If I had to define the genre that enthralls me the most when it comes to my own reading habits, I would probably go with Female Rage Novels. I’m deeply moved by authors who explore a complex woman, whether it be by indulging in qualms about her embodiment, explorations with her body and agency, or with the power structures around her. I find novels that entertain this kind of tender, flawed, fierce female character to be significant.
My favorite book of all time is The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I find her exploration of embodiment and agency to be profound and deeply saddening at the same time. Told via triptych, Kang pushes the boundaries of fiction by engaging with elements that verge on the fantastical. This book is nothing short of brilliant and remains my favorite Kang book. Some other novels I’d personally assume under the moniker of Female Rage are Animal by Lisa Taddeo, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, and Big Swiss by Jean Bagin.
I would, however, hate to not mention the grip that literary fiction as a whole has on me. Kazuo Ishiguro, Ocean Vuong, Sally Rooney (duh), Ann Napolitano and R.F. Kuang are among by favorites as well. I like to organize my bookshelf by genre rather than author and have the aforementioned writers bunched together as if at dinner with one another. I’m also absolutely obsessed with Irish writers. I studied abroad at Trinity College in Dublin, and while living there I was introduced to many Irish writers such as Ian McEwan, Colm Toibin, Sean Hewitt (who taught my poetry seminar!), and Chloe Michelle Howarth. Brooklyn and On Chesil Beach explore the impact setting can have on a novel like no other novels I’ve ever read. I also want to highlight Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth, my favorite queer narrative in a fiction novel. This takes me to another genre of literature I enjoy: Queer/Gender-bending novels. I’d include Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea and Fun Home by Allison Bechdel in this beloved category.
And while we are on Julia Armfield, I have to mention short story collections, AKA the most underrated rated genre of literature (second to poetry). Salt Slow by Julia Armfield and Bliss Montage by Ling Ma are original, speculative, and depict courageous instances of nuance. If nothing else has sounded appealing from my bookshelf, take these two as a guaranteed 5 Stars of Goodreads pick. There is something for everyone in these collections.
Summer books! With college courses eroding some of my pleasure reading time—and replacing it was the finicky syllabi and reading, ranging from incredibly engaging to the lack thereof—I relish summer and the time to read (and listen) to books (I’m obsessed with audiobooks, have I mentioned that?). My summer faves are all over the place, which accurately reflects my overall reading taste. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors, Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, and Educated by Tara Westover are summer reads that have inspired me to write, reflect, journal.
And yes, many of my books are stacked virtually as my bookshelf is criminally small… Anyway! I couldn’t end this post without mentioning poetry. Poetry is perhaps the only reason that reading is a part of my life now. I was introduced to reading poetry by my elementary teacher Holly, the first activity I really connected with. The first type of literature that moved me deeply. While Ada Limon was my starting point, and remains my home base, I’ve enjoyed Richard Siken, Charles Simic, Maggie Nelson, Marie Howe, Chen Chen, Mary Ruefle, Solmaz Sharif, Brenda Shaughnessy and Ocean Vuong. These are the books that I will take with me everywhere.
And to finish this post off, I’d have to mention Audible, my sacred multi-tasking activity. Walking to a coffee shop? Audible. Waiting for your laundry? Audible. Doing a puzzle? Audible. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro are some of my favorite listens from the past couple of weeks.
I enjoy reading in all its forms and genres, and am so grateful to have access to such a comprehensive selection of stories to read and learn from. I’ve just learned that the minimum number of books to count as a personal library, officially, is 1000 books—so, rightly, that is my next goal (I have a very long way to go).
Emma Goss (she/her/hers) is a senior English major with minors in Film and Linguistic Anthropology. A passionate reader, she prefers to always be juggling a poetry collection, a literary fiction novel, and an audiobook. Emma is especially drawn to poetry rooted in nature symbolism and metaphor. Some of her favorite collections include The Tradition by Jericho Brown, War of the Foxes by Richard Siken, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, and Jane: A Murder by Maggie Nelson. Her poetry has been published in Pangyrus Magazine and by the Princeton Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Poetry Contest. Originally from Los Angeles, she spends her time hiking local trails or browsing the poetry shelves at Barnes & Noble Studio City when not at Vassar.
