Sundress Publications announces the release of Donna Vorreyer’s To Everything There Is. A reflection, an exploration of growing, and an honouring of the beauty and the love that keeps one afloat, Vorreyer tries to deconstruct the space we occupy as we navigate a spectrum of emotions in a difficult world.
Sometimes with softness, sometimes with teeth, this book of poems will startle you with glimpses into the life of someone who has been smothered with emptiness after loss. Donna Vorreyer’s To Everything There Is unplugs every gaping hole inside the body to confront the inner turmoils, aches of desire, and tangles of sin simmering inside. While struggling through faith and journeying into a fantastical world to deal with grief, these poems question what there is to life other than discovering death’s soft humming. Yet, even at the lowest point, where one might, “slice at the swell of the skin’s blue-green river,” there is something to hope for. Although we may encounter dark roads in our lives, Vorreyer pushes us toward self-acceptance, resilience, and love—toward the beauty of life. And whether the voices in the poems are preening their feathers and coming to a rebirth, or finding somewhere or someone to belong to, To Everything There Is will have you longing to make the time you have left, “lit by some sort of fire.”
Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogue with Rising Tides says of To Everything There Is, “We travel into the details of life, death, and grief with an observer’s eye through a place where, as the poet writes, ‘there is no handbook, no map.’ These tender, honest, and incredibly moving poems pull us into a story where what is holy is all around us, where Vorreyer’s words are ‘blending all the bro-ken parts together/in a silhouette that resembles prayer.’ It is a skillful poet who can recognize the grief, and through poetry, carve light where loss was and endure what we think we can’t.”
Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her poems, re-views, and essays have appeared in Rhino, Tinderbox Poetry, Poet Lore, Sugar House Review, Wax-wing, Whale Road Review, and many other journals. She currently serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry.
“I dream of the girl who’s surviving him,” Kirun Kapur writes in Women in the Waiting Room. This poetry collection, where women’s voices echo off each other and accumulate in a scattered retelling of their traumas, is filled with lyrical and chilling lines that jostles you in your seat and hangs you on the precipice of gold and rust. Kapur’s words make you become the witness to these women’s lives and have you aching to find a way for them to live.
Immediately, you’re dropped into chauvinistic restrictions and ideas of blame in the first section of the collection where Kapur plays with imagery that whiplashes you between beauty and gore. The idea of marriage being a form of protection is juxtaposed with the characterization of the husband being gentle as fire; stamens are used to undercut the violence of a wife who has been beaten with a broom. Yet it is the woman who is shamed and disregarded. The speaker says, “How many times have I said nothing at all / or tried to explain why we aren’t at home.” You can feel the pressure of these women wanting to speak up but being silenced by the societal stance of victim-blaming. At times, you even feel the silence from the speaker herself, as she feels intimidated into believing that her actions are the reasons for her guilt, her fractured self, and her punishment.
This brings up an important theme that Kapur dissects throughout her poems: the struggle to articulate what these women have been through. Not only do the women in these poems silence themselves, when they are given the chance to speak, it’s visually striking to see the burst of dialogue across the page. Their words are chopped, hesitant, unfinished, desperate. The “Hotline” poems that reoccur, paired with the disjointed and unconventional form of these poems, really plunges you into the minds of these women and their pain. This disjointed speech is also coupled with stories of Hindu Goddesses. Kapur makes you think about the systematic violence that has been placed not only on women in society, but on the oral tradition of storytelling that has been passed down for generations and perpetuate the idea of an “ideal woman.” Even the divine female entities of God can’t escape violence, restrictions, the labelling and demeaning of their characters.
The displacement of mind and body leads the second section of the collection, where Kapur recounts personal experiences of witnessing the illness of a loved one. The speaker slowly loses her mind as her loved one is dying: “I lay under the body of silence, alive. You, / your chest unzipped, prepare to leap away.” There is a dismemberment of the speaker emotionally and mentally while the loved one is being mutilated physically. In this helplessness, the speaker makes you think about what it means to be a witness. What is there to do besides watching?
