Meet Our New Intern: Kyle J. Wente

One of my first memories is going to the library with my mom for dinosaur books. I first started to write on the bus rides to and from school, writing my friends into stories and giving away handwritten copies. When smudged pencil marks irritated me (I’m left-handed), I switched to my mom’s Windows 98 computer. I remember the loud, grating sound of the printer and the 32-bit, ocean-themed screensaver—tropical fish in a coral reef swimming across the screen. The machine could never keep up with me; running Word was enough to make the old dinosaur crash.

I grew up in the country, and between that and the technology I had access to being virtually unusable I spent a lot of my time outside when I was younger. Back then, neighbors’ dogs roamed the neighborhood freely. I used to listen to the old man with the cabin on the riverbank tell stories about the old ferry boats. When he walked the neighborhood every morning, the neighborhood dogs would follow him along his route. You would see the throngs of dogs before you saw him. That old man inspired my writing more than I understood. He and his house were something out of a storybook. The tin roof was adorned with leaves. The front porch was decorated with windchimes made of glass bottles. He lived in a way my parents couldn’t fathom. Knowing that his lifestyle was a commonality in my area only fifty years ago only made it more special. His life, like so many other lives, was like a well-kept secret.

Writing went dormant in me for a while. Writing is processing, and processing is hard. Not writing, I realize now, is even harder for me. In college, I worked on the editorial board of Sequoya Review. I also wrote for my university’s newspaper, and I began to remediate my relationship with writing. I started tutoring other undergraduates in writing. Now, as an intern with Sundress, I can contribute to having a positive impact on my community on a much larger scale. I have always admired the important figures that worked behind the scenes to produce great writers—the Gertrude Steins and Silvina Ocampos of the world. Not only were these women amazing writers on their own, they played instrumental roles in propagating entire literary movements. East Tennessee deserves more literary representation, and I am so excited to participate in a community that I feel so strongly for.


Kyle J. Wente (he/him) graduated from the University of Tennessee, where he studied English and Creative Writing. He has served as Editor of Poetry for Sequoya Review in Chattanooga, TN. He loves nature, playing bass, and co-parenting his partner’s ten-year-old beagle, Marlowe Eugene.

Sundress Publications Editorial Internship Open Call

Sundress Publications is now seeking editorial interns to join us in January 2024.

The editorial internship position will run from January 1 to June 30, 2024. The editorial intern’s responsibilities may include writing press releases, composing blog posts and promotional emails, proofreading manuscripts, assembling press kits, collating editorial data, research, managing spreadsheets, and more. The intern may also be responsible for writing copy, conducting interviews with Sundress authors, reviewing newly released books, and promoting our catalog of titles.

Applicants with social media experience or who would like to gain social media experience should make a note in their cover letter. Social media responsibilities include scheduling and posting promotional materials on our social media channels, maintaining our newsletter, and promoting our various open reading periods, workshops, readings, and catalog of titles. This will also include creating promotional graphics, digital flyers, logos, and social media images.

Preferred qualifications include:

  • A keen eye for proofreading
  • Strong written communication skills
  • Familiarity with WordPress, Microsoft Word, and Google Suite
  • Ability to work under a deadline and multitask
  • Knowledge of and interest in contemporary literature a plus

This is a REMOTE internship with the team communicating primarily via email and text messages and is therefore not restricted to applicants living in any particular geographic area. Interns are asked to devote up to 10 hours per week to their assignments.

While this is an unpaid internship, all interns will gain real-world experience of the ins and outs of independent publishing with a nationally recognized press while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Interns will also be able to attend all retreats and residencies at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at a significantly discounted cost.

We welcome, encourage, and are enthusiastic to see a diverse array of applicants in all areas, including race, ethnicity, disability, gender, class, religion, education, immigration status, and more.

