Honored to have a personal essay about abandonment in Five Points, a journal I very much admire. Grateful to Megan Sexton, Olivia Ivings, Erin Carlyle, Eve Clark, Courtney Causey, Elizabeth Garcia, Kelly Kurtzhals, Ian Lindsay, Redd Long, Nathaniel Meals, Sung-June Park, Rachel Pitmann, Victoria Pitter, Merrick Preti, Alicia Raines, and Isaiah Underwood for all of their dedicated work in getting this issue together, which has a really impressive lineup of writers.

Purchase the issue here. I had another piece published by Five Points in ’21, so it’s nice to be invited a second time. I’m thankful for Kathy Fish and Marina Benjamin’s workshop advice on this piece, started a couple of years ago and finally seeing the light of day, and to Granta for the memoir workshop bursary in which this was completed.

Honored to have asemic writing and abstract art included in Midway Journal, Volume 20, Issue 1. They do a great job of displaying it. This is a fabulous issue and includes work by Kelly Gray, Jennifer Maritza Macauley, Ryan Russell, Sean Thomas Daugherty, Bethany Cutkomp and many other familiar faces. Please check it out here.

Grateful to Gabrielle Peterson, Ralph Penell, Suzanne Richardson, and all of the editors for putting together such a lovely issue.

Happy to have received this Monarch Queer Literary Awards nomination. Thank you, Rogan Kelly and Fifth Wheel Press. Congrats and good luck y’all.

Check out the finalist page and the beautiful session (issue) here!

2025 was not a prolific publishing year for me. However, I turned a funk into a gardening adventure, and that was life changing.

What did get published, with the help and talent of some very generous people, were some interviews, plus some great book reviews for Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect were also published, which I can’t take any credit for, but am including here, as I’m so very grateful for the support (you can find links to all of the reviews and interviews here also). I also got a couple of nominations and placed third in a contest. And, of course, there was the Lammy finalist win for my book also, which was HUGE to me, as it was a finalist designation that came from peers.

In the fall, I got myself together and sent out a bunch of subs and have 18 acceptances in various genres for next year, so there’s something to look forward to, and I’ve written some things I’m happy with. So here it all is, my modest ’25:

Poems

• Sunday Gratitude | San Pedro River Review
• Holy Jesus-free Bingo Hall | Chiron Review, 139, Winter ’25 Issue
  

Fiction/Experimental

• How to Avoid or Survive a Crocodile Attack | Midway Journal 1000 and Under Contest, *Third Place Winner
• Mythic Picnic Reprint, “The Expatriates” | Mythic Picnic Journal
  

Creative Non-Fiction

• The Florida Abandonment | Five Points, Fall ’25 Issue, Vol. 24, No. 2 (fc)
  

Art

• Tornado Drawing | The Pinch
  

Interviews (of me for book by other kindly folks)

• Book Interview by James Diaz | Anti-Heroin Chic
• Book Interview by Hannah Greico | Chiron Review
• Book Interview by Patty Paine | Diode Substack
• Book Interview by Kristine Esser Slentz | (Re) An Ideas Journal
  *Find all of the interviews and reviews here.
  

Awards/Nominations

• The Theft (fiction), *Wigleaf Top 50 Finalist | Ran Off With the Star Bassoon
• The Theft (fiction), Best of the Net Nomination | Ran Off With the Star Bassoon
• The Theft (fiction/prose poem), nomination, | Monarch First Annual Queer Awards
• How to Avoid or Survive a Crocodile Attack, Third Place | Midway Journal 1000 and Under Contest
• Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect | Lammy (Lambda) Finalist
  *Note 2025 BotN nominations are on the 2024 Publications Update page due to how they time/frame their awards. These are actually 2026.
  

Book Reviews of Dancing Backwards (not me, but other generous people reviewing my chapbook)

• Elaine Fletcher Chapman | MicroLit
• Erin Vachon | Moist Poetry
• Jerome Berglund | Heterodox Haiku
• Barton Smock | Kings of Train
• Carla Sarett | Trampoline Poetry
• Jami McCarty | New Pages
• Matthew Freeman | Bending Genres
  *Find all of the interviews and reviews here.
  

Self-Published Work (this felt empowering)

• Poems About Narcissism (including some previously published/unpublished)
• Lots of Art and Photography (check out my visual Instagram page)
• Blog Post About Gardening & Hope (this got more reads than anything in a long time)

I have a book review by Irene Cooper in Tinderbox forthcoming in January, plus micros in Gooseberry Pie, SoFloPoJo, and multiple poems in Petrichor Journal, SoFloPoJo, and Milk & Cake Press’s Dead of Winter IV Anthology (out in February), and asemic work and images in Midway Journal. I’ll be posting more about these soon. It feels good to return to journals/editors I admire and who have supported my work, and Gooseberry Pie is a first. I don’t have a huge fiction output at the moment as I’m writing/hoarding memoir writing, so this made me really happy.

Happy holidays to you if you holiday and may the new year bring you peace or even just good coping skills, good health, and solutions of all kinds… That isn’t a word I use, but it feels more compelling to me during these times. SOLUTIONS. REPAIRS. But also, just hope. Happy hope to you. Thanks for stopping by.

