The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for the September installment of our reading series. This event will take place on September 25, 2022 from 1-3PM on the patio at Pretentious Beer Co. 

Quincy Scott Jones is the author of two books of poetry: The T-Bone Series (Whirlwind Press, 2009) and How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children (C&R Press, 2021). He’s a Cave Canem fellow and a VONA alum whose work has appeared in the African American Review, The North American Review, the Bellingham Review, Love Jawns: A Mixtape, and The Feminist Wire. With Nina Sharma he co-curates Blackshop, a column that thinks about allyship between BIPOC artists. His graphic narrative, >BlackNerd<, is in the works.

Gale Thompson is the author of Helen or My Hunger (YesYes Books, 2020), Soldier On (Tupelo Press, 2015), and two chapbooks. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Tin House Online, jubilat, and Mississippi Review, among others. A winner of the 2022 Poetry Society of America’s Emily Dickinson Award, Gale has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is co-host of the arts advice podcast Now That We’re Friends. She lives in the mountains of North Georgia, where she directs the Creative Writing program at Young Harris College.

Rowan Young was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. You can find her performing at venues all over the US. Rowan co-founded Tiny Stage Comedy, through which she produces several successful shows. She placed second in the Funniest Comedian in the Heartland competition in 2019, was the 2020 Plano Comedy Festival roast champion, and was named Knoxville’s Finest Comedian by Blank magazine in 2021 and 2022. Rowan has opened for comics like Dusty Slay, Billy Wayne Davis, and Shane Torres.

Ryan Dunaway is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist out of Knoxville, TN. He plays with various groups in styles ranging from folk and bluegrass to jazz. His songwriting uses elements from these different genres with a longing yet bright acoustic sound.

Our community partner for September is Hindman Settlement School. Hindman Settlement School is a vibrant beacon for progressive learning, community enrichment, and cultural exploration in the central Appalachian region. At Hindman Settlement School, they provide practical courses, programs, and services designed to inspire collaboration and improve the lives of the people in our community. They bring inspirational, life-changing educational services to children with dyslexia and their parents, and they develop and manage community service programs customized to meet our region’s growing demands and challenges. They also promote cultural awareness through arts programs specially designed to build on our area’s rich cultural heritage. Hindman Settlement School was the first rural social settlement school established in America, and they are currently the most successful. Established in 1902 by May Stone and Katherine Pettit in Hindman, Kentucky, their school soon became a model center for education, healthcare, and social services. In fact, they’ve often been called “the best school in the mountains,” and take that honor very seriously by continuing to contribute significantly to regional progress. Hindman Settlement

The school has played a vital role in preserving and promoting the literary and cultural heritage of southeastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia. They believe in their community and their commitment to providing education and service. While their mission has remained the same since Hindman Settlement School was founded over a century ago, their programs are constantly improving and developing to meet the changing needs of our region. At Hindman Settlement School, they believe in honoring the past, improving the present, and planning for the bright and colorful future of Central Appalachia. They know that through proper education, stewardship, and support, the people of our community can help our region thrive.

Donate to support at here.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is a writers residency and arts collective that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers in all genres including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, academic writing, playwriting, and more.

Nominations are now open for Best of the Net, an awards-based anthology designed to grant a platform to a diverse and growing collection of writers and publishers who are building an online literary landscape that seeks to break free of traditional publishing.

In addition to poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, we will also be accepting art nominations!

Nominations must have originally been published online between July 1st, 2021, and June 30th, 2022. See guidelines for more details on eligibility. Submissions must be received between July 1st and September 30th, 2022.

For submission guidelines, please visit: http://bestofthenetanthology.com/submissions/

To submit, please use the following form: tinyurl.com/bestofthenet2023

This year’s judges are Jane Wong (poetry), Shayla Lawz (fiction), Toni Jensen (nonfiction), and Rhonda Lott (art).

Jane Wong is the author of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything from Alice James Books (2021) and Overpour from Action Books (2016). Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House in 2023. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a PhD in English from the University of Washington and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her poems can be found in places such as Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, Best American Poetry 2015, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, and others. Her essays have appeared in places such as McSweeney’s, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, The Common, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home.

Shayla Lawz is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Jersey City, NJ. She works at the intersection of text, sound, and performance and has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Jack Jones Literary Arts, The Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and The Digital Studies Center at Rutgers-Camden. She holds a BA in English from Rutgers University and an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. Her writing/hybrid work appears in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Catapult, and The Poetry Project, among others. Her debut poetry collection speculation, n. was chosen by Ilya Kaminsky for the 2020 Autumn House Poetry Prize and is out now. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, where she teaches in the department of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute.

