Category: Sundress

Meet Our New Intern: Ana Mourant

Ana Mourant, a young woman, with blonde hair and light skin, wearing an explorer's hat, a short-sleeve shirt, shorts, and sandals, walking on a rope bridge high up in a forest

Growing up in rural Alaska, my family lived a largely subsistence lifestyle, which is the term we use when a family obtains most of its food from the wild rather than a store. We foraged for berries, fished for salmon, and hunted moose. We didn’t have a TV when I was young, nor computers, mobile phones, or even running water. Books, however, we did have. My family’s village had a small library, with many more books than people. Only about thirty people lived in the village year-round (yes, thirty, not thirty thousand), and our small library had around ten thousand books. With this book-to-people ratio, it’s no wonder that I became an introverted bibliophile.

People began to attract my attention as a teenager when I became interested in languages and met several foreign exchange students after we moved to the city. I use the word “city” loosely, since Juneau is a small town from most of the world’s point of view. But for us, Juneau was considered the “big city,” with its population of thirty thousand (yes, thirty thousand, instead of just thirty). I took linguistics, French, and Latin in school, and learned a bit of various other languages, including Greek, Italian, Mandarin, and Cantonese. My family decided to host an exchange student, after which I launched myself off on my own series of exchange programs to Greece, France, and Czechia, and spent my junior year of high school abroad in Germany (adding fluent German to my list).

In college, I knew I wanted work with literature, and initially thought I would become a writer. From my extensive language background (at that point I could speak five languages, to varying degrees), I knew I wanted to procure a thorough education not just in English literature, but the English language as well, from a linguistic point of view. I found the program I wanted which offered a major in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. I completed my BA and was also awarded membership to Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society.

College life was fun, mine especially so since I had the pleasure of studying English and global literature written from the beginning of the Old English language up to the present. Still, my heart has to get off the pages and into the woods sometimes. No matter what country I’m in or how many buildings I’m temporarily surrounded by, I always make time to return to the forest, the mountains, or whatever form of nature I can get to. I also make time to listen to Indigenous storytellers whenever the opportunity arises. Growing up in Alaska, I was immersed in both Indigenous as well as Euro-American culture. When I wasn’t out playing in the forest or reading, I was often listening to others tell their stories. In Alaska, we’re lucky that live storytelling is popular, both in casual settings as well as large ticketed events in cities. During the latter half of my college years, I began to realize that my true passion lies not in writing my own creations, but in helping others to tell their stories.

When I discovered editing, I knew that this was the path for me: helping others tell their stories. My mind is analytical, my background is strong in language, and my heart is with storytellers who have braved the wilds of life and have enthralling experiences to share. I found that I enjoy helping others more than writing my own pieces from scratch. I love the process of analysis. I love seeing the forest through the trees and helping the story shine. I love getting a rough manuscript and working as a team with the author to form it, see it grow, and watch it bloom.

After I finished my undergraduate program, I pursued this passion and went to grad school at the University of Washington to obtain my editing certificate. I graduated in June 2025, not only with my editing certificate, but also with a certificate in storytelling and content strategy. I am now equipped to help authors find their voice and bring stories to the world.

During my time at the University of Washington, and since then, I’ve edited books, news articles, and websites. I’ve worked with well-known authors, first-time authors, international journalists, and businesses around the world. I enjoy editing a wide variety of material, my favorites being nature writing and anything by or about Indigenous Peoples. As of this writing, besides my editorial internship with Sundress Publications, I’m the copyeditor for journalist Marcie Sillman, and I continue to freelance edit for a wide variety of publishing houses, authors, and businesses. My three favorite authors are Robert Macfarlane and Tristan Gooley, both nature writers, and Wes Henry, whose wonderful prose makes me smile every time I work on his humorous teaching memoir manuscript (in the substantive editing phase as of this writing).

Stay tuned for my Sundress Reads book reviews coming up in the next couple months, as well as my Sundress TikToks. I’m so excited to work with Sundress Publications and happy to be a part of this team!

Ana Mourant is an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s editing program. She holds a Certificate in Editing as well as a Certificate in Storytelling and Content Strategy, and a BA in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. Ana conducts manuscript evaluations, developmental edits, structural edits, line edits, copyedits, proofreads, and beta reads, as well as authenticity and sensitivity readings for Indigenous Peoples content. Ana loves nature writing and Indigenous cultures, and, when she’s not working, is often out in the wilderness tracking animals, Nordic skiing, or just enjoying nature.

Meet Our New Intern: Natalie Gardner

A white woman leaning against a wooden deck railing with the woods behind her. She is wearing a black dress, a green army jacket, and a black scarf, and is looking to the side.

The first piece of writing I was ever proud to share was a horror story I wrote for my tenth-grade English class. It was early October, and we were charged with writing spooky stories to share on Halloween, which unfortunately fell on a school day that year. Inspired by the works of Franz Kafka, the first author I became truly obsessed with, I wrote about a man who woke up paralyzed and was then embalmed while still alive. It was gory, visceral, and definitely not school-appropriate. When sharing it with my classmates, the predominant reaction was one of disgust. Although embarrassing in retrospect, I reveled in this reaction; I had made them feel something, no matter that it was disgust. Ever since then, I’ve been chasing that feeling.

