It’s finally here!  The Discover Beaverton anthology is available now.  This eleventh issue of Lucky Jefferson brings together 11 writers and artists to highlight Beaverton, Oregon, through their poetry, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art.  It also includes a Foreword I wrote, plus interviews with the contributors, some of whom are published for the first time here!  I really enjoyed getting to guest edit this anthology, working with Lucky Jefferson’s founder and editor, NaBeela Washington. 

You can read Discover Beaverton online for free or order a physical copy.  Inside you’ll find creative work from Rodney Wilder, Derek R. Smith, Ruth Mota, Rhienna Guedry, Elizabeth Beechwood, April Hernandez, A.M. Arndt, Katie Briggs, Kate Tomich, Andria Lishka, and Marie Queen. 

This project came to fruition with support from the City of Beaverton Arts Program.

I’ve got three poems, all sonnets, in the MiniGames issue of the minison zine, as well as a new installment of my “Level Up Your Poetry” essay series for Sidequest, this one on prose poetry and liminality. 

“Zelda II Bossfight” is a Petrarchan sonnet about my some of my favorite characters from my favorite video game.  “Manipulator” is a Spenserian sonnet about the fascinating game Braid.  “The Boy of My Vegas Dreams” is a Shakespearean sonnet about puppy love set against a backdrop of 8-bit casino shenanigans and flirtations.  (Wow, that last one is a sentence I wasn’t expecting to write today…) 

Sonnets aside, I’ve had prose poetry on the brain recently, and it seemed a fitting topic for a new essay for Sidequest.  In “Level Up Your Poetry, Part 4: Games, Prose Poems, and Liminality,” I dig into some quirks that make video games and prose poetry apt partners in art and discuss a few approaches I’ve taken in this realm. 

On the horizon is the release of Discover Beaverton, and I’ll have some news about a reading coming up.

I’ve been needing some good news this week, so I’m especially happy to share that my story “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird” from Fireside Magazine will appear in the 2022 Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction.  I’m looking forward to seeing this anthology of imaginative, hopeful stories.

You can read my latest video game prose poem, “The Labyrinth Proper,” in Sidequest.  This is the one I read and discussed toward the end of my episode of the podcast Into the Looking Glass, so if you’re curious as to the inspiration and writing process on this one, go have a listen.  Also, their next episode come out recently, featuring the wonderful Angela Acosta! 

On the fiction side of things, I’ve got some exciting news that I’m not able to share yet…  Hopefully soon.  My in-progress drafts continue to jostle around and try to cut to the front for attention.  Two are close to completion, but it doesn’t help things when they keep leapfrogging each other.

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.

I had such a fun time chatting with Brittany Hause on this month’s episode of the podcast Into the Looking Glass.  We covered a lot of ground, from my upcoming chapbook, to different processes for writing speculative fiction and poetry, to video games.  Be forewarned, this one’s kind of a marathon.  It does follow the format of the other episodes:  interview questions, then a reading, then a writing prompt.  Brittany also has a connection to South America—and does gorgeous translations of speculative poetry from that region—which fed into their very thoughtful questions and our follow-up discussions on those influences for each of us. 

Which poem did I choose to read?  A brand-new prose poem, “The Labyrinth Proper.”  I think this is the first time I’ve had something published in audio before print, although the text will also appear soon in Sidequest. 

I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the connections between Oregon and Ecuador, how I feel about rough drafts, a not-so-proper labyrinth, and more!

I’m behind on providing updates!  Here’s what I’ve been up to these days: 

• I sold a story to Wyldblood Press!  “The Sphinx’s Blind Date” will be part of their Wyld Flash series later this year. 
• I finished judging a bunch of horror poetry for the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume X, and editor Angela Yuriko Smith is compiling some comments from all of this year’s judges.  More to come. 
• I’m excited to be this month’s guest on Jasmine Arch’s Into the Looking Glass podcast about speculative poetry, where the wonderful Brittany Hause and I will share a wide-ranging conversation about specpo and more (episode coming soon). 
• I also wrote the Foreword for Lucky Jefferson’s upcoming anthology, Discover Beaverton, and finished reviewing the submissions with the editor. 
• I have a new video game prose poem forthcoming in Sidequest, and I wrote another installment of the “Level Up Your Poetry” essay series for them, this time on the topic of prose poetry.