Kapur, then, turns the tables on the reader; she drops you into a space where you become the abused and the witness to the abused: “If you can hear me you are the counselor / if you’re making these words in your mind / you’re the caller too.” She makes you start to feel the gravity of these tormented situations, pushing the idea of what it means to see and hear this violence from a first-person perspective. If you were to become the woman who steals away with demons, would you be able to confront this darkness? Would you come out whole?
There’s a brokenness in these women and in the speaker, who are trying to overcome their trauma. There’s a wish to leave the body, to become something else. The speaker alludes to wanting to be a river, to be “nothing but motion, muck mouthed, mud hearted, brackish, all dirty at the lip, with rise and fall” because in that muck is the ability to still be afloat. In the imagination of becoming something else is the ability to move on.
As Kapur dives into a global view of suffrage, from places like Waikiki, Ohio, and India, you start to wonder if there is a way for these women to survive. The answer feels murky and even despondent as the speaker continues to relentlessly thrust you into the lives of women who face sexual abuse, domestic violence, unfair healthcare, and counseling. The inability to see an actual end to this injustice feels hard hitting, and the resolution of hope feels almost dreamlike, like the only possibility of retribution would be through a fictional world, not reality.
Yet through a “survival” of women in the fragments they’ve become, Kapur shows us the need to see these women’s lives. The hope she points to is the encouragement to find ways in which we can empower and support women. But, first, they need to be seen. And when we’ve seen them, she’ll have us all trying to figure out what to do next.
Ashley Somwaru is an Indo-Caribbean woman who was born and raised in Queens, New York. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Queens College to immerse herself in pride for her mixed tongue, religious upbringings, superstitions, and cultural traditions that have made her into the red hibiscus she is. As a storyteller and poet, her work seeks to magnify the voices of women in her community, who have been silenced and abused, and to rewrite the history of her ancestors, those who were forgotten. She hopes to find them. Somwaru’s work has been published in Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Mochi Magazine, A Gathering Together, and the FEED issue of No, Dear.
When I fantasize about home ownership, I dream of bay windows in which the cats will sunbathe, hardwood floors that heartily creak, and a massive library for all my books.
A key part of this fantasy is owning enough books to fill an entire room. Currently, I own enough books to fill two small bookshelves.
These are some of my books. The bookshelf itself was purchased in a parking lot for $12. It’s wobbly and chipped, but it was the first bookshelf I bought on my own.
Most of these books were given to me by friends, or salvaged from giveaway piles, or bought secondhand. Some of the more yellowed ones belonged to my dad. I’d like to think they capture my essence pretty well, from the Dolly Parton biography to the Susan Sontag to the Miranda July to The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories.
In March, at the start of the pandemic, I drove down to Houston to be with my family, thinking it would be a short trip and I would return to Chicago in a few weeks when the pandemic blew over. Since that hasn’t happened and won’t happen for a while, I ended up deciding to stay and make Houston my home.
This is the bookshelf I have in Texas. The rest of my books are back in Chicago with my roommate, waiting for me to come back for them.
The bookshelf itself was my mom’s when she was a kid. The tchotchkes are mine (including the fake diploma from Sunnydale Highschool). These are the books I brought with me when I drove down to Texas and the books I’ve purchased since the start of the pandemic. And some more of my dad’s books. When Houston issued a stay-at-home order, books were a welcome escape, and I relied on them to inspire emotions in me other than the usual cycle of boredom and anxiety. Some of my favorites have been Bunny by Mona Awad (Heathers meets The Craft meets bougie MFA program) and The Girls by Emma Cline (cults, girlhood, the cult of girlhood).
These bookshelves are humble, and that’s because I rarely purchase books. For reading material, I usually check out books from the library. In 2019, I read 43 books. Out of those, 37 were checked out from the library. The Chicago Public Library has a branch in every neighborhood. There’s the Harold Washington Library downtown with its gargoyles and arched windows, and my local branch with its no-fuss brown brick. Generally, no matter where you are, a library is within walking distance. And in the fall of 2019, they eliminated all late fees to increase access citywide. Without the threat of fines, a book that had been overdue since 1934 was returned.
