Tell it to the Birds
: newsletter launch!
Dear merganser. Dear newly-naked birch. Dear moose munching off half a plum tree’s branches right outside my house. Dear reader. This is my first-ever newsletter as a human and I would much prefer to be the duck writing to the river or the river to the fish (“The river is famous to the fish,” said Naomi Shihab Nye), but we are, for now, stuck in these bodies, and letters are one language we have. Actually, I love letters. I have always loved letters. Love letters, and hexes for exes, and wishes for bishes . . . anything from an “I” to a “you.”
I loved, when I was a girl, to stuff my backpack with a notebook, pen, and peanut butter sandwich, and ride away from our rental house on my old blue bike with the striped, broad seat, down Barr Road to the abandoned orchard, where I would find a spot under the tree behind the falling-down-barn, and write really limbshadow-filled, hair-strewn, cawing-crow, hemlock-sap letters to J___. His father managed the newspaper in Cathlamet, and J___ helped edit, so I imagined in his sexy rimmed glasses he read them somewhere even more romantic than beyond a barn, though if I were more romantic myself, I might have gone the other way, down Covered Bridge Road, scribbled them on some large boulders at Badger’s Beach, or better yet, inscribed them in and into those wide hay fields with a scythe. My feelings for J___ were, I guess, like Emily D’s for Higginson—I thought he wielded some imaginary power to bring the writing more gravitas, more audience (?). Wherever you are, please suppose I am writing this from the spiciest epistolary origin you can possibly conjure. (Or if you’re a realist: I’m sitting in the tattered, indeterminate-colored recliner my ex left when he moved out, and I’ve covered it with a yellow-slate-royal plaid chenille blanket, and RBG—my cat—has overtaken my lap, so I’m having to type sideways, around her, and it’s un-starching her collar a bit.)
Okay. My (new) newsletter(s), which will likely arrive seasonally, and no more than monthly-ish, will be filled with various collages of: news, brief narrative dispatches; seeds (prompts) for your writing; ideas for your next trip to the library or bookstore; occasional songs to accompany your poem-or-story-making or dancing or (hot beverage) drinking seasons; links to readings and classes and cool stuff other writers have in the works. I expect, like most natural phenomena, it will evolve. This first one is pretty long, but they will often be shorter. Please let me know if you have requests! Writing life questions? Wonderings about what strange projects I’m up to or classes I’m teaching? Perhaps there will be an “ask me” element.
NEWS!
I have news. My memoir-in-essays, RAISED BY FERNS, found a home with Porphyry Press and will be out in early 2026. Jeremy, editor and publisher, wrote to me when he finished reading it:
I love the lyricism and thought, the imagery and pulse, the sheer palette of voice and time in the book, and the merge of self (selves) and place(s). It's specific but atmospheric, and so borne of an attention to how memory and time work, and so vulnerable/honest (those two words are not quite what I mean, but—) without being gratuitous or egocentric.
and
When I finished it, I wanted to do two things at once: read it again, and also go, myself, and write. (from Jeremy’s September 3, 2024 email)
(Oh! I blushed, friends. Because that last bit—that’s one of the things I want to help people do—write. In that vein, please check out the writing prompt at the end of this email.)
You can read more about Porphyry Press (and consider subscribing to their newsletter!), here.
Read a recently-published essay from the collection, “Landscape Anxiety,” over at River Styx.
Subscribe to Porphyry Press to find out when my book will be released, and, if you want to plan ahead to read together!, write directly to me. Please also reach out if you’d like to invite me to your book club or classroom or library with Ferns.
Read more on what I’ve been up to over at Artist Trust, an organization in Washington State that gives funds to artists of all disciplines; they kindly interviewed me about my 2024 Fellowship.
TELL IT TO THE BIRDS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS (2024 roundup)
I’ve still been writing poems, and a few winged their way out into the world this year. You can check out three of them, such as “Tell it to the Birds” and other spite-filled wreckage, over at Electric Lit.
Terrain.org published “All Morning I Watch God Build Her Nest,” which you can also listen to me read, on the site.
In addition to poems, spells, and hexes, I’ve been writing super weird stories, such as this hybrid short, “Recipe,” featuring Icelandic tilberi and bougie lake cabins, that came out last spring on Smokelong Quarterly. I appreciate that this journal also conducts author interviews, called “Smoke and Mirrors.”
I’m grateful to Stephanie Burt for her review of my poetry collection, out takes/ glove box, over at Cleveland Review of Books. If you want to see other reviews, listen to interviews, and learn more information on this latest poetry title, head over to my website.
PS—oh my goodness! You can currently pick up my ‘lil ol’ limited-run chapbook, Yesterday, the Bees, over at Floating Bridge Press for FIVE BUCKS. While you’re there, check out the whole array of Washington State authors they publish—Rena Priest, Laura Read, Nance Van Winckle, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha—okay, this is a perfect transition. . .
READING AND GIFTING RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE HOLIDAYS
It’s that time of year when folx want to give gifts, so I thought I’d recommend a few ideas.
I recently finished Jessica Johnson’s memoir Mettlework, which I loved for its frank and nuanced depictions of parenting while trying to work in academia and have a privacy of mind.
I had already read her book-length poem, Metabolics, out from Acre Books a few years ago, and so I knew Jessica was part of that fabric of poet-parents who write about the proximal textures and challenges of parenting in a late capitalist America that values neither children nor the imagination and time it takes to raise them. I found myself, in reading Mettlework, nodding over and over, underlining passages, feeling both seen and surprised to be seen.
