Moon City Press Book Award Winner – Field Guide to the End of the World

Good news after a month full of pretty bad news – I just found out I won the Moon City Press Book Award with my fifth book, Field Guide to the End of the World.
My next book! Moon City Press! I’m very excited. (Plus, this is the first book of mine that’s won a book contest! And had no footnotes! Coincidence?)
This book is a light-hearted look at the end of the world. It will be out in November 2016.

Here’s a poem from the book to give you an idea, and is also maybe appropriate for the news going on around us right now, originally published in Redactions:

Epilogue: A Story for After

I want to tell you a story about how we survived the end of the world. Crouched around a dying fire, I illustrate with shadow puppets the old, beat-up van, the velocity of water and sky, the unnamable odds against us. What really sells it? The way the ending goes on forever, moon ebbing closer to the mysterious dark, its craggy face calling out, the skies scattered with falling stars. The way objects are nearer than they appear. You next to me, and I remind you – here is where we used to be, here is where we are. I draw a line in the dirt with a fork and draw a picture – a house made of a square and a triangle, a single daisy in the yard, and two smiling stick figures. This is what we dreamed of, the day we awaited has arrived. There are no more shotguns or dusty trails lined with diseased corpses. A ship arrives on top of a mountain, heralded by doves; an airplane lands on another planet, seatmates dazed by the lack of gravity. We might teach the dragons to dance, learn the alchemy of soil again, rebuild libraries with tales of fantastic voyage. All I need right now is you, the simple weight of your hand, the warmth of your breath, and this last cup of coffee to tell me – we are miraculous.

Poems from the book are upcoming in issues of Mythic Delirium and Front Porch, too!

Thanks again to Moon City Press and its editors – I’m delighted.