Author: sundresspublications

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing company and writers residency.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Heirloom by Ashia Ajani

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from 
Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2023.

after my shoe spreads the guts of an unassuming earthworm across a crosswalk didn’t it just want to breathe didn’t it just want to dance in the rain too

A body can be a prison if you let it.
Fanon calls a puddle an ecosystem minutes before a boot
disperses its wet contents. Split tongues emerge from the
fragments, eager to taste what lingers on the sole.
Power is the difference. This is a food chain, after all,
begging us to spin sustenance from scarce dew droplets.
Dark, wet continents fall from our hips, waiting to be caged
once the dust settles.
Small pond, small body, it must be so heartbreaking to
see yourself reflected in every iris that passes you over;
a well of emotion, motionless til the heat of summer
evaporates you into the invisible everythingness that surrounds us.
Just as the dehydrated hips of hibiscus widened
when met with moisture, so too shall you unfold past
short-lived habitats. Change accumulates languidly like
condensation. In the ancient sludge of existence,
                                   you

                                                                disperse

                                                                                                 endlessly.

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower hailing from Denver, CO, (unceded Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe land), now living in Oakland (unceded Ohlone land). A lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate justice educator with Mycelium Youth Network, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole and others. Their words have appeared in Sierra, Atmos, World Literature Today, Frontier Poetry, & elsewhere. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine and a Fall 2023 Poet in Residence at SF MoAD. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), dropped April 2023.

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: Heirloom by Ashia Ajani

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from 
Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2023.

meditations on sweetness and other fruits

my mother asks the pronouns of my crush
as a courtesy, knowing which one she prefers.
this gives her hope, girlchildren to aspire to.
nevertheless a persistent stinging, ringing
smoke above the vibrations of the words we
speak to one another. i don’t kiss using the same
tongue i confess in, my teeth always chattering
away a girlhood dispossessed.
always remember: she the accommodating one.
i basketcase know-it-all split between all divinity, fully spatcocked
over glowing coals; i expose my beating muscle to the flame
and the flame, of course, doesn’t hold the salt of me,
doesn’t cook the meat into anything tender.
ain’t no thang cut muscle deeper than a Black mother’s refusal.
i an expensive lesson in expectation—gluttonous
in my shameful desire.
i confess, i prefer fruit.
in the eveningtime, when the heat becomes bearable,
my eyes set on the horizon, twisted with visions of
watermelon women tonguing their signatures across
my inner thighs, the flavor of kumquats descending from my
lover’s lips.
true, i am greedy.
summer arrives with its ephemeral jewels;
succulent peaches, bountiful berries short-lived
freedom ends at the corner of my lip, lest what i
love begs to remain at the border of burning.
with the scent of honeysuckle in my hair
a boi drenched in fallen flowers ripens me ready,
drunk with plum wine, the mere
promise of nectar enough to satisfy a whole
darkness of longing. the slow roast of time
descends on all of us, but for this moment i
live between a fresh kill & a blossoming tree.
no matter. it all matters.
light the joint &
exhale your juicy transgressions into my eager mouth.

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower hailing from Denver, CO, (unceded Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe land), now living in Oakland (unceded Ohlone land). A lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate justice educator with Mycelium Youth Network, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole and others. Their words have appeared in Sierra, Atmos, World Literature Today, Frontier Poetry, & elsewhere. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine and a Fall 2023 Poet in Residence at SF MoAD. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), dropped April 2023.