To apply, please send a resume and cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Staff Director Kanika Lawton at sundressstaffdirector@gmail.com by November 30, 2023.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Now Accepting Nonprofit Management Internship Applications for Spring 2024

The Sundress Academy for the Arts at Firefly Farms, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is seeking a Nonprofit Management intern for a six-month position. Each part-time position would consist of approximately 5-10 hours of work per week and run from January 5th, 2023 to July 30th, 2024. All applicants must be local to the greater Knoxville, TN area.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an entirely volunteer-run organization that hosts residencies, workshops, and retreats centered on creative writing in all genres. Located on a 45-acre farm twenty minutes from downtown Knoxville, SAFTA’s mission is to give writers of all levels a chance to work with nationally renowned professionals in their field as well as uninterrupted time to focus on their creative work. 

The Nonprofit Management intern’s responsibilities include the preparation of documents necessary to run an independent writer’s residency, such as writing press releases, composing blogs, fundraising, collating editorial and residency data, research, upholding SAFTA values, and more.  The intern will also be needed to help facilitate Zoom and in-person events. 

Preferred qualifications include:

• Fluency in interpersonal communication

• Strong written communication skills

• Experience with WordPress, Zoom, Google Sheets, and/or other online mediums

While the internship position is unpaid, our staff gain real-world experience in working with online event planning, nonprofit management, running a residency, communications, and more while creating a portfolio of work for future employment. SAFTA staff work alongside members of both the local and national literary community through workshops and readings, which staff are able to attend for free during their tenure with the organization. 

To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to the Staff Director, Z Eihausen, at saftastaffdirector@gmail.com. Applications are due by Thursday, November 30th, 2023.

For more information, visit our website at www.sundressacademyforthearts.com

Pre-Orders for Our 2023 Broadside Now Open

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce that pre-orders for our 2023 broadside contest winner are now open. Kenzie Allen’s poem, “Love Song to the Man Announcing Pow Wows and Rodeos,” will be letterpress-printed at the Sundress Academy for the Arts as a limited edition 8.5” x 11” broadside.

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Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist; she is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Kenzie is a recipient of a 92 NY Discovery Prize, the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and the Littoral Press Prize, as well as fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Summer Words, and Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po). A finalist for the National Poetry Series, her work can be found in Poetry, Boston Review, Narrative, Poets.org, The Paris Review’s The Daily, Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets, and other venues. Born in West Texas, she is currently an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing at York University in Toronto.

The broadside edition combines Kenzie Allen’s work with an original piece by artist Lori Tennant. The poem “Love Song to the Man Announcing Pow Wows and Rodeos” first appeared in Narrative.

Order your copy today for $5 off the retail price!

Project Bookshelf: Heather Domenicis

A picture of a 5-shelf brown wooden bookcase filled with colorful books, a vintage photograph, a white bust of Adonis, and a tan vessel with eucalyptus and lavender. A brown acoustic guitar leans against the right side of the bookcase and there is a monstera plant to the left of the bookcase.

I have a book problem. Which isn’t a bad problem to have, except for when it comes to dusting, moving, and traveling. I’m 26 and I’ve moved eight times in my life—four times since graduating college. The majority of my boxes are usually books and I always sneeze while I pack them, my body shocked by the amount of dust the paper holds. Often, whenever I visit my family, a relative will say, “I just love my Kindle, it’s so much easier,” as I pull out the 3-5 books I brought for my week-long stay. I won’t read them all on that trip, but I’ll read a little bit of most of them. 

I hate reading one book at a time; I simply cannot do it. Thus, I buy books faster than I consume them. After moving into my first apartment, I quickly outgrew the childhood bookcase I’d brought from home and treated myself to a too-big-for-my-NYC-bedroom bookcase that gave  me room to grow. When I moved in with my partner this year, I gave my childhood bookcase to his eight-year-old daughter, hoping she might begin filling it herself. I pondered if my partner and I might combine our bookcases, but quickly decided to keep mine my own. It’s rather organized, and to combine them would undo that. 