Every day after school, my parents would take me and my sister to the library. We would spend hours debating which books to borrow and then end up checking out as many as we could. I still remember the immense joy I felt of making my own library card (Arthur said it best: “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card”). One of the very first books that sparked my love for reading was the Rainbow Magic series. I absolutely adored the premise of two best friends helping beautiful fairies save their world. My love for stories grew and I fell in love with the world of words (and I started hinting for books for my birthday).
My favorite class throughout middle and high school was Literature, which was very on-brand for me. I loved how we got to read so many stories, and it felt like an hour-long class of just rambling about them with my classmates. And I can ramble for hours about books.
As I started to think about what I wanted to do in my life, I knew that I desired to be a part of something I am passionate about and make a difference in the world. I realized I really wanted to work in publishing after getting my Master’s in Marketing. I was reading more and more books during this time, and I started wondering about the process of how books are brought into the hands of readers—how amazing it would be to work with books and help share authors’ voices around the world. It felt very natural discovering this dream. My family and friends were like, “Wow, that is perfect for you,” which felt like an accomplishment in and of itself, since I never really knew what I wanted to do. And now I did. I want to be a part of helping stories come alive and make an impact on others. The thought of working in publishing ignites a spark of passion I didn’t know I had. And I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.
Books are powerful. They change us in ways we may not even notice. They teach us empathy, help us experience different worlds, and simply make us happy when we curl up with a good book after a long day. I’m currently a Traffic Copy Editor at a local news station in Tucson, AZ, and I’m so excited to work at Sundress Publications as an Editorial Intern. I’m grateful for this opportunity to learn closely about the publishing world. Here’s to helping more voices and books come to life!
Marian Kohng (she/her/hers) is a proud Korean American and an Editorial Intern at Sundress Publications and a Traffic Copy Editor at a local news station in Tucson, AZ. She also has a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and a Master’s in Marketing. She loves to get lost in a good book and will read just about anything, including the back of the shampoo bottle.
Growing up, I watched my mom read constantly. Her shelves overflowed with well-worn paperbacks and hardcovers, the corners bent from love and re-reading. As a kid, I didn’t get it. I’d ask, “Why read the same story twice?” or tease her when she cried over fictional characters. But now, I understand. Books were her escape. Her outlet. Her way of processing a world that didn’t always feel gentle. And somewhere along the way, I inherited that same instinct.
For me, it’s romance novels and period dramas that feel like home. There’s something about getting swept away into a slow-burn love story set in a candlelit ballroom or sun-drenched countryside that makes the noise of everyday life a little quieter. Whether it’s Pride and Prejudice, Outlander, or a swoony new romance from BookTok, I find pieces of myself in each plot and prose.
Books have become more than just a hobby; they’re how I recharge, how I reflect, and sometimes, how I remember who I am. They’ve helped me put words to emotions I didn’t even know how to name. They’ve taught me that sometimes the smallest things, a glance, a letter, the way someone says your name, can carry entire universes of meaning. Reading helped me fall in love with quiet moments: the morning light hitting a coffee cup just right, the way the wind moves through the trees, the pause between words in a really good conversation.
More than that, stories gave me courage. Courage to dream bigger. To travel. To believe the world is full of people worth knowing and places worth exploring. I’ve booked flights and wandered cities alone because a character once did the same. I’ve trusted my gut more boldly because books taught me that adventure often begins with a single step outside your comfort zone.
And yes, books made me believe in love. In happily ever afters. Not in a perfect, fairy tale kind of way, but in a hopeful, deeply human one. The kind of love that’s imperfect and earned and worth waiting for. The kind my mom used to read about late into the night when she thought no one was watching.
Now, as a 20-year-old senior at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville—majoring in English and minoring in Advertising and PR—I look back and see how those pages shaped me. I don’t just want to read stories anymore. I want to write them, share them, and help others feel seen by them, the way I’ve always felt when I turned the final page of a book that mattered.
My mom gave me that without even trying, and I like to think she’s excited that I finally understand what she was chasing in those quiet hours with a book in hand.
