Issue 24 of Rogue Agent just got a new permalink, so I’m sharing it again! It includes my poem “When We Finish Playing Cootie” in the company of some incredible poems and visual art. I love this issue and this journal!

The end of May marks the 5-year publication anniversary of The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman!

This chapbook will always be extra special to me. I put so much of myself into it (time, research, questions about faith), and it was my first book publication.

If you’d like to get a copy, you can order a signed copy from me, or you can order online from Wipf and Stock or Amazon.

I’d been wanting to do a poetry reading in my hometown for a long time. I made contact with Phoenix poets and got a reading scheduled as part of my Tasty Other book tour, and I finally got to read at the Caffeine Corridor Reading Series on May 11!

It was so special to have several family members and friends in the audience.

I also loved meeting and hearing fellow reader Trish Justrish, the poets who performed at the open mic, and the reading series hosts: Shawnte Orion, Bill Campana, and Jack Evans. What a cool community of poets!

Thanks, Bill Campana, for your humor.

Thanks, Jack Evans, for your generous affirmation of my work.

Thanks, Shawnte Orion, for arranging for me to read at Caffeine Corridor and for declaring me the poet laureate of North Canyon High School. 🙂

I have two poems in the new issue of The Light Ekphrastic! This online journal pairs a writer and visual artist together to create work in response to each other, which is such a fun and brilliant idea for a journal.

I created “How I Measure Your Body” in response to Carl Scharwath’s photograph “Spatio.” His photo prompted me to write about the different uses of the word “body,” something I’d been wanting to do in my project to/about my Granny, and his photo also gave me the four-box form for my poem. Then Carl sent a photo of Prague in response to “One Way to Use a Deck of Cards,” my poem about a honeymoon and marriage that does indeed mention photos from Prague.

Thanks to editor Jenny O’Grady, artist Carl Scharwath, and poetry champion Trish Hopkinson for introducing me to this journal.

January was bizarre for me in many ways, but I’ll stick to poetry news in this post. Several pieces that were accepted throughout 2017 were published all at once this month. The first 3 journals even went live on the same day!

I ended the month with 21 poems appearing in 6 journals and 1 anthology. If I have nothing else published in 2018, I should still feel like this was a good publication year.

Online

“The Book of Am” in Ovenbird Poetry

“I Dream That I Secrete Honey” and “Scrabble with E.B. White” in Drunk Monkeys

5 pieces from 28,065 Nights in Qu:* “The First Day of Our Second Year Without You,” “How to Use Vanilla,” “I Was Afraid It Would Be Empty,” “After Your Strokes…,” and “Your Death Explained in Birds”

5 poems in Five:2:One: “The Book of On,” “The Book of Thirst,” “The Book of Seconds,” “The Book of Were,” and “The Book of Torn Fish”

Print

“When I Hear That You Are Dead” and “Enkidu Writes a Letter to Eve” in Saint Katherine Review**

Saint Katherine Review

“The Book of Genes” in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics***

TAB Editor Anna Leahy says, “If you’d like a copy mailed to you, please send an old-fashioned check for $10 made out to Chapman University to TAB, Dept. of English, Chapman University, One University Drive, Orange, CA 92866.” There will also be free copies of this incredible postcard issue of TAB available at AWP!

 “Sleeping Beauty’s Mother,” “Wendy Lady,” “The Story of Grandmother,” “Baba Yaga’s Answer,” and “Beauty to the Beast” in Fairy Tales and Folklore Re-imagined, an anthology from Between the Lines Publishing****

Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined

Coming Soon

I’ve just updated my Events page to include newly scheduled readings and presentations in Indianapolis, South Bend, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and everywhere (online) between now and July.

Notes

*These prose poems are especially important to me. They’re from the manuscript about/to my Granny.

**These poems are also extra special. “When I Hear That You Are Dead” is for my late poet friend, Brett Foster.

***I’m so honored to be in this issue of TAB with Hadara Bar-Nadav (my MA professor who taught me how to submit for publication), and with Denise Duhamel and E. Ethelbert Miller, poets I admire. TAB has a new design every issue, and I love this postcard format.

