winter approaches

solidarity with Palestine, submission calls, and a new poem

Hello! It’s been a while! I have been crying and reading and protesting and playing New Pokémon Snap and listening and of course gathering the usual (though admittedly fewer) resources & links for this newsletter over the last couple weeks.

Let’s get right into it.

Solidarity with Palestine:

• While the genocide continues and our tax dollars in the united states continue to fund it, Christmas has been canceled in Bethlehem. If Christ were born today, he would be born in the rubble. If you’re observing the holiday this year, I urge you not to forget about those in occupied Palestine

• Check out “More Than 2000 Poets Boycott The Poetry Foundation for Censoring Pro-Palestine Voices” by Summer Farah

• and “Palestinian Poets on the Role of Literature in Fighting Genocide” in Electric Lit

• Read & sign Writers in Solidarity with Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, this letter to Poetry Foundation

• Keep boycotting Disney+, Starbucks, McDonalds, and other complicit companies, especially those that are specifically on the BDS site

  • Puma has announced they are cutting ties with the israeli football team— BDS works. It worked to dismantle apartheid South Africa and it will continue working

• Keep calling your representatives. See who in your area is organizing locally. We can’t let this be another trend that falls out of the usian consciousness. Local action is one of the few things we as individuals can control and contribute to.

From around the internet:

• I very much adore this poem by Dare Williams “WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS THE SOUND OF HEAVEN WAS ONLY JUST THE COINSTAR” in the latest issue of Split Lip Magazine

• As well as “East of Wyoming, I Remember Matthew Shepard” by Ruben Quesada in Poem-A-Day last month (and if you haven’t picked up Latinx Poetics yet… why not??)

• I recently stumbled across T! a zine about testosterone — the first two issues are great!

• Short interview with poet TC Tolbert in Beloit Poetry Journal

• Cover reveal for KB Brookins’ forthcoming memoir PRETTY in Electric Lit!

  • Why don’t you go ahead and pre-order it?

Opportunities:

• Transgender Film Center Trailblazer Grant - closes TOMORROW 12/18

  • this grant provides funding for short films written, directed, or produced by transgender creators

• Printed Matter is seeking artists books, zines, etc on Decolonization, Resistance & Solidarity

• Astral Cherry Healing Arts’ Queer/Trans Magic Zine Issue #2: Luxuria - closes 12/29

• fifth wheel press’ 2024 digital anthology secrets in the garden - queer, trans, gender variant writing - closes 12/31

• Sundress has two new paid opportunities for Palestinian writers. The first one, a microgrant, closes 12/31

• just femme & dandy - queer fashion-related art & writing - now closes 1/15.

  • Send me art/writing/pitches for the fat + furious column! I’m so stoked about what’s planned so far

• fifth wheel press’ GARLAND issue 1 - queer spirituality - closes 1/31

  • I’m guest editing issue 1 with C. M. Green & the theme is queer spirituality— we’re looking for poetry/prose/quien sabe que in, around, pro, and anti religion– devotion, questions, prayers, manifestos, confessions, and new sacred texts. More here! I’m gonna speak for the both of us and say we are SO EXCITED to start reading subs in January

• ANMLY - all genres - closes 2/1

• Trans Play Anthology Volume II: Plays and Playwrights Submissions - will start reviewing submissions 2/1

• Sundress Publications - 2024 Prose Contest - closes 2/28

SG updates:

• I turned 20-something a week and a half ago! I was part of two lovely readings that week. The folks at Writers League of Texas are really doing something special with the One Page Salon. I wrote my first short story (!!!) and read a page from it to a whole bunch of people and it was terrifying and amazing!

me and Becka Oliver at Radio in ATX!

• I have a poem in VIBE’s anthropoetics folio about deer and this city I have half heartedly called home for over three years now.

• I got into the Tin House Winter Workshop! I am so so so excited to work with Xan Phillips.

• AWP! Things are happening! More deets when I have em, but you can find me at Abode’s table, the Split Lip Mag table for a brief time, and a transpoetics panel with poets I adore.

• I’m hitting up the east coast in May for The Muse & The Marketplace 2024! I’m leading my Writing Queer & Trans Joy workshop again <3

• I have two little zines and another one coming veryyyyy soon available here— this one, aptly named, is a goofy one about my cat. The other one, I WISH I WAS CREATING, is a collage poem about burnout and creepy professors. All physical orders come with trans poetica stickers!

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I admit, it’s been really hard to motivate myself to do much of anything at all lately. Maybe this is a common bipolar feeling, but sometimes I’ll be, for lack of a better phrase, acting bipolar and wondering what’s wrong with me… until I remember! oh yes! I’ve known what’s wrong with me for the last seven years!

So, today I made the below poem out of my bipolarness, and I wanted to share it with you.

Con amor y en solidaridad

<3