Texas weather is finally below 80 degrees. I’ve switched out my Modern Baseball Halloween sweater for my Modern Baseball Christmas sweater. I spent the morning listening to Smidley’s new album Here Comes the Devil and holy shit. As promised, here’s a round-up of… things happening? Literary things! Sad things! But mostly literary things.
Porter House Review is now open for contest submissions in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction! We have an incredible line up of judges, including Edgar Gomez, author of High-Risk Homosexual. We also just published 3 wonderful pieces, like Meghan McGuire’s “Stranded Helpless in the Woods”
Split Lip Magazine’s 10 year anniversary issue of micro pieces is out now. I’m especially fond of Verna Zafra-Kasala’s poem “Honey-Girls”
I came across these poems by Jodi Bosin in Wax Nine recently and I keep coming back to them. Highly recommend!
The fifth anniversary edition of one of my favorite books, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib, is out today! Can’t wait to read the extra essays.
An anthology edited by Eileen Myles, Pathetic Literature, is also out today. (When will I have time to read all these books? Who knows)
Editing this post to add Jennifer Chong Schneider's review in ANMLY of Best American Essays 2022. This piece explores the nuances of the “Best American” series, tokenization, and more
HBO cancelled the Degrassi reboot and I am very sad about it. I still haven’t forgiven them for removing Close Enough and all the other wonderful shows in their catalog. (Dead dad Degrassi poem? Why, yes, I do have one, right here in HAD)
More personal news: I raised enough money to attend the Roots. Wounds. Words. Writers Retreat for Storytellers of Color in January! I am so incredibly grateful to all my writer friends and strangers and colleagues that contributed. Words are quite literally not enough to express how grateful I am
I have a poetry… not-quite-chapbook, Mid-Twenties, coming out with Kith Books next spring, as well as my actually-a-chapbook with Defunkt, Last Stop. More on those later. For now, here’s the first poem, “When everything died,” published in Kissing Dynamite (one of my first-ever publications!)
Mid-Twenties is, shockingly, some ramblings about my age and my bipolar disorder
Last Stop was written within the first year and a half of my dad’s death. Major content warning for that one
While writing this newsletter, I also perfected this playlist suiting the vibe of, well, everything right now. I don’t know. Listen to it and you’ll know what I mean. I had to stop myself from adding the entire new Smidley album!!!!
I feel like in my writing lately, I’ve been pushing myself waaaay out of my comfort zone. It’s a bit scary. There’s definitely value in this, but I’m hoping to return to safety soon. Pa’lante!
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