Savannah Roach (she/her) is a senior at the University of Tennessee, where she majors in English with a concentration in technical communication and minors in advertising and public relations. She is a travel enthusiast, bookworm, amateur baker, and nature lover. While she enjoys books of all kinds, she’s especially drawn to the haunting beauty and rich atmosphere of Southern Gothic literature. With a great love for Knoxville, she looks forward to serving the writing community in this position.
My name is Penny Wei and I am from Shanghai, China, currently living in Massachusetts. I am a Virgo, slow-walker, and an admirer of lakes, botanical gardens, and cherries.
Ever since I was a child, I loved to do two things: daydream and write.
Adults often scolded me for staring too long at what didn’t exist. I would nod, turn away, and return to the plot unfolding in my head. Words on a page became my bridge to imagination — only through the exertion of language could I give shape to the formless, wandering visions inside me. I rooted myself in paper; the page drank my ink, and I drank what later shaped my soul.
For a long time, I was a prose writer — I even despised poetry. To me, poetry felt like nonsense: strange metaphors merging things without reason. Why should my mother be a tree if her skin wasn’t bark? Why should poppy seeds overtake eyes? I was raised in a world where everything had to have meaning, where blue curtains meant sadness because blue meant sorrow. But then I read a poem where blue glowed holy, and suddenly, the rules no longer held.
Poetry became my emancipation — a place where empathy sprawls like vines, where I can mourn the trivial and praise the fleeting. It’s where I can say my mother is a butterfly rinsing black-blooded toenails, and that image is its own truth.
I’m thrilled to join Sundress Publications as an editorial intern, where I can harness this love for language, prose and poetry alike, into supporting others’ work. I look forward to helping writers bring their voices to the page and sharing that joy for the literary arts with our community.
Penny Wei is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She has been recognized by the Longfellow House, Cafe Muse, and Just Poetry, amongst others. Her works are up or forthcoming on Eunoia Review, Inflectionist Review, Dialogist, Aloka, and elsewhere.
I wrote my first book when I was six years old. Of course, this was not what you would typically think of when someone says they’re writing a book. This was a stack of printer paper that I had stolen from my mother’s printer, folded in half, and stapled carefully down the spine to make a book-like shape. Then, I wrote the story of a troublesome kid named Henry inside, affectionately named after my kindergarten best friend. By the time I was done, the pages were riddled with misspelled words, badly drawn stick figures, and accidental pen markings. But I had finished a book, and that was the first time I felt like I had actually accomplished something.
For years, I continued this pattern, making my mom viscerally angry by “wasting” her perfectly good printer paper. Then, I found out that I could use spiral notebooks instead, and I began to write there. Most of the time, these little stories were never finished. My brain was always swirling with ideas, and each time another would come up, I would think it was better than the last and immediately get to work on it instead. It wasn’t until I discovered my very first book while cleaning out my desk one day that something clicked. I had loved that story so much because it had someone I loved in it. I had used my own experiences, as well as his, to create a story that meant something to me. And when I showed the original Henry, several years after they had already moved to a different school, the tears in their eyes showed me that it meant something to them, too.
From that moment on, my approach to writing changed. I was no longer looking to empty the contents of my brain’s creativity on the page; I was looking to make people feel, to find a way to evoke the same feelings I had when I read my favorite books. Even before I could analyze literature properly, I knew what their authors were trying to say. Every novel that I loved and cried over had a message, and I began to find ways to put my thoughts and opinions into my own stories.
Now, I find that writing is power. In an era where critical thought and originality is shunned rather than celebrated, all I can do is write. Sometimes, that means writing think pieces that will never see the sun in my journal. Other times, it looks like poring over the third draft of my debut novel, looking for meaning in every word. Either way, the writing I do alone empowers me to write for others, to share stories that makes people think, feel, and see themselves represented in a space where they may not have been previously.
If you take one thing about me away from this post, let it be this: my writing is my activism. The world can be an incredibly dark place, but it is up to us to not only find the pockets of light but to create them and share them. In truth, my writing has never been about me; it’s been about the people I love, the people I have met and have yet to meet, and those who cannot write or speak for themselves. It’s been about you, the person who is reading this blog post, and those who have already passed and will never get the chance to. The written word has a long history, one full of pain and joy. I aim to tip the scale and make the joy a little bit greater than the pain.