The top shelf is filled with craft books, books I’ve recently read or have yet to finish, some eucalyptus and lavender, a photo of my grandmother from the 1930s, and a bust of Adonis, the Greek god of plants and rebirth. I wish I could say there was some significance behind the bust, but there isn’t. I bought it when a furniture retailer sent me a $75 gift card as an apology for my couch taking three months to arrive. The bust was the only thing I could afford with the gift card. We’ll be saying goodbye to him soon, though, as I’m beginning to outgrow this bookshelf, too. 

The second shelf—which is intentionally at my eye level—holds mostly memoirs, bolstered and bookended by some of my inspirational favorites that I often reference: Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden, Stray by Stephanie Danler, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, and This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff. You know, all the quintessential coming-of-age memoirs about emotionally absent parents. 

The next shelf holds fiction—mostly short story collections—with my favorites again acting as bookends: Heartbroke by Chelsea Bieker, Stories From the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana, The Bed Moved by Rebecca Schiff, and The Kissing List by Stephanie Reents (my very first writing mentor.) Also on this shelf is a bowl of tiny plastic babies I used to collect and some small boxes that hold change, pins I used to wear on my Levi denim jacket, and guitar picks. 

Then come novels and poetry, with some favorites being Godshot by Chelsea Bieker, Welfare by Steve Anwyll, Teenager by Bud Smith, and Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke. Towards the bottom are some self-help books, random non-fiction works, my old spine-broken Penguin Classics from college, copies of my college senior thesis and my college literary magazine, and some coffee table books. A few of my partner’s books have snuck onto the bottom shelf, too. 

Somewhere in a closet in my parents’ new Southern retirement home there’s another stack of books from my childhood—ones I’ve purposely held onto so I can pass them on to my own future kids someday. 

Then, of course, on my bedside table are stacks of whatever I’m currently reading. Right now it’s Pure Cosmos Club by Matthew Binder and Excavation by Wendy C. Ortiz. If I’m sleeping alone, I’ll often sleep with my current read in bed next to me. Is that weird? I think it’s weird, but that’s okay. 

And there’s always a book in my tote bag that hangs by the front door—I do my best reading on the subway. 


Heather Domenicis (she/her) is an Upper Manhattan based writer and editor moonlighting at a tech startup. She holds an MFA from The New School in Creative Non-Fiction and her words appear in Hobart, JAKE, and [sub]liminal. Born in a jail, she is writing a memoir about all that comes with that. She sometimes tweets @heatherlynnd11.

Sundress Publications Closes on 11/30 for Poetry Broadside Contest

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce that we are now open for submissions for our annual poetry broadside contest. The contest will be open for submission until November 30th, 2023.

The winner’s poem will be letterpress-printed as an 8.5” x 11” broadside complete with custom art and made available for sale on our online store. The winner will receive $200 and 20 copies of their broadside. 

To submit, send up to three poems, no longer than 28 lines each (line limit includes stanza breaks but not the title), in one Word or PDF document to sundresscontest@gmail.com by November 30, 2023. Be sure to include a copy of your payment receipt or purchase order number (see below for payment of fees). Please make sure that no identifying information is included in the submitted poems. You can submit poems online here.

The reading fee is $10 per batch of three poems, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title. Entrants can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store. Once the purchase is made, the store will send a receipt with a purchase code. This code should be included in the submission, or you may forward the email receipt at the same time as you send the submission. This fee is waived for all writers of color.

Previously published material is welcome so long as you maintain the rights to the work. Let us know in your cover letter if any of your submitted poems have been previously published. 

Poems translated from another language will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but we ask that authors notify us immediately if their work has been accepted elsewhere; poems accepted for publication are still qualified provided the author retains the rights to the work at the time of printing.

Submit poems online here.


This contest’s judge is Darren C. Demaree. Darren C. Demaree grew up in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He is a graduate of the College of Wooster, Miami University, and Kent State University. He is the author of twenty poetry collections, most recently Tongues Out in the Garden of Spectacle (August 2023, Newcomer Press). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system, and living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: One Way to Listen by Asa Drake


This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from One Way to Listen by Asa Drake, released by Gold Line Press in 2022.

