You can quote me on that

I was one of three poets interviewed by The Coachella Review this fall for their blog. I got to talk about writing and reading; and well, what else is there to talk about?

 
You can read my interview here.




Also interviewed in this series were Peycho Kanev and Joanne Lowery.

Post script, or ask and you shall receive

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned here that a certain picture looked like a postcard and one that I would be happy to find in my mailbox. Remember that? I do. Anyway, after writing that, I didn't think much of it. Went on with the everyday things. Then one day last week after finishing work and running errands, I come home to find this friendly thing waiting for me in my mailbox:





 Sometimes the universe is listening. Sometimes I just have wonderful friends like Annie. She is also a bibliophile and crafter, and a general fan of writing and quiet moments to oneself, or with a friend and a cup of tea. Annie is hoping to start a quiet sort of revolution devoted to writing and sending actual letters and little bits of papery ephemera. 

You can certainly count me in.

Forthcoming, part deux

For Halloween this year, I got a second (and quite unexpected) acceptance letter. I had already resigned myself to being rejected again from this literary magazine, but the emails came in yesterday: my poems "Red Market" and "Women and Children First" have been selected for publication in the next issue of Moon Milk Review!

I was first drawn to Moon Milk Review last fall when I stumbled upon them in a lit mag search. When I learned that their namesake is taken from the writing of Italo Calvino (specifically, his short story "The Distance of the Moon" from Cosmicomics), I was in love. I first discovered Calvino during my junior year of college with The Castle of Crossed Destinies; and I was so enamored that he became one of three authors I studied and wrote about for my senior thesis. Even now, whenever I go to a bookstore, I scan the C section for his name. A magazine run by editors with reading tastes as snobby as mine, now that sounds like a place I want to be. So I submitted a couple poems then, but they weren't quite up to snuff. And I went on with my daily life, writing more poetry when I could find the time in between everything else.

So, then came time to start submitting again this fall and I thought I'd give it another go at MMR. I'd written some new poems over the past year that I thought were more along the lines of what the magazine was looking for: magical realism, surrealism, slipstream with a Calvino flavor. Don't misunderstand, I didn't write these poems to match a certain editor's preferences. But after another year of writing, I took a look back at the poems that came out of it and found that a few I had written might be a good match this time around.




I am more than honored that two of my poems have been chosen for this magazine. In the meantime, I will have a good read-through of their latest issue, also released yesterday. Happy poetry season!