My favorite emails to receive were the ones that told me my holds were ready. I loved walking to the library and seeing all the books set aside for me in the “holds” section. Every time, it was like my birthday. There were my presents, all wrapped up in laminate.
When I left Chicago, I had a copy of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West’s letters to one another checked out. I had checked it out months ago at my girlfriend’s recommendation, and since I figured I would be back to the city soon, I didn’t bother returning it. My girlfriend is a devoted lover of Virginia Woolf, and our courtship process included making Woolf memes, reading Mrs. Dalloway together, and reading snippets of Woolf and Sackville-West’s letters aloud to one another.
Once a month, I receive an email from the Chicago Public Library telling me The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf has been automatically renewed. Because of the pandemic, I haven’t been able to explore the Houston Public Library yet, but I look forward to seeing if their collection of Victorian gay letters compares.
As a kid, I was no Matilda. I’d check out a book from the school library every now and then, but it wasn’t a place I frequented. In college, the library was where I went to do homework, but I rarely checked out books. It wasn’t until my senior year that I fully realized I could read literally any book I wanted. For free! I checked out Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior and reveled at the idea of pleasure reading at no personal cost.
The library isn’t just amazing because of the free books. It’s amazing because it’s one of the only public spaces you don’t have to pay to use. Even without a membership, you can still enjoy the space. It’s open to anyone and everyone. When most institutions prioritize profit, an entirely free public space is a rare and special thing.
One day, I hope to have a sprawling library, books lining each wall. But no matter how large my personal library grows, I’ll always use the public library. It will always be my other bookshelf.
Kathleen Gullion is a writer based in Houston. Her work has appeared in the Esthetic Apostle,Coachella Review, F Newsmagazine, and others. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Thank you for joining us this week for Lyric Essentials! Amanda Galvan Huynh joins us to read Sara Borjas and discusses Latinx Heritage Month, Xicanx writer identities, and the power in rewriting our own narratives.
Erica Hoffmeister: Why did you choose to read Sara Borjas for Lyric Essentials?
Amanda Galvan Huynh: During the last month, I’ve been spending more time with Latinx voices. Coincidentally, it’s also Latinx Heritage Month. So, there might be a subconscious longing for home as I’ve been reflecting on my writing as a Xicanx writer. In the reflection, I notice that I still struggle with being “Mexican” enough and with my understanding of identity. I think this is one of the reasons I chose Sara Borjas’ poems as she unflinchingly confronts the Pocha label—and embraces it. Her book is definitely one that I wish I would have had as a young adult. Sometimes, as a Pocha, you just get lost, and it’s reassuring to know there’s a voice, like yours, writing in the world—that someone has written these beautiful words for a reader like you. Her poems are also teaching me to be braver and unapologetic in my writing. In both of our works, there are similar themes and issues, but our approaches take different shapes. It’s refreshing to watch how others are in conversation with similar ideas, and how we’re collectively trying to bear witness to our family’s lives.
EH: Was there any particular draw to these specific poems that you chose?
AGH: It was difficult to narrow down which poems to read! Originally, I had picked out eight. Where to even begin with these poems—I feel like I just have to reiterate that I have been in my feelings a bunch lately and am a little homesick. With that, I’m going to start with “Míja” as this poem roots itself in longing—longing to be named, to be called, to be claimed, to be tethered to a mother. There’s warmness in the word míja that’s loving and endearing—something magical when you are surrounded by family. It’s like being called into being—into fulfilling the míja role—being awoken in the self. The poem also records subtle resistance to assimilation as míja remains on the familial tongue versus replaced by the English equivalent: my daughter. For myself, I know this feeling of being called míja and what that invokes in me.
