Back by popular demand, Elizabeth Beechwood and I will be teaching our online workshop Creating Nonhuman Characters through Hugo House again this fall.  This workshop is aimed at fiction writers and poets of all levels.  Here are the key dates for fall registration: 

• Aug 7: Scholarship Donation Day
• Aug 8 at 10:30 am: Member registration opens
• Aug 15 at 10:30 am: General registration opens
• Aug 21: Last day of Early Bird pricing
• Scholarship applications are open now through Monday, Aug 7, 2023

In just a couple of days, The Sprawl Mag is having their launch party for volume 1.2.  I won’t be able to attend live, but I’ve sent in a video reading of my poem “The Llamacorn Herd,” in case there’s time to share it.  If you’re able to attend, you’ll get to hear readings from some of the other fantastic contributors, including Lorraine Schein, Bobby Parrott, Rasha Abdulhadi, Cassondra Windwalker, Devon Field, Lilian Vercauteren, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Chelsea Fanning, and Susan L. Lin. 

The final event I want to mention will be in October.  The Oregon Poetry Association is having their annual conference on Saturday, Oct. 7, and I’ll be presenting a session on speculative poetry.  More info. to come.

Just got back from vacation in Central and Southern Oregon.  We went spelunking and horseback riding with extended family, then headed to Crater Lake, which I hadn’t visited since grade school and didn’t really remember.  It was quite impressive!  I don’t think any of my photos do the national park justice, but I picked one to share, along with a couple from the high desert. 

During the trip, I worked on a new scene for a story, wrote a new poem, and did research for a couple other stories.  One of them I haven’t really started drafting yet; it’s still percolating.  I was excited to get an update on the Discover Beaverton anthology, which is in production mode, and the upcoming virtual launch party for The Sprawl Mag volume 1.2.

Congratulations to the poets selected for the HWA Poetry Showcase X!  Editor Angela Yuriko Smith just announced the table of contents on the HWA’s Youtube channel.  The other judges and I had hundreds of submissions to consider, and ultimately, we could only fit 50 poems into the anthology.  Much gratitude to the writing community for making our job so tough and giving us so many quality poems to consider! 

In addition to the list of poets and the cover reveal, in the video you can find a clip of yours truly at the end, where I offer some thoughts and advice to poets interested in submitting to next year’s anthology.  I learned so much from judging this year, I need to make sure I take my own advice!

TERSE. Journal has just published their Mycelia issue, including my poem “Rhizomorphs.”  In this poem, I put a slightly speculative spin on the world’s largest single organism, a specimen of Armillaria ostoyae located in the Malheur National Forest.  I had a lot of fun making the format mimic the content on this one.