In my series of essays for Sidequest on writing poetry inspired by video games, I’ve just added “Level Up Your Poetry, Part 5: When Words Take Iconic Shape.”  This time I focus on concrete poetry, or visual poetry (sometimes shortened to “vispo”).  It’s a form that aligns nicely with how important graphics are in the source material.  I’ve played with this sculptural approach lately and wanted to share some of my trials and tribulations, as well as some inspiration. 

I’m a guest on Pages on the Tongue, an all-new podcast about short fiction!  Host Michelle Murray was so gracious and fun to talk to.  She’s also traveled to Ecuador, so she had me read “Venom in the Cloud Forest” from Myriad Lands Vol. 2, and then we had a marvelous time discussing my story and our travel experiences, and many other topics:  entering story through setting, how my desire to write a villain shaped the narrative, putting indigenous perspectives at the forefront, etc. 

This seems like a good time to share something I read in the article “Indigenous women are showing us how to fight for environmental and human rights”:  According to Sônia Guajajara, “Indigenous peoples make up only 5% of the world’s population, yet we protect 82% of the remaining biodiversity on the planet.”  Pretty staggering. 

Michelle put a lot of care and time into adding sound effects to my story for an extra immersive experience.  Please support the Pages on the Tongue podcast by downloading the episode and watching for her next guest. 

My new poem “Rain at Waimea Falls” is part of the Happy Poems issue of Poemeleon.  I wrote this piece after a trip to Hawaii where we got caught in a warm downpour while visiting the titular waterfall. 

Ah, happy poems.  The more I’ve been researching poetry chapbooks in recent years, the more I’m struck by how many seem to center on trauma.  Maybe it’s just me.  But I love variety and range, and I figured my poetry should be no exception.  So why not tackle sheer pleasure, awe, joy for a change?  Not that there isn’t a need for darker topics and working our way toward healing.  But I was excited to see a call for happy poems and am pleased to be part of the themed issue. 

By the way, my friend Richard Leis has an absolute stunner of a Hawaiian waterfall poem, “How We Will Walk Through the Extremely Green,” in Harpy Hybrid Review.  Please go read that one, too! 

Am I obsessed much with forests and jungles? 

I woke up this morning to the news that my story “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird” got a mention in the Reactor (formerly Tor.com) post “Seven Speculative Stories About Preserving History and Culture.”  This seems like a fitting time to mention my family’s road trip earlier this month, in which we preserved a bit of my personal history—and veered from it to put ourselves in a forest setting. 

We recreated my childhood summer road trips to the Bay Area to visit my maternal grandparents.  That is, we followed the path back up, spending the night in Ashland on the way; on the way down, though, we took a different route to see the famed redwoods. 

It was magnificent.  I’d researched long-lived trees such as these for a certain recent story of mine (and hopefully that’s not too much of a spoiler).  Getting to touch them was something else.  I loved feeling so small, like a character in “A Petrified Heart.”  My husband noted how quiet and still everything was, and sure enough, we didn’t hear much birdsong, rather like in “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird.” 

I’ll be talking about another of my rainforest stories, “Venom in the Cloud Forest,” on a podcast next month.  And a new story, “Ree in the Domain of Scavengers,” is coming out in Flame Tree Publishing’s Sun Rising Short Stories the month after that.  And I had such a kick setting a horror story in the rainforest with “Discount Night at the Haunted Eco Lodge.” 

Okay, yes, I’m obsessed. 

Anyway, San Francisco was great.  We went to some of my favorite spots, including Pier 39 and Chinatown.  We laid flowers at the grave of my grandparents and one of my uncles.  In that sense, I did visit Grandma and Grandpa, like all those summers growing up, preserving a bit of my own family history and bringing the next generation along. 

Once in a while I like to take a break from short stories and poetry to write about the act of writing.  Most recently, I wrote a guest column for Angry Gable Press called “Motivation Through Collaboration with Your Past and Future Selves.”  Any single approach won’t work for every author, but I hope others find it a useful perspective to consider. 

I’m also putting the final touches on a new entry in my Level Up Your Poetry series for Sidequest.  More on that when it’s published. 

Looking ahead, I’ve had a couple of poem acceptances (for Star*Line and Corvid Queen), and I’ve been invited to contribute to a short story anthology—more details soon! 

My poem “Rhapsody in Sage” is part of Extrasensory Overload: an anthology of speculative excess from Angry Gable Press.  This book gathers all types of speculative short stories and verse in which the senses are stretched to their limits, mixed and mashed, and otherwise played with.  I’m honored to be included with all the wonderful writers in here (Angela Yuriko Smith, Ai Jiang… too many to list!). 

I had fun writing this poem after an evening hanging out with my mom and sisters during a family trip to the Oregon high desert.  The sky was vast and filled with bright stars.  At one point, my big sister stepped out onto the cabin’s deck, intending to demonstrate her stargazing app.  The tech didn’t cooperate.  My mind took it from there.  And she was a great sport about me memorializing it through a cosmic horror poem. 

We’re getting close to this year’s Willamette Writers Conference in Portland.  Please say “hi” if you’re attending the in-person portion.  I’ll be speaking on Saturday, August 3^rd with Christopher Luna and Ellis Bray on the panel “Poetic Techniques to Challenge, Inspire, and Transform You (and Your Work!).” 

I’m also happy to share that my poem “Ghosted by Pac-Man” got a shoutout in Critical Distance. 

One last poetry tidbit (not about me), Seattle Worldcon 2025 announced they’ve appointed Brandon O’Brien as their poet laureate!  Brandon is super talented and a wonderful advocate for speculative poetry.  I don’t think I’ve heard of a conference having a poet laureate before, so let’s hope this development continues and grows!  (The Willamette Writers Conference, by the way, will kick off with an opening poem by Alex Dang.)

I’m very excited that a story of mine was selected for the upcoming anthology Sun Rising Short Stories from Flame Tree Publishing.  It’s due out in October.  They always produce such gorgeous books, and I love that they publish contemporary writers alongside classic ones.  You can get a sneak peek of the table of contents here on their blog. 

My newest poem takes shape in Sidequest as one of the ghosts from Pac-Man.  “Ghosted by Pac-Man” continues my interest in playing with word placement and white space, stretching my range of speaker voice, and mining video games as inspiration.  Enjoy! 

Thanks again to hosts Laura Blackwell and Daniel Marcus for having me on Story Hour.  Here’s the link where you can hear Brandon Crilly read one of his wonderful cli-fi stories and me read “The Menagerie Machine” and “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird.” 

I’ve been making headway on a couple new fiction drafts and working on revisions of a couple more.  I like to have a lot of works in progress at a time.  I find I’m a very moody writer and like to flit around to what catches my interest at any particular time.  The key is buckling down when a project gets close enough to completion so I can push through the final parts.  That’s a great feeling.