For “Lies I Tell”, this reimagines a life. I think everyone can relate, at one point or another in their life, of wanting things to be different. Whether it’s wanting a different name, family, job, love, [insert your desire here]—“Lies I Tell” focuses on the specifics of one’s outlook. Sometimes the information we take in like shows, stories, Snapchat, Instagram, and other medias makes this longing easy. At times, our memories alter what we want to believe. This poem settles in between the awareness of realizing the kind of life you have been given and writing another life into existence. As writers, we are given a kind of power to rewrite our stories and claim our narratives. But we are also capable of revealing those truths for the lies they are.
EH: As a Mexican-American writer from the Southwest, what does Borja’s Heart like a Window, Mouth Like A Cliff mean to you?
AGH: In writing, it is important to see your reflection. Her poems were the first ones I saw myself. Of course, it’s not identical as there are some nuances that are specific to Mexican Americans living in California versus Mexican Americans living in Texas. Together, we share a culture but have different landscapes for each of our lives. This speaks to the many facets of the Xicanx experience. There will be overlaps within our stories even with the long distance between California and Texas. Especially, when you look at the ganas passed down from generation to generation.
EH: Lastly, is there anything that you are working on that you’d like to share with readers?
AGH: Right now, I am working on my PhD at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Just last week I made my first mini zine for a project—it was exciting to step out of my comfort zone as I don’t consider myself a good artist. My drawing skills are at the stick figure level, but I did have the fleeting thought: Not bad. Maybe I can make poetry comics or poetry mini zines. Something on the back burner but my curiosity and wonder has been piqued!
Since the pandemic started, it has taken me several months to get back into creating. It’s been a real thing for me to recognize and name. But, I have slowly surrendered to it. The most recent piece of writing I finished was a chapter of nonfiction. Over the last few years, I have been outlining, organizing, and trying to find a thread into a memoir idea. Now, I’ve moved into finding my writing style as a nonfiction writer. It’s a clunky jump for me—I’m trying to embrace the mistakes and identify my editing and revising tendencies. While I write by hand for poems, I write by computer for nonfiction—I’m still editing by hand though.I’m also still writing poems. I’m creating new work centered on intersectionality, interracial relationships, biracial and multireligious family systems and dynamics. So, my work still revolves around identity, but now it is in relation to a loved one. I’m exploring what it means to hang on to your identity while being in love with someone. How can two identities remain independent but coexist? How can you leave enough room for each other? How can you be without diminishing or losing you or your partner’s self? What do we compromise on? And when we compromise what is lost or what is gained? What parts of ourselves do we surrender in order to keep the peace within a new family? Or maintain order in our own? So many questions I still do not have answers to, but questions I’m trying to answer for myself.
Sara Borjas is a Xicanx poet and fourth-generation Chicana from Fresno, California and the author of the acclaimed debut poetry book Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff, which won a 2020 American Book Award. Sheis a 2017 CantoMundo Fellow, a 2016 Postgraduate Writers Conference Fellow at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a 2013 Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw Valley Fellow, as well as the recipient of the 2014 Blue Mesa Poetry Prize. Borjas is active in liberation, decentering whiteness, and reclaiming her pocha identity. She currently lives in Los Angeles and teaches Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside.
Amanda Galvan Huynh (she/her) is a Mexican American writer and educator from Texas. She is the author of a chapbook, Songs of Brujería (Big Lucks September 2019) and Co-Editor of Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making: An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics (The Operating System 2019). Amanda has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net. She was a 2016 AWP Intro Journal Project Award Winner, 2018 Best of the Net Winner, a finalist for the 2015 Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poetry can be read in print and online journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, The Southampton Review, and others. Currently, she is a doctoral student in English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.
Further Reading:
Purchase Huynh’s chapbookSongs of Brujería from Big Lucks. Read this write-up of Songs of Brujería from Poetry Northwest Watch Huynh read her work for Rigorous Magazine from last year’s AWP conference.
