen, and thanks to Green Linden Press for affirming and encouraging my work.

Publications
In addition to my poem in Kahini Quarterly, which I did write a post about, I also had two more poems published in the past week:
– “How Can You Tell If a Mushroom Is Poisonous?” was published by the excessively cool Cotton Xenomorph, a journal whose editors and contributors I can’t wait to hang out with at AWP post-pandemic.
– “Baba Yaga’s Answer” was featured on the website for Next Door Villain, which is a fantastic podcast focused on villains from fairy tales to recent shows.

Readings
– On Friday, January 29, I got to be a featured reader for The Greatest Indoor Reading Series alongside Jane R. LaForge, Jack Bedell, and Keith Kopka, and that was such a warm and welcoming gathering! I will certainly be attending this reading series in the future. Thanks to Noley for inviting me, to Charlotte for hosting, and to Treena and Ridge for creating this space.
– On Sunday, January 31, I was a special guest with Marthe Aponte and Jacqueline Tchakalian for a brand new series from Nicelle Davis called Plants, Painting, and Poetry. What a gift to read and talk with powerhouse artists and poets!
– I’ve continued to participate regularly for Wednesday Night Poetry, the longest-running weekly poetry series in the U.S., hosted by Kai Coggin. This asynchronous reading series has been such a lifeline during the pandemic, and the inaugural reading was especially incredible.

Class Visits
I love teaching my own students, but there’s also a special thrill in getting to visit someone else’s class as a guest poet, most notably because I don’t have to assign any grades. 🙂
– On January 21, I visited Susan Rich’s literary magazine class at Highline College as part of a panel of journal editors for the student editors of Arcturus. The students asked brilliant questions, and I loved getting to hear from the other editors on the panel as well.
– On January 29, I visited Tom Allbaugh’s intro to creative writing class at Azusa Pacific University, and those students asked me such thoughtful questions about my new chapbook and about writing in general.

Writing
My university is starting our spring semester late, March 1, in an attempt to work around the winter COVID surges, but I’m still hosting a 3-hour silent writing time called Writers Gonna Write once a month on Zoom for students, alumni, and colleagues. I also gather once a week with a few dear writer friends to catch up and do a bit of writing. So much right now is so far out of my control, and parenting kids who are doing school at home is still a challenge, but these regularly scheduled meetings with kindred spirits have been keeping me writing.

Editing
The staff of Whale Road Review made it through our largest reading period ever (over 600 submissions in December), and by mid-January we’d chosen all of the pieces for our upcoming issues. I’m working on setting up the spring issue now, and it’s amazing. We had so much fun at our 5-year anniversary reading on January 9 that we’re now planning a staff celebration reading for February 6, and we’re planning to have virtual release readings for each issue going forward too. I love doing this work.

I won’t mind if February brings more good poetry news and events, but I do need things to slow down a little so I can focus on completing syllabi and course materials for my spring classes. I feel fortunate to get to do all of these things while we’re staying home. If you’re reading this, I hope you’re taking good care and finding ways to be creative and connect with others safely too.

Thimble Prize & Pushcart Nominations

Now that I’ve finished grading for the semester (hooray!), let me take a moment to share an award and some nominations here…

Last month, the wonderful Thimble Literary Magazine awarded one of their first ever Thimble Prizes to my poem “Don’t Repeat This,” an honor with an honorarium that they gave to one prose piece and two poems from the previous year.  I’m still so surprised and pleased by this! Thank you, Nadia Arioli and staff!

Also, after a seven-year drought, four of my poems received Pushcart Prize nominations from two publishers. Origami Poems nominated “When Your Granny Panties Saved Me” from The Best of Kindness 2020 anthology, and my incredible chapbook publisher, River Glass Books, nominated three poems from 28,065 Nights.

In the midst of this impossible year, I’m grateful for these bright spots of affirmation and encouragement to keep going.

Crab Orchard Series in Poetry

Hereverent, my new full-length poetry manuscript, was a semi-finalist in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry!

Life was overwhelming in late May when I got this news, and life is still overwhelming, but I’m so grateful for this affirmation of my work from one of the first places I’ve sent this manuscript.

Several of the poems in this collection were published as a digital chapbook, A Door with a Voice (Agape Editions, 2016), so you can check that out at this link if you’re interested.

PCA, New Alchemy, & Unlost Journal

The end of the semester would’ve been busy enough, but we’ve also had my spouse’s surprise cancer, surgery, and chemo treatments. Although April and May haven’t been the most productive writing and publishing months for me, I do have some good poetry-related updates.

The PCA/ACA conference was wonderful as always. I loved seeing all of the poetry presentations and sharing poems from Tasty Other. I was also honored to receive the Felicia Campbell Area Chair Award!

I got to read on April 19 at the New Alchemy Poetry Series, which is newly relocated at Lestat’s West. What a cool venue, and what a great night of sharing my poems and hearing others read during the open mic.

In May, my poem “The Book of Icons” from my Bible word banking project was published in Unlost Journal.

This week, Tasty Other turned 6 months old! I joked about doing a mock-baby photo shoot with a chalkboard of fun facts about the book, but I’m not that silly (or perhaps I just don’t have the time right now… I am that silly).

Next up: I’ll be participating in a local author book signing this coming Friday, June 2, from 6-8 p.m. at Liberty Station, Barracks 16 (co-sponsored by SD Writers, Ink and Comickaze).