Toni Jensen is the author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, a finalist for the Dayton Peace Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice Book (Ballantine, 2020). An NEA Creative Writing Fellowship recipient in 2020, Jensen’s essays have appeared in Orion, Catapult, and Ecotone, among others. She is also the author of the story collection From the Hilltop. She teaches at the University of Arkansas and the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Rhonda Lott is an artist, code developer, and writer based in Knoxville, TN. As a lifelong lover of the arts and sciences, she holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Springfield and a doctorate in creative writing from Texas Tech University. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Whiskey Island Magazine, among others. She has contributed cover art to Best of the Net for twelve years.

In the house where I grew up, at the end of a neighborhood in the suburbs of Michigan, my parents had a large, walk-in closet with sliding mirrors for doors. Behind those doors, my father kept an extensive and wonderful collection of CDs. On the weekend, my older brother and I would sit on the floor—boombox in front of our small, pajama’ed reflections—feeding in one disc after another. We would excitedly write down the songs we loved, and our father would burn us our very own CDs. The rock n’ roll I fell in love with started a rebellious fire inside me. All throughout elementary and middle school, I dreamt of running away. I read books about the fearless and misunderstood and scribbled angsty prose. By the time I reached high school, I was as restless as a flighty bird and after graduation, I decided to take a gap year to travel. I set out on a puddle-jumper bound for a small Caribbean island off the coast of Puerto Rico, where I lived and worked for three months. There were eight other volunteers from all over the world, and they pulled me into the traveling community I would call my family for the next four years.

During my time on the road, I worked in and backpacked through Europe and Asia. I taught English in Poland and Vietnam, learned how to run a sawmill and reorganize a retired artist’s paintings on a medieval farm in Austria, lived with a family and provided childcare in Italy, and learned hospitality skills living and working in a hostel in Thailand. I also did a two-week trek in the Himalayas. There were at least twenty other countries I explored, and I wouldn’t change that time in my life for the world. I learned so much about myself, my passions, and my breaking points. I had always loved reading, and checked books by Billy Collins, Mary Karr, Stephen King, John Steinbeck, Margaret Atwood, and Maya Angelou off my list as I roamed. I kept my Google Docs full to the brim with poems until it occurred to me I should put them all together into a manuscript. Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to get back into the classroom. In 2021, I was accepted into the University of Michigan, Dearborn and enrolled in an honors program. My classes were all remote due to the pandemic. Taking advantage of the situation, I took off again, this time to live in Mexico and Guatemala while studying. I also published my first poetry collection that spring and hosted some book signings around my home state (Michigan). I created a website to share updates about my projects and a Linktree to connect my social media pages, interviews, and places my book is available for purchase.

At this point in my life, all I know is that I want to work with literature and keep creating. I am thrilled to be starting this internship with Sundress so I can learn more about editing and how small publications and presses run. I can’t wait to work with other artists and writers. Currently, I’m living in a small village called St Mary. It is a picturesque place on the edge of Glacier National Park, sitting on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. This is my second Montana summer, and I love the wild freedom it offers. I spend my time reading, writing, hiking, camping, and summiting mountains. In the fall, I plan to head out into the world again with my adventurous boyfriend. We are planning on South America, but will follow the wind where it calls.

__________

Emily DeYoung‘s first poetry collection, How the Wind Calls the Restless, won first place in the Writer’s Digest 30th Annual Self-Published Book Awards competition in 2021. The book was also reviewed by Victoria Carrubba on the Sundress Reads blog. Emily is currently working on a memoir and searching for a publisher for her second poetry manuscript.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is pleased to announce the guests for the August installment of our reading series. This event will take place on August 28, 2022 from 1-3PM at Pretentious Beer Co. 

Maurice Moore is currently a doctoral Performance Studies Candidate at the University of California-Davis. Moore’s works have appeared in Communication and Critical Cultural/Studies, Queer Quarterly Magazine, Decoded Pride, Confluence, and Mollyhouse. From 2011 to the present, the creative has exhibited at the Centre for Recent Drawing (C4RD) in London United Kingdom, Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento California, Calabar Gallery in New York NY, Medford Arts Center in New Jersey, Christina Ray Gallery in Soho New York, Mnemosphere Project in Milan Italy, Pence Gallery in Davis California, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro North Carolina.

Juliana Roth was selected as a VIDA Fellow with the Sundress Academy for the Arts for her fiction and is a recent resident with SAFTA. Her writing appears in The Breakwater Review, Your Magic, Irish Pages, Los Angeles Review of Books as well as being produced as independent films that she directs. Her web series, The University, was nominated by the International Academy of Web Television for Best Drama Writing and screened at survivor justice nonprofits across the country. She writes the weekly newsletter Drawing Animals which features essays, interviews, and doodles celebrating our interconnection with animal life, and teaches writing at NYU.