“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
— Edith Wharton
Shelby Hansen (she/her) is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.
The urge to write was not an ever-present companion in the early years of my life. It was more like a slow-rolling epiphany, sweeter, more instinctive, like a hard-earned deduction I had arrived at through a series of infallible coincidences and a steady love I hadn’t named.
Growing up in early 2000s coastal Jeddah, I—like most kids of immigrant parents—lived in a weirdly curated world, wide open yet incredibly particular. In part, I attribute this paradox to the culture that I began to recognize at the edges of my earliest memories—one that wasn’t my parents’ or Jeddah’s, but a third, strangely unified mishmash of people. Attending an international school does that.
We all spoke English and Arabic, but mostly English, and when we spoke Arabic, we borrowed phrases from each other’s dialects until you couldn’t entirely tell where anyone of us was from. That was one of the irrefutable rules of the school: it didn’t matter where you came from. Other unspoken expectations included a future STEM career, which is why, obsessed with science as I was (read: watching hours of rare disease documentaries), I wanted to become a scientist, maybe work in a lab.
I was so sure of my love for science and the predetermined path that I never gave much thought to the other hours I spent in a state of pure flow: drawing, reading, writing poetry with my childhood best friend.
It was with figuring out that I didn’t want a STEM degree that I recognized I was just as obsessed with the arts, in the way kids are: intrinsically, joyfully, like something in the human soul aches for creativity. I loved science in the way I loved puzzles, something to figure out, to learn, but I loved storytelling in a way I felt in my soul.
I hadn’t yet figured out I loved writing at eight or nine, but I loved story. I watched Mulan every day for a year and pretended I was her with a disassembled hula hoop part as my bamboo stick. Then came Tangled, Brave, and plenty of other movies in glossy DVD cases I’d pick out with my mom. Elementary school visits introduced me to The Magic Tree House; I discovered old copies of A Series of Unfortunate Events on my brother’s shelves; I read Matilda in two days. And throughout it all, I was diving into these stories, their characters, their journeys.
I wrote as a hobby, hoping to replicate the feeling of reading and watching good stories. I was good at grammar, writing with a technicality that suited 10th grade in 8th grade (and got my essay rejected for it), but it wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I realized I wanted to write, preferably forever.
And that was it. Even when everyone questioned my decision to pursue a writing degree, I knew it was what I wanted. My time at university and my lecturers shaped my writing and myself in ways I couldn’t have imagined. It was during my final year that publishing—a once mysterious entity hovering somewhere far above me and my writing—sparked my interest for the first time.
Case studies and a newfound appreciation for the teams involved in making a book made me want to play a part in the publishing process, to champion global voices in a way that made sense to child me who thought the diversity inside her school bubble was the norm everywhere. I’m incredibly excited to see what the next six months with Sundress will bring, and I can’t wait to be part of making literary things happen!
Tassneem Abdulwahab (she/her) is an aspiring writer and editor with a BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing from UWE Bristol. With a strong interest in culture, history, and psychology and a love for fiction, her writing often draws on one or more of these threads to tell character-centric stories. Trained in oil painting, she recently exhibited and sold two portrait paintings in February 2025. In her free time, you can find her buying more books (no, seriously—she owns three editions of Little Women), snapping pictures of the little details, or sitting at her easel!
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “The Enthusiasm of Influence,” a workshop led by Sandra Marchetti on Wednesday, October 8th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
We’ve all heard of the “anxiety” of influence. Have you ever struggled to pin down who or what is influencing your writing? Do you want to learn how to write with your influences instead of against them? Do you worry that acknowledging your influences makes your work less likely to be taken seriously? Do you want to find out more about what makes you, you on the page? If so, this workshop will help you to sleuth your voice.
You will learn how your influences are working in your writing, how to make an influence-driven exercise into a polished piece, and how and when to “steal” from writers you love. Literary “influencers” like Jessica Rae Bergamino, Ansel Elkins, and Colm Tóibín will be discussed. Bring two influential texts (art, poems, music!) to share, a pre-existing draft of your own that you want to revise, and some blank notebook paper!