I Don’t Know How to Talk About Racism, so I Call
My Mother About the Indispensable Pleasure of
Material Things

It is night in my house. I imagine one room
safer than the rest. Other people really do exist,

and this is not a comfort. Tonight I have
no terrible news. This week my lover

works late, so the windows overwhelm
their steel frames, opening. This week I look

like my mother in the daytime, drawstring shorts,
red scrunchie, planting lemongrass and ginger

borders, bromeliads in the trees. I hear a lot
of people move south these days for that. Mom

down in Coral Gables instagramming her vandas
because an orchid isn’t an orchid, it’s specific.

Look down on the species. Tell which leaves
signify expense, and none will last my life.

No need, but the woman tonight, to file her SSN,
she lived through her ages twice. I hear even

the SSN isn’t eternal, so tonight, the woman
is anyone I love too much to bring attention to.

She says the fear keeping me up is my dream
where the lotus paste vanishes, the animals

are small but endless, and I am looking for
the one I own. I don’t want to go further.

She’s just closed on her house. Neither of us know
if the things we buy will last our lives. I want to know

dreams without worry. I ask my lover what he dreams.
He dreams our windows are in the Midwest. They are broken.

In the dream, he can’t find our insurance. Like all
monthly recurrences, I keep the insurance to myself.

Asa Drake is a Filipina American poet and writer in Central Florida. She has received fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Tin House and Idyllwild Arts. Her chapbook, One Way to Listen (2023), was selected by Taneum Bambrick as the winner of Gold Line Press’s 2021 Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her most recent poems can be found in The American Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape and Waxwing.

Sarah Clark is a mad crip genderfuck two-spirit enrolled Nanticoke editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, Editor-in-Chief at ALOCASIA: a journal of queer plant-based writing, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2024) and the Bettering American Poetry series, and a current Board member and Assistant Editor at Sundress Publications. They have edited folios for publications including the GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms at ANMLY. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations, including the Best of the Net anthology, contemptorary, Curious Specimens, #PoetsResist at Glass Poetry, Apogee Journal, Blackbird, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: One Way to Listen by Asa Drake


This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from One Way to Listen by Asa Drake, released by Gold Line Press in 2022.

A Co-worker Asks if I’m Superstitious

No, but there’s only so much salt water anyone can swallow.

Asa Drake is a Filipina American poet and writer in Central Florida. She has received fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, Tin House and Idyllwild Arts. Her chapbook, One Way to Listen (2023), was selected by Taneum Bambrick as the winner of Gold Line Press’s 2021 Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her most recent poems can be found in The American Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape and Waxwing.

Sarah Clark is a mad crip genderfuck two-spirit enrolled Nanticoke editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, Editor-in-Chief at ALOCASIA: a journal of queer plant-based writing, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2024) and the Bettering American Poetry series, and a current Board member and Assistant Editor at Sundress Publications. They have edited folios for publications including the GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms at ANMLY. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations, including the Best of the Net anthology, contemptorary, Curious Specimens, #PoetsResist at Glass Poetry, Apogee Journal, Blackbird, the Paris Review, and elsewhere.

Sundress Reads: Review of Self-Destruction in Small Doses

The bleakness of love is something to be unraveled. How do humans navigate the world after it comes crashing down around them? Do we pick up the pieces and sew them together, creating a scattered imitation of what once was? Or is there space to mourn what’s been lost?

Tinamarie Cox’s Self-Destruction in Small Doses (Bottlecap Press, 2023) collects the worst parts of heartbreak and self-isolation in 27 clipped pages of untitled poems. Hurt bleeds through her stanzas and pools in the laps of the audience. Her poetry is an assortment of pain: a punishment the speaker mostly afflicts upon themselves. 

Following a breakup, the speaker suffers from a suspended stillness as the culmination of grief and regret threatens to fracture their very soul. Sorrow gives way to numbness: “[I] dream of spilling my blood / desperate to see color again / even if all I witness is red” (Cox 18). The speaker flickers from an expansive internal void to reflect on their previous lover. The space left behind cannot be easily filled, and so the speaker turns to supply the gap with their own combustion. To ignite themself is to finally feel something after aimless wandering. 