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: Heirloom by Ashia Ajani

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from 
Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2023.

the plug won’t

after Mykki Blanco

i grease myself with lipgloss & lotion
perhaps a lil blush will conjure color courage
to go sit in this nigga’s honda for the third time
in two weeks.
the weedman is the only man to ever see me
with my scarf on. i dip & toe a green line. the
intimacy of purchase lingers want on my lips.
yes, this too is heady. in the eveningtime, i
upcycle heartbreak, try on a new facade of
sexycool meant to bring back bliss. eyes low
i coax memory to rewrite itself through a wrapped
fatty & weighty conversations like

did you know so n’ so died?
						         ash fell from the sky when—
										                                          he
									                                       didn’t
									                                       deserve—
the doctor says— 			rent is up another 175 so let
									                                       me get
							                 a 1⁄2 ounce of anything

that will pull my mind
back from the brink of no return. eager to oblige,
weedman hands me a bag of indigo to evince

a night sky from beyond my wildest emptiness.
both of us Black & hustling, rife with dreams
of soulmates evergreen. this be an elegiac alliance.
heartache notwithstanding, he beholds my blessings
everlasting. lovers come & go but this—this is
something sacred. i don’t know where my paycheck ends
& his begins, but i love (the idea of) being tethered to
something. i am a shapeshifter eroded by grief;
render my tenement hollow, let the fullness of me
idle below an unseeded frontier to conquer.
i call myself a Before. simply ungrounded.
how i began? not like this.

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower hailing from Denver, CO, (unceded Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe land), now living in Oakland (unceded Ohlone land). A lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate justice educator with Mycelium Youth Network, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole and others. Their words have appeared in Sierra, Atmos, World Literature Today, Frontier Poetry, & elsewhere. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine and a Fall 2023 Poet in Residence at SF MoAD. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), dropped April 2023.

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.

2023 Prose Open Reading Period Selections Announced

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce the results of the 2023 Prose Open Reading Period. The winning selection is Laura Dzubay’s Pure Fear, American Legend. The horror collection is scheduled for release in 2024.

The stories in Pure Fear, American Legend are startling, haunting, and memorable. Dzubay’s writing is honest, sharp, and unflinching without being cruel or unkind. Like any good horror story, the most commendable part of this collection is not in the momentary terror but in what happens after: how to live when you realize you’ve survived. 

Laura Dzubay is a writer and teacher from Indiana. Her stories and essays have appeared in Mid-American Review, Electric Literature, TIMBER, Gulf Coast, Blue Earth Review, Cimarron Review, and Southern Humanities Review. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University, where she won the AWP Intro Prize.

We are also excited to note our finalists and semifinalists from this year’s Prose Open Reading Period.

Finalists

Perils of Girlhood by Melissa Fraterrigo
Matter Out of Place by AnnElise Hatjakes
Where the Water is by Anjoli Roy

Semifinalists

A Blur in the Field by Lori Brack
Holly by Grace Gilbert
The Aves by Ryane Nicole Granados
Fighthouse by Liesel Hamilton
Just Before Midnight by Abby Manzela
People with Antlers by Elena Minor
AMNH by Anthony Morena
When the Crows Call by Shilo Niziolek
More Than I Could Chew by Esteban Rodríguez
Wormery by Gretchen VanWormer
Vanishing Acts by Lori White

Sundress Publications Seeks Craft Chaps Fiction Editor

Sundress Publications is now open for applications for our Craft Chaps Fiction Editor. Craft Chaps offers substantive essays by contemporary writers on creative writing practice. Each chap focuses on one aspect of craft and contains a writing exercise and bibliography for further reading. They are freely downloadable on our website.

Our fiction editor’s responsibilities primarily include soliciting one author for the series each year, editing the author’s craft chap, delivering the final product to the managing editor in a timely fashion, and working with the managing editor to make sure that it is released and promoted.

We are looking for applicants with the following qualities:

  • Knowledge of contemporary fiction and prominent authors
  • Strong editorial skills including both line edits and proofing
  • Good communication skills
  • Ability to self-start on projects
  • Great time-management and attention to deadlines

Applicants are welcome to telecommute and therefore are not restricted to living in any particular location.

Sundress Publications is staffed entirely by volunteers, so this position, as with all positions at the press, is unpaid. Craft Chap editors will receive a small honorarium for their work each year.

