Things I Am Thankful For This Year
Happy Thanksgiving to you all! I slept late this morning and let my husband do most of the holiday cooking today, as I am still (still!) having this off-and-on flu virus wrestling match. I have a stack of magazines and books to read, calls to family already made, and generally, though the weather outside is frightful (40-degree hard rain with wind for a week, anyone?) am feeling warm and fuzzy.
Things I am thankful for this year:
–Friends and family. My family is, mostly, too far away to visit easily, but I’ve enjoyed using Skype to stay in touch, as well as e-mail, IM and other technological inventions. My friends here in Seattle, the artists, the writers, who continually inspire me and challenge me to do more and better, who remind me that spending time working on creative stuff isn’t wasted time…
–Being back in Washington State. The friends, the readings of all kinds, the library systems, the bookstores…everything except, possibly, the weather.
–The lovely publisher of my second book, Kitsune Books, who has done so much to make my experience with She Returns to the Floating World a happy one. Including putting me up for the Florida Publishing Book Awards, which ended up landing me this fancy sticker for my book cover:
–My wonderful husband, creating a beautiful Thanksgiving menu for me (sans wheat, onions, or poultry…) and generally being super supportive during a tough year.
–Poetry publishers in general who care about writers, especially those who don’t charge fees; literary magazines that still pay for poetry (thank you, Crab Orchard Review, Hollins Critic, Indiana Review, and etc… it makes poets feel so thankful to get those little checks!) and readers who let writers know they’ve connected with your work. Thank you to all the hard-working volunteers out there in the literary world, adjuncts, editors, reading series leaders…
–Yes, I have some anxieties: about work (finding it,) money (same,) where my life/career is going, the ongoing health excitement that forced me to curb my travel plans for readings this fall…but I am am looking to the future with hope, with gratitude, and faith.
Upcoming: Christmas book shopping lists, my great book downsizing project (painful!) and embarking on yet another poetry book manuscript (madness??)
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.
