Happy May! Some Results, and Trying to Get Back My Mojo

Happy May!
I’ve been trying to process all my news, including the fact that (yay!) I don’t most likely have metastatic cancer (this, according to a conference of liver tumor specialists including radiologists and hematologists and oncologists) which is good! But I do have a bunch of irregular and rare kinds of liver tumors which they are calling adenomatosis – basically a rare/irregular presentation of an already rare kind of tumor. The bad news is they want to keep monitoring them every three months – because they can burst or turn into cancer sometimes – and they want me off the medication that’s been controlling my rare bleeding disorder for the last twenty years. Yikes! On top of that, I’m investigating (again) more stuff about the brain lesions, because of the new one that looks like it could be one of several bad things, so, more radiation second and third readings and second opinions from neurologists are ahead. Can’t I ever be just average or anything? I was joking with my friends that I’ve become “the most interesting woman in the world” – but only medically speaking. (My liver specialist said they did my case first at the conference, because it was so interesting and difficult!)
So, in the meantime, I’m once again trying to manage and balance all the health stuff with an ACTUAL life, like, writing and friends and doing things other than sitting in doctor’s offices and getting tests. It’s been unseasonably warm here in the Northwest, so, even though I would never wear shorts after 40, yes, I gave in and bought three pair. I’ve been out walking through parks and the woods almost very single day, and so far so good on the ankles and tripping/falling issues. I’m trying to get my strength back after back-to-back ankle injuries earlier this year. I’ve been eating tons of fresh veggies and fruits (cherries on the side of the road!) and bringing home flowers every week. This whole health crisis has made me even more aware of the necessity of being good to your body as much as possible.


And everywhere there are signs of spring – in the deep woods the trillium, ducklings along the Sammamish river, baby bunnies, yellow iris along the waterfront and our quarterly pilgrimage to Snoqualmie Falls and Ollalie State Park. It’s a reminder – life goes on, nature is ruffling itself with blossoms. It’s hard to be depressed with so much sunshine!


Now I want – despite upcoming doctor’s appointments, stresses, and even more tests – to move myself out of crisis mode and into writer mode again. I haven’t been writing or sending out as much as I usually do this whole year so far, and of course we’re still looking for a house in our insane East Side/Seattle market (record high prices! record low inventory! record..sigh.) I’m ready for my next chapters, with the whole “dying of cancer” scenario off the table, at least temporarily. (Everything is temporary, you remind yourself. Often.)
I’d love to know how you have moved yourself out of a tough time back into your regular creative routines. I know there’s an adjustment period, a kind of getting back into not just a “normalized” state of mind, but I want to start to look forward again, instead of having a fear that you shouldn’t even plan for a future that might not come true.

Birthdays, Uncertainty and the Cyclops, and Looking Forward

bdayflowers2016Thought I’d post a little update since my last post, though sadly I don’t have as much definite news as I’d like at this point. I also want to report on a pretty terrible week with a bright side – my birthday!

Yes, the day of the test came and went, the tests themselves weren’t super fun but no crazy reactions, and pretty much the two days straight afterwards, I was tense, waiting for reports, then doctors to give me insight into reports. I was getting about twenty messages from different specialists a day for a couple of days in a row.  They gave me tentative diagnoses, made plans, then other test results came in, and then they decided to scrap their plans and diagnoses. So for now, I’m still waiting, until an “Interdisciplinary Board” reviews all my results on May 11. It is a stressful process. I didn’t have an anaphylactic reaction to the test itself, which the docs were worried about – so that’s good, right?

Anyway, I didn’t plan much for my birthday because I didn’t know what state of mind I’d be in, which turned out to allow me to do multiple fun things. Glenn went out in the morning and got me flowers (peonies! In April!) and made brunch, then we went down to the Seattle Japanese Garden where I ran into an old friend and great poet, Kathleen Flenniken, and got to admire the beautiful wisteria, which smelled exactly the way it looked. After a quick walk around the park, we drove down to Seattle’s International District and the very cool Wing Luke Museum, where Michael Schmeltzer was launching his first full-length book, Blood Song (and my friend Natasha Moni was reading), and got to say hi to Annette and Kelli from Two Sylvias as well as other poets I don’t get to see as often as I like. Natasha and I got to go to the famous tea house at the Panama Hotel down the street and catch up. It was far better than sitting at home listening to sad music and crying (which, um, was probably what I would have done if my husband hadn’t encouraged me to go and get out of the house) – I’ve been having nightmares about cobras and radiation (nothing to do with those scary medical tests, I’m sure) and basically thinking about all the BAD stuff the doctors have been presenting to me as options.

I was thinking about the mythical curse of the cyclops. The cyclopses (cyclopses? cyclopsi?) were super angry, mostly because they were cursed with knowing the exact time and circumstances of their deaths. You know, you never actually want to know the way you’re gonna die. Let it be a surprise, you know? The more info I get about my weird malfunctioning human self, the more I want to be an android, or at least a slightly more ignorant human, who didn’t have the information.

Anyway, I’m determined to look forward, not sit around chewing my nails until I have all the answers. I want to focus on the positive – the blooms around us appearing and fading (hello and goodbye, cherry blossoms! lilacs!), my upcoming poetry book, sending out and writing new poems. Saying hello to my 43rd year, saying goodbye to April and National Poetry Month and hopefully less time in hospital rooms and specialists’ offices.  Focusing on each day and embracing the good things around me.

PS: Check out my entry on Orion Magazine’s Poetry in the Wild feature on Tumblr here.

Pre-Ordering My New Book, Montaigne Medal Finalist, and Surviving Medical Tests

Hi all! Survived the latest round of medical testing (no results yet) and came home from the hospital to a flurry of literary news!

Field Guide final coverFirst of all, you can now pre-order my latest book, Field Guide to the End of the World, from Moon City Press (and distributed through University of Arkansas Press.) It’s also on Amazon already, squeee!

The other news was that the finalists for the 2016 Montaigne Medal have been publicly announced and The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is on the list, along with poet-friend Maggie Smith’s latest book. It’s nice to have poetry books in a list of finalists for a prize on “thought-provoking books” of any genre.

The third is to keep an eye on Orion’s social media feed this week for a post from me on their visual series “Poetry in the Wild,” curated by their poetry editor Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Part of how I survive so many medical tests is a plan to have good things going on right before (also, the doctors wisely gave me a generous portion this time of pre-medications to prevent any allergic reactions – good work, doctors!) A few days before the test, we had an early birthday celebration with my little brother and his wife, which was a lot of fun, and Glenn took me to an Aimee Mann/Billy Collins concert down in Tacoma’s beautiful antique Pantages theatre.

billyaimee42016Here’s a picture of Aimee laughing at Billy Collins’ reading and check out this little bit of video of Aimee turning one of Billy Collins’ poems into a melancholy breakup tune:
https://webbish6.com/aimee-billy-france/

If Billy Collins and Aimee Mann can’t cheer you up, I don’t know what will!

Living in the Liminal Spaces – Birthdays, Flowers, Finding Space, More Tests

I’ve had to get used, lately, whether I like it or not, to living in the liminal spaceslilacsbleu42016 – in other words, the in-between. We have sold our house, but haven’t yet found a new one (lost the 18th or 19th bid – I’m starting to forget how many we’ve lost in this crazy market.) I’m turning 43 at the end of the month, a month which has gone mad with flowers – cherry trees, iris, dogwood, rhododendrons, azaleas and lilacs all blooming at the same time – and with heat – three days above 85 out here in the supposedly chilly and damp Pacific Northwest has made us all wilt a bit, even the sunlovers. And I’m getting another (hopefully definitive but slightly dangerous) test next week, a couple of days before my birthday, that hopefully will give us more answers in the mysterious world of the scary health stuff. I am trying not to talk as much about the cancer scare going on, but I notice when I don’t talk about it when I’m awake, it shows up when I’m asleep. I literally had a dream in which I spoke the line “I can’t do that, I might have cancer” – an unspoken background in my mind right now that’s leading me to only making tentative future plans, because…well, we don’t know yet.

Except I AM thinking of the future in a positive way – visiting the Skagit River Poetry Festival in May, making our annual pilgrimage this summer up to Port Townsend, even thinking about AWP 2019 in Portland. I’m thinking of my book launch in September, at least a little, already (Where would it be fun to read this time? Should we have a party?)

But I notice I’m pickier about what I commit to. I’m quicker to throw down a book if it tries my patience, if I’m not really enjoying it. I’m conserving my energies each week for one outing that’s good for my spirits – a visit to Open Books to talk poetry, or down to the Japanese gardens to watch the different trees and shrubs open up to bloom.

I spend more time photographing light and color, especially birds and flowers.


I’m making small efforts to be healthy, too – eating the most beautiful produce in the stores – asparagus, strawberries and blueberries, new lettuces. I’ve been making a tremendously delicious soup out of barely-cooked fresh peas, fennel, and a little honey and salt thrown together and immersion-blended into a bright green shot of spring flavor and eating (drinking) it almost every night with dinner. (So different than the dim brownish split-pea soups of our seventies childhoods.) I’m reading old poetry books I loved in the past at night, finding the poems I loved the most when I first started writing.

Is this how you live within limits, within a space where your end goal is no longer clearly defined? You throw yourself into the things that make you feel the most alive, not just happy, but the most “you.” What would you miss if everything were going to be taken away? That’s what I’m trying to hold onto right now.

Cover Art and First Blurb for Field Guide to the End of the World!! Plus a new review…

Here’s the cover reveal for Field Guide to the End of the World – now upcoming in September 2016 from Moon City Press! The artist is Charli Barnes, and I told her I wanted a combo of vintage science-y field guide books and graphic-novel-sci-fi-futuristic – I think she did a great job!

Field Guide final cover

And here’s the first blurb for the book, from one of my poetry superheroines, Matthea Harvey:

“In Field Guide to the End of the World, Jeannine Hall Gailey allies herself with the mutants of the world—from zombie stripper clones to teen girl vampires—but unlike them, she is haunted by the possibility of the world and the self coming to an end. Wry, heartsick and shot through with black humor (Martha Stewart’s “Guide to Apocalypse Living” dispenses advice on “storing munitions in attractive wicker boxes”), these poems about transformation and extinction mournfully remind us via post-apocalypse postcards, notes and instructions, “we were not here first, we will not be here last.”

Also, a review of The Robot Scientist’s Daughter on Strange Horizons by John Amen might be my favorite review yet. Check it out.

I’ve been a little under the weather (did I finally get a bug from my AWP trip?) the last couple of days, but still managed to put in another offer on a house today (this one a little bit of a fixer-upper, which we may still lose to an all-cash offer, because that’s the market these days.) Our spring has been so beautiful it was tough to spend a day resting indoors, but at least I got some poetry judging done for an undergrad contest and had some reading time. Wishing you all a wonderful week!

Tulips! An April Respite

daffstulips42016Since AWP hit us both like a truck, and we jumped right back into the stress of work, high-pressure house pinkdogwood42016bids (losing, sadly, a dream house in a dream neighborhood) and scheduling medical tests as soon as we got home, we decided we needed a bit of a real break, so we took a day to go up and visit the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. We also got to visit one of our favorite towns, La Conner, WA, where you can find a cute sunhat and a gluten-free cookie (thanks Seeds!) in between trips to the tulip fields. We saw bald eagles and my beloved snow geese in flight (no pics this time, sorry, but they are just amazing!)  We got to play tourist in a place we could definitely see ourselves living someday. (Did you know National Geographic listed the Skagit Tulip Festival as one of the top ten spring trips in the world this year? Yes, it’s that good. I missed this more than anything when we lived in California.)

The weather has been just beautiful, in the seventies and sunny. It makes every day feel a little bit like a pleasant respite. Today we had nothing scheduled so we slept in. I got to walk slowly and notice the rustle of hummingbirds in the flowers beside me, the scree and flap of stellar jays and red-winged blackbirds, rabbits in the grass, a heron overhead. When the Northwest hands you sunny weather in April, so you can actually see the blooms and mountains that hid throughout March and February, you pretty much have a pass to go out and enjoy it. Plus, I have my 43rd birthday AND a scary medical test coming up at the end of the month, so I thought it’s a good time to shore up my reserves.  I am looking forward to coming back to town (hopefully!) to visit the Skagit River Poetry Festival in May. The tulips will be gone but the town will be full of poets!

AWP Recap Part II: The Reckoning (and a panel recording!)

Back in Seattle from AWP, and time for the post-AWP reckoning! Here are a few pics from my first day back in my hometownospreyapril2016aprilcherrykirkland2016, during which an osprey hung over my head for a few breathless moments, and the pink cherries came out to say hi. It was a very nice welcome back. Tomorrow we might sneak off to see some of Skagit Valley’s tulips before they’re gone.

First of all, I wanted to let you know that thanks to my husband Glenn there is an audio recording (with visual cues like the panel slides and photos from the panel) available from the AWP Panel “Women in Spec” (with me, Lesley Wheeler, Sally Rosen Kindred, Margaret Rhee and Nancy Hightower talking about women in speculative fiction and poetry publishing, inspirations, and more ) available now on YouTube.

Second, the AWP 2016 reckoning: how do you decide if a conference like AWP is “worth going to?” For me, I’ve been paying my own way since the first AWP I went to (ahem, over 15 years ago,) so there is a financial cost (usually around $1500 for tickets, meals, hotel, registration, etc.) and there’s a personal cost, for everyone – we all have limited energy and time – and for me, due to my health and mobility problems, a little bit of an extra pain factor there. For instance, I woke up with yet another respiratory thing yesterday, probably picked up on the plane home, and my physical therapy eval yesterday indicated being on my ankle so much – mostly from springing up and down to hug people – probably set that sucker back at least a week in terms of healing. I’m under strict orders to put the ankle up and ice it and wrap it. (But will I stay wrapped and prone long? Probably not!)

What is worth it? I was so enthusiastic about this particular panel (watch to see why) this year I probably would have tried to make it there even in worse circumstances. I was happy to meet and say hi to many of my publishers and lit mag editors – it’s good to actually meet the people publishing your work in person.  I think one of the main reasons people go to AWP is to see old friends, friends from other parts of the country you’ll never see otherwise – and I did, which was great. I was really happy to be invited to so many wonderful parties (I made it to only one, due to travel snafus on both ends of my journey to and from LA, but I got to hang out with some of my favorite people and have actual conversations there, which was really nice.)  And I’m familiar with and like (parts of) LA, which makes the trip a little less onerous. (I always recommend people get out in the city they’re visiting for AWP at least once – a museum, the local food, a cool neighborhood with galleries and shops to visit, and in the case of LA, the blue sunny sandy ocean.) I actually wrote a poem at this AWP, which might be a first.

Here’s things I wish – I wish I’d been able to say hi to more people, spend more time in the bookfair and pick up more books (and how is the bookfair always so exhausting? They need fifty times more hydration centers than they ever have, like iced coffee fountains, maybe), go to more readings. There were a few panels I wished I’d attended. I wish I’d had time to visit more galleries (LA’s art scene is actually pretty cool) and spent more time relaxing on the beach.  Was it perfect? No (See previous recap.) But I think it was worth it, after all, as Prufrock would say.

AWP LA 2016 Recap: alien flowers, writers, and speculative women

AWP 2016 Recap:

Back from LA and AWP 2016 (I got in at 4 AM yesterday, and I’m still a bit zombie-esque) so I can finally recap it for you!

j9atthepanelawpHad a wonderful time doing the panel on “Women in Spec” with Lesley Wheeler, Nancy Hightower, Sally Rosen Kindred, and Margaret Rhee. The room was packed (and about 112 degrees) and the audience response afterwards was really positive. I really enjoyed hearing the panelists talk about their inspirations, their publishing experiences, the way they found community in the speculative writing world. It made me feel more optimistic! We made an audio recording which I might be able to upload from my phone. I loved talking to people after the panel, too. It made me feel so hopeful for the future of women’s writing in this genre!

 

Thanks to everyone who worked hard to make this AWP happen! The bookfair was large but not as crowded as Seattle’s AWP. I sold some books at my signing and was happy to see lots of old friends (although never as many as you want to see, isn’t that always the way?) I got to see most of my publishers (Steel Toe Books, Moon City Press, Two Sylvias Press) except Judith from Mayapple Press and of course James from New Binary in Ireland, and talk to a few magazines I’d recently had acceptances from, which was fun. I picked up some contributor copies, swag, and a couple of new books from friends. (See the Rumpus mug and Moon City Press t-shirt? Cool, right?)