Erica Hoffmeister is originally from Southern California and earned an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English from Chapman University. Currently in Denver, she teaches college writing and is an editor for the Denver-based literary journal South Broadway Ghost Society. She is the author of two poetry collections: Lived in Bars (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), and the prize-winning chapbook, Roots Grew Wild (Kingdoms in the Wild Press, 2019). A cross-genre writer, she has several works of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, articles and critical essays published in various outlets. Learn more about her at http://ericahoffmeister.com/
Doubleback Books announces the release of Terese Svoboda’s Treason. A book centered on betrayals with a wry and feminist eye, these poems speak out against injustice and hold a mirror to our own flaws.
Treason is sometimes funny, sometimes strange, and always hard-hitting, covering motherhood, the toll of the 2002 civil war in Sudan, the Rodney King protests in L.A., and much more. Svoboda’s poems shine a torch on injustice and betrayal inside our public and intimate institutions. Treason’s topics are unfortunately timeless, the poems themselves worthy of mythology.
Eleanor Wilner, author of Tourist in Hell and many other collections writes, “Cool, wry surface: depth charge of cry, of outrage, language at the edge of utterance, utterly original, black-bordered, indelible as we are not.” D.A. Powell, author of Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys adds, “These poems seethe with dangers so close to home they seem to teeter on that frightening edge between comic and tragic.”
The author of 19 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, biography, and translation, Terese Svobodawill publish Theatrix: Play Poems (Anhinga Press), in 2021. A Guggenheim fellow, she has been awarded the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Prize for poetry, an NEH grant for translation, and other prizes. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.’s Disney Hall.
Doubleback Books is an imprint of Sundress Publications. More information can be found HERE.
If I lived alone, I would forfeit at least two feet of living space in each room to bookcases – great big floor-to-ceiling tallboys, organized by author, genre, perhaps even book jacket color. I’d have a wooden rolling ladder to reach the topmost shelves and would probably spend a good bit of time perched on it, having lost myself in a book and forgotten to descend fully. But … I married a non-reader. Oh boy. Saying that to a literary community almost feels like admitting failure. I imagine you asking, “how did she get here?”
Seriously, where did I go wrong?
My husband, Mark, has read three books; the first was a baby shower gift from his childhood friend’s wife, and I purchased the other two. Mark’s complete collection comprises The Caveman’s Pregnancy Companion: a Survival Guide for Expectant Fathers, Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know, and The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. That last one was a gift from Santa after a screamingly silent year. You can safely assume that nobody describes me as reticent.
The only explanation I have for marrying a man who seriously dislikes reading is our extremely short and intense courtship. We met Labor Day weekend of 2005 at a mutual friend’s party. There was a shot ice luge and lots of kissing. We were both in our late twenties. We knew right away.
On December 26, 2005, when the morning light had yet to dilute the blackness outside his townhouse window, Mark proposed. We married the following August. I guess it’s time I admit that during those eleven months – when I was reading little other than legal textbooks for night school and court records for my day job – I failed to talk books with my husband-to-be and ultimately tethered myself for life to a reading-averse man.
To correct this imbalance in my universe, I chose a fellow bibliophile for a best friend. Nina buys me books for every birthday and freely loans me her ever-expanding collection of narrative nonfiction. She’s critically essential to the continued success of my marriage.
I’m also fostering a love of reading in my three children.
Instead of the tall bookshelves I covet, we have a few standard bookcases and cubby-style pieces that multi-task as trophy, picture, game, and toy display cases. We also have book stacks, book piles, book bins. I find books in my children’s beds, books in the bathroom, books in the pockets behind the car seats, and books in the car doors. Despite my husband’s genes, our kids are bookish. If an interior wall ever crumbles in our house, I am confident my kids and I could rebuild it with our books.
As our county began reopening businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, my first retail trip was to our beloved local bookshop, Riverstone Books. The kids and I donned our pleated cloth masks, wiggled our fingers into the plastic gloves Riverstone provided, and dispersed like Dandelion seeds in the breeze. Beforehand, I had told my kids they could each buy one book; if memory serves, we left with at least eight. I could never say no to books.
