ajodasso

"Systems Inertia," A Bees' Breakfast anthology, Beautiful Dragons Press, May 2017.

"The Devil in Boston," Barking Sycamores, Issue 12 (June 2017).

"Radiant Things," Noble Dissent anthology, Beautiful Dragons Press, November 2017.

(I'll post the texts of the two print-only poems later from home.)

* My new poetry manuscript, Things Being What They Are, has been long-listed for the 2017 Sexton Prize. That's about as much as I can say at the moment, and it's unbearably exciting!

* I have a new poem out in Barking Sycamores. It went live in June, but I forgot to mention it.

* I'm the new SFPA Treasurer.  Most of you probably caught this news on Facebook or Twitter.

3/6/2017 Small Insects and Their Place Among Main Sequence Stars - Juanjo Bazán
3/13/2017 Concerning Boston's Haunted Subways - Konner Jebb
3/20/2017 If I Told You - Gabriel Noel
3/27/2017 Last Time - José González Vargas
4/3/2017 The Day After We Saved the City - Rose Victor
4/10/17 Iris - T.D. Walker
4/17/17 Explorers - Ethan Chua
4/24/17 The Sign of the King - Mary Soon Lee
5/1/17 [One of Sonya's past acceptances will run in this slot.]
5/8/17 I Fight Monsters - Richard Ford Burley
5/15/17 How to Breathe On Venus - Symantha Reagor
5/22/17 Time to Want - E. Kristin Anderson
5/29/17 Hot - Cislyn Smith
6/5/17 The Monster-Maker's Bride - Meera Jhala
6/12/17 Hullabaloo in Thambapani - Rushda Rafeek
6/19/17 Love, the Time Machine, Love Again - Duke Kimball
6/26/17 Ocean Heart - Maddie Phelps
7/3/17 The Slowest Way to Hades - Jungmin Kim
7/10/17 Boys On Bikes - Valya Lupescu
7/17/17 Beast - Jenny Blackford

My sidebar needed some serious streamlining, so I've done just that.

Otherwise: bed, and Rhysling Award nominations close in an hour.

Our Queer Roundtable is one of the many favorites to place.  So much love to fellow round-table participants Anna Anthropy, Rose Fox, Vanessa Rose Phin, Nisi Shawl, and Cynthia Ward!

ETA, 1/25/17: Yes, what you read in the final sentence of this entry, and more explicitly in the comments, is correct.  I'm running for SFPA Treasurer.  I'd been planning on making a bid at getting involved since spring of last year.  My M.F.A. program and teaching fellowship kept me busy till June 2016, but now that I've relocated and settled into my new employment, I can act on said plans.

ETA, 1/18/17: With regard to the below, Tlotlo's poem was reinstated as a nomination today.  Many thanks to all of you who signal-boosted this, offered thoughtful commentaries, and helped to shift the outcome.  I'm exhausted and have been in and out of clinic, hospital, and pharmacy waiting-rooms all evening.  I've had a severe cough for almost four weeks; it seems I was misdiagnosed at first.  Hopefully I'm on the correct medications now!  Anyway, sorry for the belated info; other people's posts got updated before mine.

( This is mostly a recap of what has been happening in the spec-po realm of Twitter since the weekend...Collapse )

A new poem, "Origin Story," will be published in Dreams & Nightmares 106 (May), and a new essay, "Being the Dictionary," will be published in an as-yet-untitled anthology of pieces by adult-diagnosed autistic individuals from ASAN (November).

I don't know how many of you who don't follow me on Facebook had explicitly registered this, but I recently moved from Boston, MA to Albuquerque, NM. Six months is, to me, not that long. Once the divorce was finalized in July (already covered in both a previous post and on FB: how James turned out to be a bigoted, cheating, emotionally abusive egomaniac), I relocated for a couple of reasons. One, my dad and stepfamily have lived out here for over a decade, and two, I got a job offer at University of New Mexico.

Not all of my belongings came with me at first, as I had to move on very short notice for both work and personal-safety reasons, but I recently got back all of my books, my two beautiful Peshawar rugs, and my framed artwork, nearly all of which are originals by various of my talented friends. Unpacking and going through my books has meant realizing that there are a number of them, mostly accrued during my hectic Fellowship-and-M.F.A.-year at Boston University, that I haven't even gotten around to reading:

The Middle Ages in Popular Culture
Chaucer's (Anti-)Eroticisms and the Queer Middle Ages
Language and Imagination in the Gawain-Poems
Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking
Lifelode
Swordspoint
The Fifty Year Sword
Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics,
  Style, and Reception of the Television Series
The Forms of the Affects
Snape: A Definitive Reading
Hidden Youth
XIII: Stories of Transformation

(The latter three are anthologies in which I have either short stories or poems, but which I have not gotten around to reading in their entirety.)

The events of 2016 took a lot out of me, by which I mean it's a miracle I've kept up with my obligations as they stand. Frequently, I've even had to pick up responsibilities that aren't mine; I'm not the kind of person who can neglect the duties I've promised to execute in favor of faithful blog updates, not even when I'm already taxed to the breaking-point, so pardon my relatively long absence. Even now, I'm recovering from severe viral bronchitis.

My thought is that, since there are twelve books, I should aim to read and review one per month here in 2017. In the past, I would've attempted a book a week, but the realities of working full-time, writing in my spare time, and going into my fifth year of editing at Strange Horizons make that impossible.  My kingdom for a Time-Turner.

I know better than to say I hope that 2017 brings better, brighter things, because the simple fact of recent political events indicates that, for most people like me and for most of the people I care about most, it probably won't. Instead, I'll say this: I hope it's a year in which the very fact of our continued existence is the ultimate act of defiance.

"Outbound," "Oblivious," and "The Calm Before"; Belmont Story Review, Spring 2016

"XX/XY," Mythic Delirium, June 2016

"Jellyfish" and "Out of Water," Liminality, Issue 8.

"Augur Effect," Spelling the Hours, Stone Bird Press, July 2016.

"Sargasso Sea," Remixt: Volume 1, September 2016.

"Widening Gyre," Not a Drop anthology, Beautiful Dragons Press, November 2016.

Two Poems ("Nothing Goes Away" and "Ace of Spades"), New England Review of Books, November 2016.

*

The full texts of these will be available soon on the SFPA website; in the meantime, if you want me to send you the file, please drop me a FB message, LJ private message, or email.

Gabriel Noel, "If I Told You"
Symantha Reagor, "How to Breathe On Venus"
José González Vargas, "Last Time"
Rose Condon, "The day after we saved the city"
T.D. Walker, "Iris"
Ethan Chua, "Explorers"
Ada Hoffmann, "Million-Year Elegies: Oviraptor"
Mary Soon Lee, "The Sign of the King"
Richard Ford Burley, "I Fight Monsters"