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Sandra Marchetti via Venmo:@Sandra-Marchetti-1.
Sandra Marchettiis the 2023 winner of The Twin Bill Book Prize for Best Baseball Poetry Book of the Year. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, DIORAMA, from Stephen F. Austin State University Press (2025), Aisle 228 (SFA Press, 2023), and Confluence (Sundress Publications, 2015). Sandy is also the author of four chapbooks of poetry and lyric essays. Her poetry and essays appear widely in Mid-American Review, Blackbird, Ecotone, Southwest Review, Subtropics, and elsewhere. She is Poetry Editor Emerita at River Styx Magazine. Sandy earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from George Mason University and now serves as the Assistant Director of Academic Support at Harper College in Chicagoland.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present Poetry Xfit hosted by Bleah Patterson. This generative workshop event will take place on Sunday, October 26th, from 2 to 4 pm EST via Zoom. Join us at the link tiny.utk.edu/sundress with the password “safta”.
Poetry Xfit isn’t about throwing tires or heavy ropes, but the idea of confusing our muscles is the same. You will receive ideas, guidelines, and more as part of this generative workshop series in order to complete three poems in two hours. A new set of prompts will be provided after the writers have written collaboratively for thirty minutes. The goal is to create material that can be later modified and transformed into artwork rather than producing flawless final versions. The event is open to prose authors as well!
Bleah Patterson is a queer, southern poet from Texas. Much of her work explores the contention between identity and home and has been featured or is forthcoming in various journals including Electric Literature, Pinch, Grist, The Laurel Review, Phoebe Literature, The Rumpus, and Taco Bell Quarterly.
Ladies, Ladies, Ladies is Kristen Zory King’s debut short story collection, featuring 18 vignettes of utterly electric women. These women feel familiar. We know them from fables, myths, and cautionary tales. But here, in King’s writing they are modernized, drenched in both fantasy and reality. Their habits and trials are the same ones that compose our lives. Through them, we can more clearly see ourselves. King’s ladies proclaim, “You don’t need to stay sewn to your shadow. Fight hook and crook for this life of yours.”
MRH: The ladies in your book are each so distinct, so vital. The details that flesh them—the smashed jar of salsa, the pink lipstick, the bathroom door left open—inspire real empathy. I am curious, how did you create these ladies? What were your inspirations? In other words, what did you steep yourself in while writing? Feel free to discuss TV shows, films, books, songs—anything! Take this as an invitation to discuss your research process.
KZK: Many years ago, I spent a summer in the south of France working as a waitress at a small cafe. I was in my early twenties, escaping the heat of Las Vegas—where I lived at the time—and my first real heartbreak. In exchange for my work, I lived with the woman who owned the cafe, who also fed me and provided me with lots of local recommendations for my breaks and weekly afternoons off. I remember one such afternoon as I sat outside the cafe journaling with a glass of lemonade—a daily and near unbreakable ritual I had quickly settled into—she left to run errands remarking “you’re not the most curious of creatures, are you?”
It struck me, that comment. What she meant was “you’re young! You’re cute! You’re in a foreign country and you’ve got a life to live! Get out there, love! Explore!” But what she didn’t understand is that I was exploring, albeit in my own soft way. While I have never been the bravest of adventurers, I have always been someone who finds great pleasure in pausing to ponder the world around me—the pale ladybug gently crossing the cobblestone; the cool blue of an early August morning through fogged window; the woman one table over who leans close to her companion to whisper “you’ll never believe who I ran into last night.”
What I’m trying to say is that I frequently find myself drawn toward small details and delightful vignettes and that these moments feel, to me, as if they contain entire worlds. Ladies, Ladies, Ladies didn’t start as a collection—it started as individual vignettes spurred by details. Prior to these stories I had primarily written poetry and nonfiction. But early in the pandemic, I took an online workshop on flash with Kathy Fish and later a micro fiction class with David Byron Queen and found myself hooked, becoming obsessed with all the things I had previously noticed and recorded from my travels and daily life and fleshing them into slightly larger universes while I was stuck inside my increasingly isolated world.