A couple of weeks later, when our local library began offering book pickup, I placed a sizable order that included fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books for my kids, and The Call of the Wild for me to read to them. I showed up a day early for my scheduled pickup time, even though we all had several books in our reading queues and wouldn’t get to the library books for a few more days.
Thanks to Riverstone, the library, and additional books on loan from friends, we have more than enough books to last us through the end of summer. Still, my seven-year-old has already asked me when we can place another library order, and I will continue to purchase and borrow books at a faster rate than we can read them. I like how they look in my house – the amalgamation of bought and borrowed books against the spaces were loaned out books belong – and the promise of escaping to the worlds inside of them. I like the stories my bookshelves tell about my family and me.
My cookbook shelf is an exposé. It reveals how eating a healthy diet to fuel my physical activities comes between me and my first love: baking. It shows that my family loves ethnic foods and is devoted to the Food Network. It provides a history of me showing others how much I value them through food, since I’m not the best at vocalizing feelings of love. Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies for my husband and Coconut Crème pie for my dad this past Father’s Day. My sister’s wedding cake. Iced cut-outs to mark every new school year and Christmas. It reminds me of the simple concoctions prepared by my daughter’s preschool cooking class, and the love and skill that the women in my family and my husband’s family pour into every meal.
Other shelves reveal my struggle with religion and remind me of my wavering atheism when floundering in the aftermath of my father-in-law’s death. For weeks, it felt like the universe had a tear. Nothing seemed solid or real. I’m still very much open to suggestions on the meaning of this life and whether it’s the only one we have. I hope it isn’t. I fear it is.
I consider my children’s love of reading to be one of the greatest gifts I could have given them. Books have gotten us through some challenging conversations and have taken us on journeys to faraway places during this time when actual distant adventures are discouraged or impossible. Plus, when they grow up and have homes of their own, I know they’ll stuff them with bookshelves, book stacks, book piles, and book bins. I can’t wait to borrow from them.
Natalie Metropulos is working concurrently on a middle-grade fiction chapter book and a nonfiction picture book series about wildlife photography. She holds a B.A. in English from the Pennsylvania State University and a JD from Duquesne University and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. Although it has been some time since her writing has appeared outside of a legal document, Metropulos has been published (nee Natalie Rieland) in Kalliope, Research/Penn State Magazine, and Pitt.
Yup, that’s me, waiting for my food to arrive so that I can scarf it down!
I have always been a quiet and shy child, and I think I still am. I was brought up to be a ‘perfect’ child, which meant ruckus, naughtiness and tantrums had no place in my day-to-day upbringing. My dad worked in the publishing industry. This meant that there were always books at home, and what else would a quiet child turn to but books?
I could always be found reading, perched eagerly in my bamboo chair in the corner of my mother’s room. And that’s where the journey began.
Dad chose my books for me until his death in 2016, up to which I was reading only what he brought home for me. It was from then when I started venturing out on my own and choosing what I like because my mom never cared enough to check what her son was reading.
Even though I started as a math major at university, this freedom, alongside a compulsory course in Literature convinced me to take up literature as a discipline permanently. Bam! Here I am, a graduate in English and creative writing, something that I had never envisioned four years ago.
This is also where my journey with language and words started. My parents come from multilingual families: most of the members speak both Malayalam and Konkani (regional languages in South of India) at home, and English and Hindi functionally.
This multilingualism informs my identity: even as a quiet child, I have always been encouraged to embrace this multiplicity. This makes sure I have something to turn to when I run out of words to speak, but at the same time, it also gives me something to play with even in the absence of language and speech. It taught me the power and beauty of silence, and this is something I have taken into my academic life: silence as a language that has its own rules and syntax in literature. This also directly informs my queer identity.
As a queer individual brought up in an extremely conservative family, silence is the only language I can use to survive, and it is this politics that I want to explore. In that sense, my writing becomes a very important building block of my identity—it becomes my only mouthpiece, and this is indeed how and why I turned to it.