Readers/gifters: this book will appeal to anyone interested in mining culture in the Inland Northwest in the 1970s, educators and parents, womxn and caregivers, those who wrestle with or are in proximity to chronic illness and disability, and people who love good sentences.
Imagine my delight to have former student Brittany LaPointe text me the morning after the National Book Awards to tell me about her dreamy trip with University of Akron Press (where Brittany works) to celebrate (Seattle!) author Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, whose Something About Living won this year in the Poetry category. Congrats, Lena! Congrats, U Akron Press! This week, I read aloud Khalaf Tuffaha’s “Letter to June Jordan . . .” to my poetry class at Central Washington University, as well as to a bar full of poets at Club 301, for PIE (Poetry in Ellensburg) night.
Readers/ gifters: get this one if you’re looking for lyric, meditative verses on Gaza/ the atrocities of war and the quiet beauty of enduring human spirits, and an international sensibility in its aesthetic that transcends and inhabits the conversational, reaching for a feeling of song and philosophy.
I believe children’s books allow us a version of ourselves that is timeless, or at least in the scope humans can comprehend of geologic time. One of my favorites is Everybody Needs a Rock, because, like Byrd Baylor and Peter Parnall, “I’m sorry/ for kids/ who don’t have a rock/ for a friend.” I cite this one in my memoir’s title essay, “Raised by Ferns,” and I recommend buying a copy for yourself and one for a child in your life.
Readers/gifters: This belongs in everyone’s library. I recommend adding a second title by the same author/illustrator pair.
Of Carla Crujido’s fiction collection, Jane Wong wrote “I know readers will want to live in the vibrational rooms of these stories as I did.”
Readers/gifters: If you’re a fan of surrealism, fairy tales, historic Spokane (especially the Mt Vernon apartments, the localized center of the book), and sizzly, weird sex plots involving magic and Stockholm Syndrome, this one is for you/ your gift recipients.
The Book of Slow Gardening, by Molly Tenenbaum, is “a comic book of adventures in the garden,” written AND illustrated by Molly, and it is, as I often joke to my children that I am, a G-D DELIGHT. Part nature journal, part Commonplace, “kind of like playing in the dirt, for grownups,” it has panels including her mom’s old, bloodstained shirt (which Molly wears to garden) and the hazards of fast gardening.
Readers/gifters: Anyone who likes humor, play, wonder, gardening, whimsy, dirt, banjo (she’s a part-time music teacher, too!), seasons . . . and reading will enjoy this book. I got lucky because Molly mailed me a copy, so mine’s thoughtfully inscribed, and you can do that, too, by ordering directly from the writer.
. . . And More Poetry!
Poetry, the language of stones and rivers and mica dust and starbeams and babies and animals, doesn’t make it onto enough national lists, but it’s my favorite genre to read, because it demands a crucible-like kind of attention you can spend either in a short a burst (the kind of time spans moms have) or in longer stretches (no comment, as Idk who has long stretches of time, but if you do, please read poetry!). So, here are a few poetry collections I read and enjoyed this year, a very non-comprehensive list:
Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Corvus & Crater (Salmon Poetry)
Carolina Esses, translated by Allison A. deFreese, Winter Season (Entre Rios Books)
Henrietta Goodman, Antillia (University of Nebraska Press)
Melissa Kwasny, The Cloud Path (Milkweed Books)
Erica Reid, Ghost Man on Second (Autumn House)
Martha Silano, This One We’ll Call Ours (Lynx House Press)
Alexandra Teague, [ominous music intensifying] (Persea)
Ann Jäderlund, translated by Johannes Goransson, Lonespeech (Nightboat)
WRITING PROMPT
This one is for the lovers of the epistolary form (like me!). An alchemical magic happens when letters combine with instructions, as in one of my favorite poems, “How to be Sad,” by Laura Read. Write a letter [poem, essay, story?] to yourself six months from now. Give yourself instructions on how to do something, using, maybe, the same kinds of line breaks and pauses that Laura does. Remember to offer very specific instructions, as well as interruptions of those instructions with commentary. If you’re making a poem, enjamb your sentences, but don't make them too long. Be sure your syntax is a little tired, your tone a little despondent (unless you’re writing how to be happy and frantic; then adjust accordingly). End on an image that mirrors the feeling your speaker has.
[My sister Raine read this prompt and said, “I like that you’re allowing people to be sad and write some sad shit in your writing prompt.” You don’t have to be sad in your instructions, but I love that Raine is acknowledging a common and often neglected feeling during the holidays: sadness, melancholy. That’s REAL, babes, and it’s okay to say so. Witch it out!]
UPCOMING EVENTS & APPEARANCES
Thursday, December 19: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Central Library, Spokane - Central Conference Room B & Lounge, Inland Northwest Special Collection
Friday, January 03: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Liberty Park Library, Spokane
Banned Books: An Event Dedicated to Celebrating the Freedom to Read, Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series and CWU Libraries, Various Readers
Thursday, January 23: 5-7 p.m.
Brooks Library, CWU, Ellensburg
Zoom attendance will be offered
Wednesday, January 29: 6:00pm - 7:00pm
Liberty Park Library, Spokane
Visiting Writer, Kelly Magee’s Living Writers Class
February, date TBD
Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
Visiting Author, The Reading Series @RMC
Thursday, March 13th: 7:00pm
Rocky Mountain College, Billings, MT
Book Signings, Events, etc.
March 25-29th
Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference
Los Angeles, CA
Have a question or prompt for me? Send it here (just mention it’s for the newsletter).