Today is my chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect’s first birthday. The year has flown by quickly and much has happened both in my book life, my real life, and in America’s life, not to mention the upheaval everywhere.

There were high notes and disappointments, one of the highs being it was shortlisted for a Lammy Award, which was the most I could hope for for it considering it is a chapbook and there are not lots of contests to submit it to, but also, my writing is just not contest writing (usually). I don’t fit in, but also, I don’t want to, so I have to kick my own butt when I catch myself whinging about the things I don’t have—and try to count my blessings, of which I have many. The Lammy shortlist was, for me, a great story about underdogs as I am not an It-girl-boi poet, I don’t have a big MFA support network, and I’ve had to work hard for everything I get. And there have been OBSTACLES, big ones, which I will likely never write about, but… Being an underdog is just hard…

This all reminded me a bit of when I was young doing Taekwondo and decided to enter a tournament, which I heard about through my school. Everyone expected and wanted the pretty-yet-cocky blonde straight girl, Dana, from my school to win—the one who belted me in the mouth while sparring, causing a bloody lip, before the no-contact, but actually full-contact, tournament. I was a sort-of punk, buzz-haired, loner artist dyke with no support, and, while I don’t like to brag, I kicked ass that day and won the tournament. Soon after, the semester ended, and I quit the school, never to return… Of course, there were no such opponents in the Lammy Awards and I don’t really regard the other finalists that way. I’m happy for them too because, for the most part, if you’re a lez in lit, you might as well be dead… So getting some accolades is so very welcome. I also acknowledge there was a huge element of luck in this, but also, it feels so great knowing something I wrote moved someone(s) while also defying some peoples’ expectations (which is the cool part of being an underdog (I do hope this doesn’t sound like bragging). Getting acknowledged by peers—also, super cool.

Know I don’t often enter contests and I’m not particularly competitive. I was when I was young but did some significant work around it (around the time I quit the karate school, and more, when I started exhibiting art). To celebrate the successes of others whole-heartedly, in my opinion, is where we should all be headed as humans and lit citizens.

I’ve been reflecting on the book lately, in part due to the birthday, but also because of certain recent life events that seemed to coincide with issues explored in this book and my other work. Some of the things touched upon in the book are loss, addiction, abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and other implied abuses. While I consider this somewhat auto fiction (hybrid poetry), of course, some of it was shaped by my experience, and some of it was very anecdotal, or at least riffed off real life…

Many of my family members have addiction or did (many of them are are now gone, including my cousin who died of an overdose this year), leaving her offspring both motherless and fatherless. Her ex-boyfriend died under mysterious (probably drug related) circumstances also. My feeling, a murder. Hers, especially, was a very heartbreaking and unnecessary death and made for a difficult year, but other life events seem to point to a chapter of my life closing in a way that parallels my writing.

For one, two abusers in my family left this plane recently, and the third and probably most dangerous was just committed to a dementia center, his mental state and external restrictions rendering him pretty harmless to others. And while I wouldn’t wish dementia on anyone, my younger relatives stand a better chance of healing and surviving, and I’m just going to say it, the world got a bit safer, and while things continue to be difficult for me in many ways, and the filth that is our government continues to dismantle anything that remotely worked in our system, I’m moving through this passage with a strange hope and a LOT lighter than I was a couple weeks ago as I realize I’m completing a difficult transit and entering a new phase of life.

I hope to see you on the other side of it. And thank you for supporting me, my chapbook, and my writing… I don’t think lit people are interested in talking about book publishing as life passages, but, for me, it’s definitely a part of it. There’s no tenure committee champing at the bit for my list of accomplishments and proof of self worth in my humble, non-academic existence (and I’m glad, to be truthful). This is just authentic life hanging here in these words I share.

One thing that is very clear to me is that there is no way I could have published this book without the help from others. I’ve received a lot of amazingly generous support in the way of publishing, promotion, and in much-needed emotional support when things got strange. Publishing is tough, and I’m not sure where I’m headed in it, but this has been a really great life passage in finding and learning about community, something I have experienced very little of in life save for some childhood years in which this queerdo got to experience it in the farm area I spent the bulk of my childhood in, mostly by proxy through my grandparents connections, something that is now long gone from this area. While internet community means people come and go way to fast for my temperament and life wounds, still, I’m so grateful for this experience, wherever it leads…

Thanks for stopping by. Hang in there… Keep writing. Do friendship well. Hold your loved ones close. More soon.

*You can purchase a signed copy of my book here (U.S. only), or get an unsigned one from Diode (also, if purchasing internationally, you can request a shipping discount in writing using their web form). If you have any issues, please contact me.

Thanks for stopping by.

This one was published in Stanchion’s recent music issue. Find it here. There’s lots of great work in it–plus there are two volumes.

This was published in the now defunct Kissing Dynamite Poetry:

This was published in San Pedro River Review:

Very honored to have this #CW piece win third in Midway Journal’s contest. Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh was the final judge of the contest, and I’m grateful to Suzanne Richardson, Ralph Pennel, and the rest of the editors for all of their work. Read the piece here, and be sure to check out the other contest winners and the entire issue. It’s fabulous.

Read the piece here: