So, some good news on the job hunt front…
Unless I mess something up radically in the paperwork (always a possibility) I’m going to start teaching a poetry seminar class for an MFA program this fall. It’s not full-time or tenure-track or anything fancy, but a great start. Squuuuueee! Now I’m nervous!!! I know some of you have been teaching forever, and it’s all old hat to you seasoned professionals, but for me, it’s thrilling. Name of program to be revealed later…
Did I mention both my parents are professors? So I couldn’t escape it. Plus, it turns out, what with all those guest-teaching stints and workshops that wonderful people offered me, I really loved teaching.
I guess this means I’m part of the po-biz now, eh Eduardo? Now, to get together enough funds to move AND start my own press…then I’ll really be shaking.
Did I already recommend taking b12 supplements? Awesome stuff. Why wasn’t I taking this ten years ago, since I’ve been borderline low at least that long? So much more energy!
Also, I wrote a new poem, first one in some weeks. And I liked it! It was partially inspired (gothic-mood-wise) by the book Daphne, which continues the gothic reading streak started by “Jane-in-the Box.” Daphne follows the lives of a contemporary graduate student in a Mrs. De Winter-marriage, Daphne du Maurier, a dubious Bronte librarian, and Branville Bronte. One reason to love the book is that the “Rebecca-type” character is a glamorous, thirty-something, brunette poet. Gotta love those kinds of villainesses, right? Also, repeated references to JM Barrie and Peter Pan, Henry James, The Snow Queen, Jane Eyre…

Jeannine 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.