I hope this editorial internship with Sundress Publications helps me find that space between speaking up and not speaking up, and at the same time helps me give back the support and encouragement I have received at every stage of my life. I also hope I can help people come into a world of reading and writing and carve their own niche in it, a niche they will find comforting and distorting at the same time!
Gokul Prabhu is a graduate of Ashoka University, India, with a PostgraduateDiploma in English and creative writing. He works as an administrator and teaching assistant for the Writing and Communication facility at 9dot9 Education, and assists in academic planning for communication, writing and critical thinking courses across several higher-ed institutes in India. Prabhu’s creative and academic work fluctuates between themes of sexuality and silence, and he hopes to be a healthy mix of writer, educator and journalist in the future. He occasionally scribbles book reviews and interviews authors for Scroll.in, an award-winning Indian digital news publication.
During the four-day conference, attendees will learn how to stay confident while writing a first draft, build mystery, develop characters, structure a story around revelations, and earn their ending. On the final day, speakers will explain how to build an audience and market your book.
Attendees will have access to 20 live sessions, including: “Learn 7 Essential Keys to Planning Your Novel: Story Preparation for Pantsers,” a guided hands-on brainstorming and writing exercise session; “Getting the First Chapter Right—Let’s Talk About Scene and Structure,” a simplified approach to starting your book; and “Suspense and Intrigue,” during which writers will learn simple rules for creating page-turners that keep readers engaged in every scene.
Creator Daniel David Wallace has curated a list of presenters comprised of authors in various fiction genres, such as fiction writer April Davila, middle-grade fiction writer M. Shelley Coates, romance writer Kris Kennedy, and science fiction and fantasy book author Michael La Ronn, along with academic and professional writing instructors, and a panel of Sundress Publications fiction editors including Meagan Cass, Samantha Edmonds, and Saba Razvi.
Free registration includes full workshop attendance and replay access for 24 hours. Registrants can also purchase a Plot Pass for $67 for unlimited replay access, bonus content, and access to upcoming masterclasses. For more details and to register, visit: https://forest.plotsummit.com.
Madeleine Barnes’ debut collection You Do Not Have to Be Good, which was published by Trio House Press this year, takes the unspoken rules of living and turns them into gentle but firm poems. With images of space scattered like constellations throughout the collection, as well as the occasional medicinal term, it isn’t just about what one does not have to be—the potential of what they can be is also explored. Even if one doesn’t understand the nuances of such jargon, it is still impactful and striking, an inner glimpse into a compassionate world. In this world envisioned by Barnes, we do not have to always conform to a standard; rebellion should be in our hearts; that there is hope within acts and words of vulnerability.
The book is set up in sections, such as “You Do Not Have to Generate Capital,” “You Do Not Explain Tenderness,” and “You Do Not Have to Be Captive.” As the poems within the sections weave in and outside of these abstract themes, the speakers of the poems are searching for reasons, answers for the existence of such concepts. But, as we continue to read on, we realize that sometimes there are no clear-cut reasons for existing. In the poem “New York in June,” it is written, “I’m not sure how I stayed alive / the summer I lost you…I never asked god about you.” Here, as the speaker struggles with the death of a loved one, they continue to go through a routine of mourning. It is through this process they learn how to move on, to linger in a space and live without this person.
Combining personal and impersonal narratives, such as the one in “New York in June,” Barnes sets up intimate scenes that empowers both speakers and readers. In the poem “Tenderness is all I Remember,” the speaker states, “Sister, what do you think will happen to us? / Do you think it is plausible that we, / winged, will trim the ghosts’ gowns / from snow?” In the acknowledgements, Barnes writes that the collection is geared towards queer disabled women, non-binary individuals, girls and non-binary teens, and to those who are unknown and suffering silently. It is poems like “Tenderness is all I Remember” that this is particularly evident, as there is a particular type of vulnerability and smallness trapped within the speaker’s voice.
