Runner up in Boulevard Magazine's Poetry Contest

Seems like just yesterday I was in high school, sitting on the floor of Barnes & Noble, reading Boulevard Magazine for the first time and dreaming of seeing my name in its pages one day. Now Boulevard has selected me as runner up to their 2022 Poetry Contest. My poems will be in the next issue. Thank you Boulevard for this privilege and for sowing the seeds in my fifteen-year old heart!

Dogs! Revenge! 1st Person Plural! Story "Geraldine Foggs" published in Identity Theory

There's revenge! Dogs! Mysterious illness! Yuppies! Small town crimes! Revenge by dogs! "Geraldine Foggs" is now out with Identity Theory. It only takes 12 minutes and no cost at all to read here.

This story about a cleaning woman with a crooked son and an unexplained blindness is told from the perspective of the town. I've always loved the first person plural. Anthony Doerr's "For A Long Time, This was Griselda's Story" and Jeffrey Eugenides' Virgin Suicides are gorgeous examples. It took me several drafts over the years to get the point-of-view and magical realism atmosphere right. A good reminder to keep editing and don't give up on your favorite stories. 

Can't thank enough editor extraordinaire Sophie Newman who helped me land the ending, and Matt Borondy for bringing me into the Identity Theory community, and who found the perfect photo to go with this piece.

"It Was Our First Great Sorrow" and "The Best Things in Life" in Shenandoah Journal

In the first week of the pandemic, when we didn't know this would last for more than a year, when we created a bunker life in a one-bedroom apartment, these two poems poured out of me. In "It Was Our First Great Sorrow," I imagined what hell would be like if it were made of flowers, when something beautiful turns into the tragic. Then in a burst of uncharacteristic positivity, I thought about how phrases like "the best things in life" are so familiar yet unknown and undefinable. Those moments that make you feel on a visceral level that life is precious are the ones that surprise, the ones that defy rational explanations. Now, more than a year after that bunker life, Shenandoah Journal has put these poems out in the world, and the world has changed so much, yet in some ways, not at all.

Read the rest of "It Was Our First Great Sorrow" and "The Best Things in Life."

And check out the full issue of writers I'm lucky to be sharing space with, including Anna Maria Hong and a new translation of Adonis!