Our speaker keeps remorse and shame in a time capsule to ruminate on. Every misspeak, misstep, and mistake is carefully cataloged and recycled to be torn apart in the dark of night. 

Although the nature of their relationship is unknown, we know the speaker internalizes what transpired, holding that hurt close to their heart. It threatens to devour them, and they’re starved for feeling. Cox writes,

“I only know the noise of

metal grating against the ground 

as I drag their weight behind me.” (23)

Cox’s poems gather at the beginning of each page, leaving the remainder of the space empty. Stanzas slide from start to finish, with minimal punctuation and a vacancy that suspends readers in the same endless anguish the speaker is subjected to. There’s space for readers to contemplate, reflect on our own lives and intricacies. Can we see the annihilation of self within our past actions? Or is the speaker’s pain a foreign concept?

Cox’s writing is visceral. She engages with an aspect of human nature in her narrative: the consumption of misery and emotional implosion. The speaker shatters before our very eyes. This destruction isn’t sustainable but it’s realistic. In one poem, they threatened to sledgehammer their way through their mold, before they “disappear again” (Cox 26). Our speaker has become a shell of their former self, a husk of who they once were. They take on the blame and idolize the person who’s left them behind. In their eyes, there must have been a definitive cause for the separation.

The speaker searches for an answer, something definitive to rationalize their fracturing resolve. In an earlier poem, Cox writes,

“I only know the noise of

metal grating against the ground 

as I drag their weight behind me.” (23)

They decide they’re the reason, and it anchors them to what’s been left behind. Still, they stand. Earlier in the collection, for example, the speaker goes through the motions of everyday life, leaving pieces of themselves in their wake. The audience bares witness:

“Spinning in circles is tearing me apart
and I’m not sure I can keep stitching myself back together with these frayed threads.”  (Cox 10). 

Is love hopeless? Is there a loss too great to recover from? Cox doesn’t conclude with a happily ever after or even some semblance of hope. And she doesn’t need to. Resolution comes in stages and is rarely linear. As readers, we enter the speaker’s life as an interloper, gazing at their distress with passive interest. And, as soon as we arrive, we leave without so much as a whisper of relief in their near future.

Self-Destruction in Small Doses embarks on a journey of loss and the slaughtering of someone in love. It’s brutality in its proper form. It’s heartbreak. And, most importantly, it’s real. An unfiltered truth of what can happen when we lose ourselves in another person. 

Self-Destruction in Small Doses is available from Bottle Cap Press


K Slade (she/her) is a Black gothic and speculative fiction writer pursuing a BS in Digital Journalism and a Japanese minor at Appalachian State University. She currently serves as Visual Managing Editor for The Appalachian, her collegiate newspaper, and specializes in multimedia journalism. Horror media deeply inspired her love for the craft and in the future, K wants to write a script for a horror game. After undergrad, she hopes to move to New York and pursue an MFA in Creative Writing. 

Sundress Publications is Open for Microgrant Applications for Palestinian Writers

Sundress Publications is open for submissions for grant applications from Palestinian identifying writers with a chapbook or full-length collection in progress. All eligible authors are welcome to submit during our application period which closes on December 31st, 2023. Applicants may apply for any genre.

The Sundress Microgrant for Palestinian Writers will award $500, a slot in Sundress’s reading series, a one-week residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN, and the potential for publication to one writer of Palestinian descent with a chapbook or full-length in progress to support the completion of said project. 

All applications will be read by members of our editorial board. One writer will be selected, who will then work with Sundress’s reading series coordinator, residency team, and editorial board.

To apply, please send a sample of the work in progress along with a brief (no more than 500 words) artist/personal statement about what this grant would mean to the completion of said work. These items should be sent to our editorial board as DOCX or PDF files at sundresspublications@gmail.com. Please include the phrase “Sundress Microgrant for Palestinian Writers” in the subject line. There is no fee to apply.