After a few years, and thanks in large part to the kind and consistent encouragement of Stanchion’s Founder Jeff Bogle, I realized that I had quite a few pieces that seemed to fit in a similar sphere—women captured and crystallized in a moment, rather than a lifetime. And so I started to see what it would look like if I put their voices side by side. I have always been drawn to stories that feature strong female centric narratives, that aren’t shy of emotions like rage, lust, nor grief, which has certainly guided much of my writing and teaching across genre. But I remain most inspired by the world around me—not so much the macro, no, but the small and the intimate, the beauty in the oft overlooked or unsaid.
MRH: In my interviews, I always like to invite the author to talk about their revision process. I am specifically interested in how you organized your stories, considering some of the characters make appearances outside of their vignette. The collection has a wonderful choral quality.
KZK: Thank you, Marah! To build off the above, I toyed with the idea of a collection for some time but was far more interested in building each individual narrative than I was in creating a larger whole, so it took quite a bit of time to organize and edit the stories into a chapbook. Some of the pieces had intentional crossover, but most didn’t.
There’s a workshop I teach on Tove Jansson’s The Woman Who Borrowed Memories in which I ask students to make a character map for the story they are working to tell. Who are these people? Why are they here, in this story, or on its outskirts? How do they know one another? Why does that matter? Who is married to who? Who is in love with someone they shouldn’t be? Who hates their neighbor? Who told a lie one winter evening that changed the course of their life?
When I started putting the chapbook together, I did something similar—mapping out the larger universe to see where there was natural (or forced!) crossover. I then edited and sewed it all together from there and this, alongside the incredible editing of Katie Schmeling, helped me to see each individual piece as part of something larger, connecting dots so there was some sense of cohesion. As I revised, I tried to leave room for each woman to live independently within their own world, while also hinting—perhaps yearning for or occasionally visiting!—the worlds of the other ladies. The unifying thread, as you noted, are the choral pieces that use the plural first person, which I hoped would help tie the various experiences and voices together.
MRH: I apologize if this question too closely resembles the question about organization, but I would love to ask what you believe connects these women? Why do they belong together?
KZK: No apologies, I love this question! What I hope comes across as a unifying or connecting thread throughout the collection is that each woman—whether mad, sad, or simply bad—is consciously, aggressively alive in (and/or sometimes thrashing against) her own life. I also feel as though most of the women in the stories are also seeking something larger than themselves, but I’ll leave just exactly what that might be to the reader.
MRH: I was constantly stunned by your first sentences. An exceptional example comes from “Neverland, New Mexico (Wendy),” “The only time Wendy reads her horoscope is when she is stoned, but as she has been stoned for the better part of three years now, she understands her heart more as celestial being than animal object” (23). Such a sentence offers an immediate intimacy with the character. Do you have any advice for crafting strong first sentences?
KZK: That’s very kind, thank you! As a teaching artist, I often remind my students how compelling a first sentence can be in hooking the reader. This is especially true in a short form like flash—being brave and blunt in your opening is akin to winking at your reader, telling them, “Hey, I’m not saying that you can trust me here, but I am telling you that I’ll give it to you straight.”
For a brief period of time, I would occasionally ask students to come visit me at a restaurant I worked in. When they arrived, I would ask them to recite their poems or stories like they were giving me their order. I think that’s kind of similar to what I’m trying to say about first lines—we don’t have a lot of time (on the page! On this earth!) so let’s get to the good stuff. And if you can make it pretty or fun or meaningful or whatever in the process, all the more power to you. But, as Denis Diderot states, always, always, always work to immediately “tell the thing as it is.”
With regard to my own process as a writer, I do find that I am most often prompted by either the flash of a title or first sentence through my brain or a sharp, present detail that I know will be the heartbeat of the piece. When it’s the former, it’s pure, dumb luck for which I am always grateful. When it’s the latter, I hoard the detail in my notebook until I can find good use for it. I guess that’s kind of what writing is—persistance and chance.
MRH: Finally, would you be willing to talk about your next project? I would love to hear more about it!