Based in Ten Mile, TN, Ali Simpson performs comedy all over the country from bowling alleys where people did not know comedy was happening to breweries, to venues such as Blue Ridge Comedy Club, ImprovBoston, and Empire Comedy Club. She has performed at the Comedyfort festival (Boise, ID), LaughFest (Grand Rapids, MI), and the What a Joke nationwide fundraising event for the ACLU. She produces shows in Knoxville with Tiny Stage Comedy. Her favorite shows are at queer anarchist bookstores, or at community centers in the sticks where retirees one-up her on dirty material. She thinks this path has been a great use of her MFA in Creative Writing and Literature.

Zach Russell is a singer-songwriter from Caryville, Tennessee. Growing up in a small town tucked away in the Appalachian mountains, Zach learned to play music working through the Red Book Hymnal in the band at a Southern Baptist Church. The notes of the supernatural and yearning still weave their way through his first person tales of pain and loss.

Our community partner for August is Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi is one of Tennessee’s oldest and largest private, non-profit health care agencies. For over 75 years, PPTNM has remained committed to providing high-quality, affordable reproductive services and education throughout Tennessee, north Mississippi and part of Arkansas. Their mission is to improve health and well-being by providing high-quality, nonjudgmental sexual health care, honest and accurate sexuality education, and reproductive health and rights advocacy.

Donate to support the essential work they do here.

Laura Passin’s debut full-length collection Borrowing Your Body (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) reflects the experience of a woman grappling with illness, loss, duty, and the fleeting human existence amidst the vastness of the universe. Passin’s words weave a tapestry that beckons the reader to wrap it around them, a poignant story told with both specificity and a sense of general-ness that will embrace anyone who has struggled with losing a loved one, heartbreak, and/or overcoming the ways in which our bodies fail us.

The story witnesses a speaker caring for a terminally ill mother while considering her relationships as both a daughter and sister. The book opens with “APHASIA,” which tosses the reader into the intimacy of grieving a mother who is not yet gone, while contemplating the roles of words, speech, and their decay with age and illness. This sets the tone for the rest of the collection, with its beautifully relatable, yet jarring imagery like “feel my hand / cramp in anticipation” & “the secret world of words / and their birth pains” that introduces a speaker consumed by rumination.

From here, the book is organized into five sections, all of which exist in their own interpretation of human existence, while pooling together to divulge a greater story. The first of these, NOT MEANT TO MEAN, provides a glance into the speaker’s relationships and responsibilities. It ends with the dichotomy between the experience of the patient and their loved ones. Throughout, the reader receives glimpses of memories of that reveal the complicated relationships between family and self, like in “DAUGHTER MEANS DUTY” with the lines “what you want is / not what you choose,” and “…do not / stray. Stay. / Away is for brothers.” There also continues to be an emphasis on the role of language and its interpretation⁠—“…”These bits / of language are not meant to mean.” (“ELEGY BEGINNING AND ENDING WITH A BRIEF LESSON ON PHYSICS”). The second, SPACEWALK/SPARROW, leads with “Space is trying to murder you. / It’s not personal. Nature abhors an individual” and so we get a feel for the speaker’s infatuation with outer space and human interaction with it, as well as the metaphors that can be drawn between physical space and that between words.

YOU NEED ANOTHER TONGUE is simultaneously wrapped in simplicity and mathematics. Though these don’t exist exclusively, they perform on opposite ends of the same spectrum, offering both clarity and ambiguity. TIME ENOUGH AT LAST breaks the speaker’s life into zones, dwelling in the idea of life as “an experiment in narrative” (“ZONE 1”) brought forth from an obsession with The Twilight Zone. Here, Passin’s lines pierce in their relatability, with moments like, “…If you haven’t / yet held the cold hand / that used to be human, / you will” and “When I’m happy / I start seeking the twist” from “ZONE 6.” Passin introduces questions of space, time, and purpose by inhabiting a space of conjecture, while simultaneously creating specific zones for emotions like grief, longing, and hope like small boxes that can be individually lidded and shelved. This is especially evident in “ZONE 6,” where grief is painted as “It’s not dark everywhere, / like you thought⁠—but you know / so much more about shadows.”

GIVEN A FINITE BODY starts with inspiration from Anne Carson and travels through the ways in which we carry grief, juxtaposing strength against fragility and defines grief as inevitability. The final poem leaves the reader in a space of contemplation while providing a subtle, satisfying circle back to “APHASIA” with the act of the speaker writing, once again employing language as a tie and habit, and thoughtfully considering its role with “She wants to read. / Her daughter writes this down.”