I found many of these poems to come from places of pain, whether they are rooted in the poet’s personal memories, or in the ambiguous poems that seem to touch upon broader experiences and topics. My favorite poem of this collection is one of such poems, one that seemed quite raw and real.
A favorite poem from the collection, “Some Answers I Wrote on a Long Term Disability Questionnaire,” gets into the nitty-gritty life of someone who lives with a disability. This poem alternates between the questionnaire format, asking questions like “Are your illnesses, injuries, or conditions related to your work in any way?” and if the condition will impact future work. Barnes then answers these questions with the terminology of astronomy, astrology, and physics. With haunting lines like “I have been here so many times before” and “If an object is moving towards us, its spectral lines shift to shorter wavelengths; / if it’s moving away the lines swing to longer wavelengths,” Barnes juxtaposes something that seems so small—a physical disability—with the weight of the entire universe. It is in this part of the book, in the section dubbed “You Do Not Have to Generate Capital,” where I began noticing the medical and space terminology. It is here, in this section, where the speakers begin to dig deep into themselves and tries to find answers within these grand scientific words and concepts. But, in the end, it seems quite futile, only providing answers on what could be, not what is.
Madeleine Barnes’ You Do Not Have to Be Good layers memory and the metaphysical in order to create a thought-provoking collection. It gives a voice to those considered to be within marginalized groups, offering ideas of their potential in a beautiful, lyrical manner. Instead of focusing on the pain of living with a disability, or the burden of an identity, they can the equivalent of a shining galaxy.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an undergraduate at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her work has appeared in Into the Void, Corvid Queen, and cahoodaloodaling, among others. She attended the International Writing Program’s Summer Institute and was a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. Currently, she is trying to figure out a happy intersection between her writing, film, and photography endeavors.
Growing up, I always had a passion for reading and telling stories. One of my teachers said I always knew how to entertain myself, and it was because I always had a book in my hand or a story in my head. I loved to tell myself stories each day, and when I got to middle school, I started to write them down. I kept writing until my junior year of high school, when my AP English class made me realize that I enjoyed reading and analyzing fiction far more than I enjoyed writing it. At the same time, I started taking art classes and began dreaming of a career as an animator, using art to tell beautiful stories. I also developed a passion for social justice, as I advocated for the rights of LGBT people at my school.
Yet, when colleges asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I said I wanted to study chemistry with the goal of developing psychiatric medications. While I did genuinely enjoy studying chemistry, there was no passion there. I just wanted to choose a career that would help me earn money, and I didn’t think I would get that with literature, art, or social justice.
In March of my senior year, I was invited to interview for the Haslam Scholars Program at the University of Tennessee, where I gladly peddled my story about a passion for studying chemistry until, during one of the events, a speaker asked us “What do you imagine your ideal self doing?” I started sobbing, because I couldn’t picture my ideal self, but I knew I couldn’t dedicate my career to chemistry. That night, I told my mom that I was going to attend the University of Tennessee and change my major.
I ended up changing my major to sociology, even though I honestly wasn’t sure what sociology was. I found that I enjoyed the program when I arrived at UT, but I couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. It wasn’t until I took my first university English class that I realized that what I was missing was the thrill that analyzing stories provided. There was something so special to me about stories and the way they work, and I missed the feeling of close reading, developing an argument, and writing an analysis. It was that spring that I decided to major in English literature.
I have spent the rest of my time at UT studying the intersection between literature and social theory. My thesis project is going to be a podcast dedicated to analyzing the sociological messages of science fiction films and texts, with a focus on how authors and directors use literary techniques to develop social commentary in their work. I am going to continue studying this intersection of literature and social theory when I pursue my masters of library sciences after I graduate.
I am so excited to learn more about the innovative and progressive work that Sundress Publications does, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share this work as the social media intern.
Sydney Peayis a senior at the University of Tennessee pursuing a BA in sociology and English Literature. In addition to managing the social media for Sundress Publications,they manage the social media for the Voices Out Loud Project, an LGBTQ+ archive of East Tennessee.
