trans day of anxiety
is every day! read on for solidarity with Palestine, opportunities, & things to read
Trans day of visibility falls on easter sunday this year, and there’s a poem brewing about it somewhere in my mind. Something about queer spirituality. (Which, if that’s something you’re into, stay tuned…)
Let’s get into it!
Solidarity with Palestine:
Read Dispatch From Gaza by Huda Soboh in Mizna
If you’re in the usa, keep calling your reps. Flood biden’s phone lines every Tuesday and Thursday. USCPR is a great resource for getting started.
If you’re an organizer age 16-35, check out the USCPR Youth Fellowship
Keep boycotting, disrupting, etc. Check out the BDS site for more info.
Intel was just added to the official BDS list as well— no tech for apartheid!
ICYMI, check out The Offing’s “A note on REFUSAL”
The Offing is working to rehome writing pulled from genocide-abiding publications
I’ve mentioned open letters to PEN america in prev newsletters. This article is from just two days ago, in which they are accused of silencing its own workers. Is the free speech in the room with us, PEN america?
The boycott on Poetry Foundation was lifted… and then they immediately released a clown statement in which they didn’t take accountability at all, and then, to add insult to injury on injury, they ended with a June Jordan quote…
Opportunities:
SUPER SUPER INCREDIBLY EXCITED about this one:
is hosting a Virtual Summer Retreat throughout the month of June! I’ll be facilitating the poetry workshop, and the iconic Diamond Braxton and aureleo sans will be leading fiction and nonfiction! AND it’s free to apply. Details y más here- is hosting a creative nonfiction workshop starting next month
We are currently considering original manuscripts of fiction and non-fiction (including works-in-progress). We are also considering reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors.
Printed Matter is seeking artists books, zines, etc on Decolonization, Resistance & Solidarity
Leeway Foundation - tons of grants for women, trans, and gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers living in Greater Philadelphia
Sundress Virtual Trans/Nonbinary Writers Retreat - fellowships available - closes 3/30
I’ve gone to this both years it’s been offered, can’t recommend it enough
Jaded Ibis Press Uplift Voices Nonfiction Book Award - open to book-length creative nonfiction by US-based, historically marginalized writers - closes 3/31
manywor(l)ds - open for all/no genres from trans, two-spirit, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, queer, crip, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex writers - closes 3/31
Canthius - writers of marginalized genders, all genres, theme of TRASH - closes 4/1
open to chapbooks from LGBTQ+ poets - closes 4/5
open to poetry for next issue from LGBTQ+ poets - closes 5/15
Interchange Fellowship - $25k grant open to artists from Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, & Texas who have a history of impactful work with a socially engaged creative practice - closes 4/15
NYU’s The Latinx Project Artist in Residence - closes 4/15
Meet Me There, Another Time: Letters To Places Queer and Trans People Left Behind - anthology open to queer and trans writers - closes 4/15
Foglifter - open to all genres from LGBTQ+ writers - closes 5/1
Twin Cities Collage Collective Materials Scholarship - closes 5/31
Sinister Wisdom - Mad Dykes, Queer Worlds - closes 6/30
Diode Editions - Full-length & Chapbook contests - closes 7/15
From around the internet:
- ’s cover reveal for their memoir PANSY is absolutely gorgeous— check it out here:
If you’re like me and love crowding your inbox with newsletters,1 check out this post from
: Black Queer Writers with Newsletters to Subscribe & Vibe to!My first issue of just femme & dandy as fat + furious editor is out!! It means a whole fucking lot to me. I’m still undoing so much internalized fatphobia, and I’m very proud of this section:
“Temporary Satisfaction” by Basil Lee Rivers
“Bridging A Gap” by L. M. Cole
“Sweet Round Baby” by Livia Meneghin
“Declarative. Body.” by Talicha J.
Check out “Decolonization Ghazal with a Smartphone in My Hand” by Tanima published in
“Father’s Daughter’s Baby” by Teal Ivy Hall in HAD is a great micro read
This article in Electric Lit, “Grief Memoirs are for the Living” by Jenny Singer, absolutely fucked me up. Content warning for the article, the entire thing centers around suicide. Technically, everything I’ve published as a writer has been in the wake of my father’s death by suicide. And this article helps express what it is to write in someone’s memory like that.
“The ideal reader for this book is dead, these writers suggest. The reader is invited as an impossibly distant second place.” OOF.
My Sisters Look Like God: A Womanist Manifesto of Poetry by Desiree McCray is available for pre-order from Abode Press. This book is so incredible, y’all.
I also got to blurb the forthcoming Poems of Color by Willow P. Delp from JAKE. You don’t wanna miss this one.
El Ghourabaa: A queer and trans collection of oddities is also available for pre-order from Metonymy Press
Three incredible poems by Mack Rogers in Diode (the whole issue honestly is full of bangers)
It’s been a year since I put together the trans joy folio for ANMLY— give it a read, you won’t regret it
The poem “Palestinian” by Ibrahim Nasrallah & translated by Huda Fakhreddine in Protean Magazine has stayed with me since I first read it.
“I was silent and nothing came of it.
I spoke and nothing came of it.”
Now introducing a new segment— If you have the funds:
The bestie/chosen fam/fucking amazing writer, editor, organizer, educator, etc etc etc Diamond Braxton got into Tin House!! Support their GoFundMe here!
Check out the KidLit4Ceasefire auction
We Need Diverse Books is fundraising to send queer care packages to Oklahoman youth in memory of Nex Benedict
Like I said at the top, TDOV is this weekend. Why not support TENT in their efforts down here in Texas?
What I’ve been up to:
Check out my latest article for Chicago Review of Books: “Poetry for the End of the World”
Also in jf&d, an interview with
on fiber arts and her crochet shop!My essay on microaggressions at my former job is up at here to complain
My poem “reclamation as in” is in All My Relations volume 6: Resistance
My first piece of fiction, “El Primo,” is in Barrelhouse’s Latine Monsters issue
I published the first-ever trans poetica author interview with Sean Enfield for holy american burnout! and have two more v v exciting author interviews coming up2
Boston friends: I’ll be facilitating my Writing Queer & Trans Joy workshop at the Muse & The Marketplace conference May 10th
I’m going to be part of the Poets in Pajamas virtual reading series on May 26th
Of course I’ve also been preparing for the Abode Virtual Retreat <3
Well folks, that’s all from me today. Next up: Spring Reading, a round up of everything I read in March. Shit is bad. Art and literature makes it less bad. We got this.
<3
Thank you for reading this far down. Trans poetica will always be free, but tips are greatly appreciated! I have three pay-what-you-want zines available here. I am available for editing, readings, workshops, and more through my site.
If you have an opportunity for trans, BIPOC, disabled, otherwise marginalized writers or artists you’d like me to include, please let me know. If I’m platforming an institution that is doing wrong by our communities, please let me know that, too.
I am being so serious here. reading great newsletters makes me happy when little else does
Could you be number 3? hit me up!
Thanks so much for sharing my creative nonfiction workshop! I really appreciate it.
Congratulations on your 'just femme & dandy' issue!! As always, so many wonderful reads I've added to my list here—and thank you for the s/o <3