KZK: Yes, I would love to! I put equal stock in my creative work as a writer as I do my creative work as a teaching artist. In addition, I believe that to be a teacher is to be a lifelong student, a role I take very seriously. I have always felt fortunate to find my purpose and place in learning communion with others and as such, over the past few years, I have been grateful to move through some very difficult challenges and big life events with the help of friends and community. I am also fascinated by the idea of vocation and the pondering of one’s work in the world.
Last year, I found myself feeling very, very small and very, very lost. I always choose a word for myself around my birthday in August and a phrase to guide my calendar year. With all of this swirling through my mind—my role as teacher and student, my love and need for congregation, my desire to learn from and alongside others, and my disorientation in my own life—I chose the word “listen” to guide Year 34 and the phrase “Walk the Walk” to guide 2025.
With all this in mind, from Fall 2024-Winter 2025 I am exploring a creative project on community, vocation, and spirituality called “The Wonder Walk.’ As a part of this, I’m facilitating a number of events, including community “Wonder Walks” alongside one-on-one hikes through Rock Creek Park, public installations, and more, to think and talk about our collective and individual work in the world. I am essentially spending eighteen months listening, most often while walking alongside both strangers and friends on one of my favorite hiking trails. What will I do with all this information? Honestly, I don’t totally know. My hope is to write a series of Substack posts and essays about what I’ve learned throughout this process (about myself! others! this big, bright, beautiful, brutal world!). But, you know, my palms are open and I am a big believer that art and creation is just as much about the experience and process as it is about the product. If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to be in touch at thewonderwalks@gmail.com or kristenzoryking@gmail.com.
Kristen Zory King is a writer based in Washington, D.C. Recent work can be found in Electric Lit, The Citron Review, HAD, and SWWIM, among others. In February 2025, her chapbook of flash fiction stories, Ladies, Ladies, Ladies, was published by Stanchion. She is currently at work on a collection of nonfiction essays exploring nature, spirituality, and community, among other projects. In addition to her work on the page, Kris is also a creative teaching artist, yoga and Pilates instructor, and graduate student at George Mason University. Learn more or be in touch at www.KristenZoryKing.com.
Marah Robyn Hoffman is a poet–turned–creative–nonfiction writer from Pennsylvania. Since graduating with her BA in English and Creative Writing in 2022, she has lived (at least briefly) in Tennessee, Michigan, Vermont, and North Carolina. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington. There, Hoffman teaches undergraduate students, works as the creative nonfiction editor of Ecotone, and hosts Write Wilmington. In the fall of 2022, she was the long-term writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA). Her essay “Self Portrait in Cacophony” was recently published in Fourth Genre.
The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Making the Personal Political: Writing Protest Poetry,” a workshop led by Kara Dorris on Wednesday, September 10th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).
From the civil rights and women’s liberation movements to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, speaking truth to power remains a crucial role of the poet in the face of political and media rhetoric designed to obscure, manipulate, or worse. Poetry can call out and talk back to inhumane forces that threaten equality and freedom, exposing horrible truths, raising awareness, and building empathy. Even “each act of living,” as Denise Levertov says, can cultivate collective resistance, allow us to rail against complacency and show why poetry is vital and necessary, not merely decorative, in moments of political and social crisis. By layering the personal and real-world concerns, by incorporating contemporary headlines and news stories, we will use poetry to create social awareness.
From found poems to erasures, we will look at poems from Molly McCully Brown’s Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, which confronts ableism; poems from torrin a. greathouse’s Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, which challenges gender norms; and Danez Smith’s Don’t Call Us Dead, which confronts racism. We will also consider how form can inform protest poems as well.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Kara Dorris via Venmo: @karadorris
Kara Dorris is the author of three poetry collections: HitBox (Kelsay Books 2024), Have Ruin, Will Travel (2019) and When the Body is a Guardrail (2020) from Finishing Line Press. She has also published five chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Nine Mile, DIAGRAM, Wordgathering, Puerto del Sol, and swamp pink, among other literary journals, as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (2011). Recently, she edited the poetry anthology Writing the Self-Elegy: the Past is Not Disappearing Ink (SIU Press, 2023). She currently teaches writing at Illinois College. For more information, please visit karadorris.com.