Among the five sections, Passin nestles poems in the form of “migraine diaries” that suspend the timeline while the speaker is forced to depart from rumination and consider her own pain and body. The reader is pulled into this pain and tangible physical distress with lines like “The knife in my eye” and “My skull cracks open / and a mirror steps out” from “MIGRAINE DIARY II” and “My bones detach / and say their final wishes” in “MIGRAINE DIARY IV.” Throughout the entire collection, Passin’s poetry drips with vibrantly tangible images like “A place where the smoke leaves your lungs / before you see the fire / someone has lit in your hand” from “THE TWILIGHT ZONE” and “the trees are glitter-drunk” from “HOME, SICK.” In “MIGRAINE DIARY IV,” “The jaw of the world / unhinges” and we feel “the world’s skin / clatter on the floor.” Among a saturation of others, these images drown the reader in the speaker’s struggle, while validating the many ways in which we all experience grief, loss, and depression.

Passin encourages us to “…gather the future / and the past in these / trembling hands.” And for a summary of this collection, I couldn’t dissect a more telling line. Her words weave in and out of personal experience and conjecture in a way that is both gorgeous and viscous. Each poem is its own world, inviting the reader to linger and live in the sensation and emotion they elicit. While these poems aren’t what I expected, Borrowing Your Body led me on a journey through the complexity of love and loss that cut deep and left the kind of scar you yearn to talk about.

Borrowing Your Body is available at Riot in Your Throat

Nicole Bethune Winters (she/her) is a poet, ceramic artist, and yoga teacher. She currently resides in Southern California, where she makes and sells pottery out of her home studio. When she isn’t writing or wheel-throwing, Nicole is likely at the beach, on a trail, or exploring new landscapes. She derives most of the inspiration for her creative work from her interactions with the environment around her, and is always looking for new ways to connect with and understand the earth. Her debut poetry collection, brackish, will be published by Finishing Line Press in August 2022.

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Victoria Mullins. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, August 21st from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with password “safta”.

Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. This generative workshop series will give you prompts, rules, obstructions, and more to write three poems in two hours. Writers will write together for thirty minutes, be invited to share new work, and then given a new set of prompts. The idea isn’t that we are writing perfect final drafts, but instead creating clay that can then be edited and turned into art later. Prose writers are also welcome to attend!

Victoria Mullins is a writer, bookseller, and avid reader from Knoxville, TN and has worked with SAFTA for two years. In her spare time, she enjoys rock climbing, pasta cooking, and vegetable gardening. She is currently at work on her first poetry collection.

While this is a free event, donations can be made to the Sundress Academy for the Arts here: https://sundress-publications.square.site/product/donate-to-sundress/107?cs=true

Each month we split any Xfit donations with our community partner. This month our community partner for August is Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi. Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi is one of Tennessee’s oldest and largest private, non-profit health care agencies. For over 75 years, PPTNM has remained committed to providing high-quality, affordable reproductive services and education throughout Tennessee, north Mississippi and part of Arkansas. Their mission is to improve health and well-being by providing high-quality, nonjudgmental sexual health care, honest and accurate sexuality education, and reproductive health and rights advocacy. Find out more about the essential work they do at https://www.plannedparenthood.org/planned-parenthood-tennessee-and-north-mississippi. 

To donate to Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, please check out https://www.weareplannedparenthood.org/onlineactions/cOJVhOyrzkq4uBcxVekXFA2?sourceid=1000065&affiliateID=091550. 

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce the results of the 2022 Prose Open Reading Period. The winning selection is José Angel Araguz’s Ruin and Want. The book is scheduled for release in 2023.

José Angel Araguz, Ph.D. is the author most recently of Rotura (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). His poetry and prose have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, The Acentos Review, and Oxidant | Engine among other places. He is an Assistant Professor at Suffolk University, where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Salamander and is also a faculty member of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. He blogs and reviews books at The Friday Influence.

The Editorial Board of Sundress assigns Honorable Mentions to:

Mi Gente/My People, Amelia Díaz Ettinger
The Fallen Ones, Michalle Gould

Finalists

Pro Infirmus, Sarah Giragosian
Undocumented Desert Rose, féi hernandez
Water Study, Freesia McKee
Different Kinds of Death, Dorothy Neagle
Scruffy City, Arabella Sarver
Between Worlds, Deepak Singh

Semi-Finalists

Small Cruelties, Joanna Acevedo
Recto/Verso, Liz Asch
Bitten by the Lantern Fly, Frances Cannon
A Handful of Earth, Jesse Curran
Forecast 2031, Marlena Chertock
Naked Phoenix Child, Brooke Gitzel
Intrusive Thoughts, Phoebe Rusch
Moon Scribbles, Kimberly Ann Priest
Reliance, Julia Tagliere
Boy in the House of Art, Gregg Williard