****I’m so thrilled that Ellen Huang, my TA and friend, also has 7 short stories in this anthology, You should definitely get a copy of this one and read it at bedtime.

News from December: I published the second anniversary issue of Whale Road Review, and it is just gorgeous. The Cresset also published a really wonderful review of Tasty Other. I’m so grateful for Rebekah Denison Hewitt’s thoughtful examination of my book!

As for 2017, my time as a Poetry Has Value blogger in 2016 definitely changed the way I submitted my work for publication. I aimed for more paying and top-tier journals than ever before. Here are my stats:

Submissions: 87
Acceptances: 17 (38 poems total)
Paying acceptances: The Cresset, The American Journal of Nursing, Ryga, and Qu ($175 so far, with $100 U.S. and $200 Canadian pending).
Rejections: 48
Still pending: 18
Publications: 13 poems in 9 journals and anthologies (Ink & Letters, The American Journal of Nursing, UnLost Journal, Rogue Agent, The Cresset, Heron Tree, Psaltery & Lyre, The Nice Cage, San Diego Poetry Annual)

For 2018, I hope to spend more time writing and revising, to pull together a new manuscript, and to keeping submitting work widely. I already got my first acceptance and my first rejection of 2018 on January 2 within hours of each other. 🙂

Next up: I’ll be reading poetry tomorrow night at 7 at San Diego Writers, Ink in Liberty Station with Anna DiMartino and Michael Mark.

After an October full of my sons’ birthdays, lots of grading, and Halloween festivities (side note: we were awesome in our Super Mario Bros. costumes), November was full of poetry.

Photo by Sarah Butterfield

UMKC, my masters alma mater, brought me out to Kansas City to give a poetry reading at The Writers Place. I loved reading in the company of Jermaine Thompson, Bonnie Bolling, and Jason Ryberg, and I loved being in that wonderful venue full of friendly faces. It was a bittersweet event though; my thesis advisor, Michelle Boisseau, passed away the day before I got to town. I closed my reading with one of my favorite poems of hers. I’m grateful for her guidance and for the way she pushed me forward in my writing.

Photo by Natasha Ria El-Scari

The next day, I also led a workshop at The Writers Place on revising and submitting work for publication, Later that afternoon, I got to read poetry alongside Karen Craigo at the Johnson County Library’s Leawood branch. All around, I felt so celebrated by my mentors, grad school peers, and friends. These events were a wonderful way to celebrate Tasty Other‘s first year of publication! 

I was also pleased at the end of November to have two of my poems, “The Book of Us” and “The Book of Cons,” published in Issue 6 of Ink & Letters, which is available for purchase here.

I wish us all a December that’s just as full of good poetry and good people.

I was so busy giving readings and talks (and starting the semester, and parenting two small humans, and publishing a new issue of Whale Road Review, and…) in August and September that I didn’t post about the readings here, so I will do that now.

I was the featured poet at Speak for Yourself in Provo, UT, mid-August, and I had a wonderful time hearing some young writers, meeting Trish Hopkinson, and visiting with my sister.

Speak for Yourself

I was honored to perform in The Poetry Circus in Griffith Park once again, this time with a full line up of women. Nicelle Davis makes the most magical events happen!

The Poetry Circus

On the first day of September, I drove up to Santa Monica to be a featured reader at The Rapp Saloon Reading Series. I loved hearing the other poets (Martin Ott and Julayne Lee), seeing a college friend, and spending some time with Cynthia Alessandra Briano.

The Rapp Saloon Reading Series

On September 18, I was thrilled to be the first poet for this fall’s Tabula Poetica Reading Series at Chapman University. I recorded a podcast with Mike Gravagno, gave a talk about connecting as writers, visited Victoria Chang’s wonderful graduate students, enjoyed dinner with Anna Leahy and Richard Bausch, and gave an evening reading to such a responsive and wonderful audience. What an awesome day!

Tabula Poetica Reading Series