I feel like I should wish a happy first birthday to my three chapbooks that were published last summer, but then that’s not quite right. They were born long before they were published. Maybe publication is more of a coming of age than a birth. Maybe this is an anniversary.

Regardless, I’ll start with the first…

Happy first year of publication to The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman! This collection was the first intentionally unified, researched-based collection I ever wrote, yet the persona poems manage to capture more of my own faith/doubt than any overtly autobiographical poetry I’ve written.  It will always be special to me, and I’m glad that it was the first to be published.

During this first year, I especially loved sharing these poems as the featured poet at PLNU’s Poetry Day last September and as the keynote speaker for Biola’s Zeitgeist Conference in May, and, of course, I loved wearing my Jesus costume at the AWP bookfair to get people to stop and talk to me about this book.

I was also thrilled to have a poem from this collection, “Where Death Is Not an Is,” featured on Verse Daily in September.

Thank you to everyone who bought this chapbook, read these poems, listened to me read these poems, talked with me about these poems and the stories behind them, reviewed the collection, interviewed me in print and podcast, and stopped to talk and take pictures with Jesus/me. I’m so honored to be able to do this work.

If you haven’t yet gotten a copy of The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman, you can still do so from Amazon or from Wipf & Stock. Or better yet, you can buy it straight from me and I’ll sign it for you. 😉