AWPhaul2016

AWP Swag and Books

I was navigating all of AWP in a wheelchair and with a cane, and that made the whole experience a little more difficult (although at Seattle’s AWP I had a broken elbow and was recovering from pneumonia, so…) It also meant I couldn’t run up and hug friends from across the room, and fewer people made eye contact with me (what is it about wheelchairs that does that? Wheelchairs aren’t contagious, people!) I heard several publishers say their sales weren’t as good as at AWP’s past (LA isn’t really a book town like Seattle or Minneapolis – when I lived in SoCal, it was hard to find books at the actual library) and there was a decision not to make the bookfair open and free to the public on Saturday which may have had a negative impact that way. It’s always nice to just to be around other writers talking about writing, though!

Here are some pics from parties and bookfair!

I wish I’d been walking w/o my cane or wheelchair – I’d been doing really well until an injury right before the conference – and that our travel plans (cough, Virgin lost my wheelchair for an hour and the rental car didn’t have a car available big enough to put a wheelchair in, cough) hadn’t messed up my plans on Thursday to register and get to at least one evening keynote or reading – but these frustrations were reminders that traveling with any kind of disability is tough. I hadn’t flown for six years – and I remember why now! A bad immune system and any kind of mobility problem – from an inability to walk large distances to carrying a suitcase – make travel extra difficult.

I stayed a bit away from the conference in Hermosa Beach which meant navigating LA traffic – never a pleasure. But I got to make up every morning and look at the blue Pacific ocean (our ocean in WA is always gray and uninviting, even in good weather) and watch the sunset in the evening. My flights to and from both had problems, especially the incoming flight from Virgin (we actually had to change tickets home on the fly because Virgin screwed up our tickets home so much) and I think LAX is the worst airport I’ve been in since LaGuardia. I probably won’t fly again for a while, which means my next AWP will probably be Portland’s in 2019.

I was obsessed with the fascinating alien flowers blooming in strip mall parking lots, by the side of the highway, in office parks. Something about the California landscapes always makes me feel like an alien, a mutant hybrid, which is actually pretty inspiring.

Just for fun, here’s a link to a poem I wrote about California that was published in LA Weekly that sums up the frustrations and beauties of LA:

Introduction to a California Poetics

Where I’ll be at AWP 2016

Eastercherry

Here’s where you can find me at this year’s AWP LA 2016!

I’m flying in on Thursday, hopefully in time to register before registration closes at 5.

On Friday:

I’ll be doing a panel at 1:30: AWP Panel F222: Women in Spec: Women Writers in Speculative Poetry and Fiction. 1:30-2:45. (Jeannine Hall Gailey, Lesley Wheeler, Sally Kindred, Nancy Hightower, Margaret Rhee), Room 505 LA Convention Center, Meeting Room level. Should be fun!

On Saturday:

I’ll be doing a signing from 2 PM to 3 PM at the Two Sylvias Booth (#835) in the Bookfair. Come by to chat, say hi, get a book, whatever! We’d love to see you (and Martha Silano will be there earlier that afternoon if you want to catch her!) Plus, Two Sylvias Press always has a great booth and great swag!

Where you can find my books:

This year, only two of my four publishers will be at AWP, so you can find Becoming the Villainess at the Steel Toe Books Booth (2141) and She Returns to the Floating World at Two Sylvias Press table (#835) – but even though Mayapple Press won’t be there this year, you can find The Robot Scientist’s Daughter at the SPD booth and I’m going to bring some copies with me.  I’ll also be bringing copies of Unexplained Fevers from New Binary Press. And I’m looking forward to meeting the folks at Moon City Press who are publishing Field Guide to the End of the World in November!

I’ll try to get to some offsite readings and parties as well as wandering around the bookfair, so if you see me, say hi! And if you want to get together for coffee, let me know. I’m hoping my energy holds up all the way through Saturday night 🙂

I’m so excited just to be able to go. Today I’m trying to schedule the hospital test for my liver for right after I get back, but I’m so happy to have this reprieve to just go and be a writer for a little bit. Of course, I’m dealing with another little ankle sprain (!) and woke up yesterday with a terrible sore throat (elderberry, licorice, and liquid benadryl are what I’m using to make it go away…) so I’ll be mildly impaired but not totally out! At least the chipped tooth and computer crisis (three viruses – a trojan, a worm AND an exploit – on my MacBook Pro! Grrr!) have both been resolved – thank you virus software and emergency dental appointment.  Now I just have to make sure my brain is working in literary mode!