To apply, please send a CV and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Executive Director Erin Elizabeth Smith at erin@sundresspublications.com. Applications are due by December 1, 2023.

Project Bookshelf: Izzy Astuto

When I was eight, my family and I moved into the house we now live in, and I knew immediately which room would be mine. I moved from room to room listlessly during the initial tour, until we came upon the room with two closets. Opening the first one up, I was delighted to find it was not only a closet, but a floor to ceiling bookshelf! From then on, I determined to fill the shelves up completely.

This task was significantly easier than I expected it to be, and, with my book acquiring habits, the shelves quickly started overflowing. As pictures demonstrate, in my last years of high school, I was stacking books more than shelving them. Honestly, I didn’t end up minding this too much, as much of my reading taste had matured past many of the books on my shelves, so I preferred to have my leather-bound The Picture of Dorian Gray blocking my middle grade Adam Silvera’s and John Green’s.

I couldn’t get rid of any more books at that point, though. Believe it or not, the state of these shelves was after multiple book purges, trying to get rid of as much of my old taste as possible, to make space for all the shiny new covers I drooled over every Barnes and Noble trip. But some books I had far too deep an attachment to to ever get rid of. I still would probably cry if I ever re-read Wendy Mass’ The Candymakers.

The top shelf of the closet was always reserved for my more educational books. When I was younger, the least favorite of the classics my mom forced onto my reading list were also shoved up there, although now many have simply migrated into the mishmash on their own. I could never dream of hating Tuck Everlasting or Pygmalion. I always loved climbing on a chair to reach the precariously stacked tomes on a rainy day, picking out my favorite Childcraft encyclopedia and spending the afternoon reading About Animals or How Things Work.

I don’t live in that bedroom anymore when I am home. I had to beg my younger brother, its current resident, to even allow me to take the above pictures. Now, I don’t read much from that collection, only sneaking in sometimes to pull some old favorite to relentlessly pour over, or allow a friend to borrow. In my current room, I don’t have shelves, so books are once more piled throughout the space, haphazardly arranged by TBR and just read. My taste leans pretentious now, full of Murakami and Didion. I’m a liberal arts student stereotype, with my favorite author as Eve Babitz and a guilty understanding of the narrator from The Stranger‘s thought process.

I can’t help but wonder what my taste will be like in a year’s time, what this post would look like if I made it next summer instead. Maybe I’ll have some actual shelves by then. But probably not.

Izzy Astuto (he/they) is a writer currently majoring in Creative Writing at Emerson College. When not in Boston for college, they live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His work has previously been published by Hearth and Coffin, Sage Cigarettes, and Renesme Literary, amongst others. When not writing, he can often be found watching movies and crocheting.

Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Writing About Our Relationships to the Places We Inhabit”

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing About Our Relationships to the Places We Inhabit,” a workshop led by Shlagha Borah on November 8th, 2023, from 6:00-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

In this workshop, participants will read and write about our relationships with the spaces they exist in. They will examine how places shape individuals, especially when they perpetuate violence or oppression in some way. Participants will look into our domestic, public and ecological surroundings to reimagine their environments beyond pastoral poetics. They will then question/explore the idea of “home,” situating themselves in their geographical histories and exploring how it informs the way they view the world. Which place are we running away from? Where do we run towards? The workshop will look at poems by Tarfia Faizullah, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Tishani Doshi.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Shlagha Borah via Venmo @shlaghab.

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is a queer, multi-genre writer from Assam, India. Her work appears/is forthcoming in Salamander, Nashville Review, Identity Theory, Longleaf Review, Variant Literature, South Dakota Review, Passengers Journal, Rogue Agent, Hunger Journal, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is an Associate Poetry Editor at Grist. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Heirloom by Ashia Ajani

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from 
Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2023.

collards

The pot stays on. On the stove, the simmer sojourns south.
Hunger don’t have no place in this kitchen. In this kitchen, every
Black belly has its feed.

This ornamental garden tastes best after the first frost. After what
could not survive falls to decay in service of more sumptuous
fruit.

O, my clever, sour Gods smoked from brine and whimsy,
sweetwater recalls me a Mississippi mad woman. Sick to the soul
with all this fruit. Yearning for 
								what it means to feed 
								& be fed.

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower hailing from Denver, CO, (unceded Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe land), now living in Oakland (unceded Ohlone land). A lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate justice educator with Mycelium Youth Network, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole and others. Their words have appeared in Sierra, Atmos, World Literature Today, Frontier Poetry, & elsewhere. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine and a Fall 2023 Poet in Residence at SF MoAD. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), dropped April 2023.

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: Heirloom by Ashia Ajani

This selection, chosen by guest editor Sarah Clark, is from 
Heirloom by Ashia Ajani, released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2023.

drapetomania

“a form of mania supposedly affecting slaves in the 19th century,
manifested by an uncontrollable impulse to wander or run away
from their white masters, preventable by regular whipping. The
disorder was first identified in a medical report that is often cited as
a fanciful case of psychologism” —Oxford English Dictionary
often, i dream of flight.
this makes me susceptible to any
gin-stinking wisdom that comes
my way—

better days are coming.
the drunkards on the corner blow
kisses masked by hiccupped
vengeance, eyes soot-dark
with visions of marronage.
“why you ain’t smiling?
you blessed my nigga” says the man
at the city bus stop.
instinctively, my wings unfurl.
perhaps it's just the smell of last night’s dinner
lingering on his coat,
good feed enticing wayward flock,
but there are always unnamed hungers who
draw us closer to truthsayers;

Lord, i been starving.

stuck in the oil slick, plumage clipped.
eager to find its destination happy,
a patient violence lives at the base of my spine.
desire stands guard against colonial teeth,
says, “run.”
i oblige,
exposing the geography of hurt
across these United States.

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower hailing from Denver, CO, (unceded Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe land), now living in Oakland (unceded Ohlone land). A lecturer in the AfAm Department at UC Berkeley and a climate justice educator with Mycelium Youth Network, Ajani has received fellowships from Just Buffalo Literary Center, Tin House, The Watering Hole and others. Their words have appeared in Sierra, Atmos, World Literature Today, Frontier Poetry, & elsewhere. Ajani is co-poetry editor of the Hopper Literary Magazine and a Fall 2023 Poet in Residence at SF MoAD. Their debut poetry collection, Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing), dropped April 2023.

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: God Themselves by Jae Nichelle

This selection, chosen by guest editor Katie Manning, is from 
God Themselves by Jae Nichelle, released by Simon & Schuster in 2023.

A Book Reminds Me I’ve Known Joy

I know love because I have turned the page
of this borrowed book to find a stain of maybe ketchup

or another bright food & I am holding something someone
would not even let go of to eat

I have laughed so hard at a joke I had to clutch a table
for balance         I have smiled so hard I removed

my glasses to make room for my cheeks         I have been so
overwhelmed with gratitude I pulled the car

over & cried at the wheel         I do not have to guess
what it feels like to be this book, admired,

invested in dearly         I have been so tenderly held

Tomorrow, will you remind me? I have been so
tenderly held

Jae Nichelle is the author of the poetry chapbook The Porch (As Sanctuary) from YesYes Books; the inaugural poetry winner of the John Lewis Writing Award from the Georgia Writers Association; and her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2020, The Washington Square Review, The Offing Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere. Her spoken word poems have been featured by Write About Now, Speak Up Poetry Series, and Button Poetry.

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award), and six chapbook collections, including How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press) and 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books). Her poem “What to Expect” was featured on the Poetry Unbound podcast, and her poems have appeared in HAD, Poet Lore, SWWIM, Stirring, Thimble, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Katie is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University.