Here’s what I look like right now, even though I’m not always standing under a cherry tree. These are pictures from Easter, which was blustery (a funnel cloud appeared – and a rainbow! Nutty weather!) and it was about 45 degrees, so I am definitely looking forward to dryness and sunshine in California!

j9cherryeaster

Prepping for AWP 2016 and for more Tests

I’m so excited for this year’s AWP. It’s not just doing the panel, which I am truly enthusiastic about, or the parties, or the book fair. It’s the idea of celebrating – in a land of sunshine and seawater in what is usually for Seattle-ites a dim and blowsy month – being writers together, loving reading and writing books. If this sounds a little squishier than my typical cynical post about surviving AWP, it’s because it is.
My recent health scare (still ongoing, more on that later) has kind of illuminated parts of my life that are important to me, that give me joy and meaning, and dang it, AWP – the chance to be with other writers, while it may be stressful and chaotic, is also a magnificent chance for accidental magic – catching a reading of a writer who might be your new favorite, or running into someone you really admire but have never met and managing to string a half-decent sentence together, the chance to actually see and hang out with friends you love but never get to be in the same space with, for geographical reasons.

Here’s Entropy’s Guide to AWP 2016, which lists our panel (Women in Spec, April 1 Friday 1:30!) as one of their picks (thanks, Entropy!):
http://entropymag.org/entropys-guide-to-awp16/

It also includes good links to other advice about AWP. I think mine boils down to: eat, drink, sleep, and wear comfortable shoes – do NOT take a vacation from self-care, and your body will thank you. Let good things happen spontaneously inside of trying to plan out every little thing – it took me several years of going to AWP with detailed plans to figure that one out. And enjoy yourself in the city you’re visiting – get out and go to the beach, a museum, a great restaurant – and LA has a great restaurant scene as well as amazing dives. (I personally am staying far out from the LA downtown center in order to make sure I actually do some sightseeing. I may be allergic to the sun, but I still love hanging out in Santa Monica and Hermosa Beach, especially.) Also, come visit me at the Two Sylvias Booth at 2 PM on Saturday at the bookfair if you get a chance! I lived near LA for a year, so I got to visit often and so it feels like I’m going back to an old familiar place, which is kind of nice. Also, looking forward to being able to get ahold of really good fresh corn tortillas (hard to find here in the Seattle area, but plentiful in SoCal.)
In medical news, I got to see – finally – a liver specialist this week, a really good one. He was nice and reassuring and called me “young and healthy” several times, which I really appreciated – although, for the young part, well, he couldn’t have been more than five years older than Glenn, ha. He had an idea for hospitalizing me for one more test before trying the biopsy. He also ran down the odds of things the solid growths could be besides metastatic cancer (yay! adenomas, hyperplasias, etc.), and the odds of something going wrong bleeding-wise with biopsy. I like numbers, so I found all the information reassuring (well, the part about the likelihood of a bleeding event during a liver biopsy was sort of alarming, but I guess not totally unexpected.) So I’ll be going back to the hospital for a whole day/night thing soon, when I get back from AWP, but I’m going in with my eyes open, and with all possible precautions taken. Hopefully this test will give us enough info – positive identification of the kind of growth that is non-cancerous – to avoid the liver biopsy all together. That’s what I want you guys to think good thoughts about, if I can ask that of blog readers.
That and me not getting sick/injured before/during/after the AWP trip. This will be the first time I’ve flown in over five years! Last time I flew, I was in a wheelchair, an arm brace from a sprain AND I caught pneumonia, so you can see how that might have made me a tad anxious about flying again. Not only am I flying, I even got TSA pre-checked and found out I basically have invisible fingerprints, so I could have been an international jewel thief all this time. Ah well. Missed my calling there.

I’m looking forward to inspiration, walking on the beach, and spending a few days celebrating being a writer with a bunch of other writers!

Jeannine Hall Gailey

Jeannine Hall GaileyJeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World.  Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.

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