I’ve always had a penchant for the weird, the off-putting, the over-the-top and campy. I attribute this to feeling like an outsider for most of my life, being both visibly queer and caught between my very Southern upbringing and the culture of my suburban hometown. Combine this with the inherent body horror of growing up as transgender, it seems self-evident that horror would eventually become my mainstay.

The urge to shock is not an inherently negative thing. Although it can easily give way to base cruelty, shocking art can also be a powerful tool for galvanizing others to action. For me, creating and enjoying art that seeks to shock is an act of self-empowerment. In a way, I am claiming the right to exist as something strange and margin-bending. To this day, I still love trashy, over-the-top art of all kinds, from Pink Flamingos to ’80s slashers, from Manhunt to Bladee. 

Around the time I started college, another of what I would call my “sustaining motivations” emerged—the urge to document. I was regularly attending hardcore and DIY shows hosted in basements, bars, and anywhere else that would take us. Additionally, I was (and still am) immersed in Knoxville’s “queer scene.” Inhabiting these spaces catalyzed my personal and artistic development. Anyone who has danced until 3 AM or moshed in a basement that is packed from wall-to-wall will tell you that it is an experience like no other. Its beauty is in its transience; for just a few hours, you are one with everyone around you. If the experience itself doesn’t convince you of this, stand outside after the show and watch complete strangers talk like old friends, share their last few cigarettes, and make plans to see each other again despite having just met. Watch the crowd dissipate, go back to your normal life, and then do it again a few weeks later. Do this again and again, watch scenes emerge and thrive and die, and you’ll understand the urge to hold on to it.

Queer lives, local scenes, basement shows where people who feel unwanted find community for the first time in their lives—all of these things are transient and immeasurably beautiful. Much of what I write is an attempt to document the beauty around me before it is gone. I owe this perspective on life and writing to another author that influenced me as a teenager, Torrey Peters. Peters’ debut novel, Detransition, Baby, was the first book I read by a trans author explicitly for a trans audience. It’s hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly enthralling, but more than that, it is a snapshot of the trans experience in a particular time and place. Peters moved me and showed me that I could accomplish more with my writing than I ever imagined. My writing became imbued with a new purpose, or rather, my ends evolved. No longer was I writing just to get a rise out of people. Instead, my goal became to create something that spoke to my particular moment, and for it to move the reader through its sheer, self-evident beauty.

When you really get under the hood of it, this desire is the same as my long-held desire to shock and disgust. Buried under all the teenage angst was a desire to make the reader feel something, and for them to really feel it. In truth, this is the goal of all art. There is beauty in every moment, in every voice, and I believe Sundress Publications is a place that values this beauty. I am excited to be a part of this team, and I look forward to making beautiful art with y’all!

Natalie Gardner is a trans writer hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee. She is currently pursuing a BA in English with a minor in philosophy from the University of Tennessee. She loves transgressive fiction, hiking, and schlocky, B-tier horror movies. When she isn’t working, you can find her haunting the coffee shops of Fort Sanders and DIY shows across East Tennessee. Her work in the field of linguistics can be found in Feedback Review in Second Language.

Sundress Reads: Review of String

Sundress Reads black-and-white logo with a sheep sitting on a stool next to the words "Sundress Reads." The sheep is wearing glasses and holding a cup filled with a hot drink in one hoof and holding an open book in the other.
The word "string" is in the center of the image. Thin strands of red string are tangled and spread out in the image. The background is a light tan color. The author's name "Matthew Thorburn" is in smaller font near the bottom.

In String (LSU Press, 2023), Matthew Thorburn chronicles a teenage boy’s journey through an unnamed war. Thorburn brings a breathless quality to the entire volume, with almost no punctuation in any poem. Lines break randomly in the middle of sentences and phrases. Concrete poems seemingly resemble nothing while still floating strangely on the page. Disorientation and urgency ring all throughout Thorburn’s poetry collection,.

String is divided into four parts, each one roughly corresponding to the narrator’s experience of this war. Part 1 depicts the happy life before the war alongside the anxiety as war looms and Part 2 describes the devastation of living in a war zone. After beginning with rich, nostalgic narratives, Thorburn plunges unexpectedly into violence in, mirroring the way that conflict envelops civilian homes. In “They,” Thorburn creates the idea of a generic, violent “them” consisting of soldiers who “liked to throw things” such as “a woman down a well” (11). After establishing a serene, happy setting, Thorburn destroys any sense of security the characters possess and depicts the awful descent into chaos that occurs for the victims of conflict.

Thorburn’s outright refusal to name who or what is happening forces us into the lived experiences of conflict. We never learn what war or what part of the war String occurs in. We have no semblance of timeline or how long these characters suffer, nor how long the conflict itself endures. We aren’t allowed to think about politics or death tolls; the ideologies of any single side blends into a single wave of violence that falls upon the narrators’ home. Thorburn focuses us entirely on a single life and the devastation that war inflicts on that life. String is a deeply emotional, personal book in a place that seeks to rob its inhabitants of any sentimentality.

Part 3 guides the reader through the narrator’s choice to leave his home. Consisting of a single extended poem, this section investigates the string which ties the narrator not only to the people who love him, but to the past and present. Over the course of the poem, his string takes the form of a fuse, soldiers’ razor wire, a cursive line, and even an umbilical cord (Thorburn 43-54). This string represents the hold that the narrator holds on his world over the course of this conflict, as well as the sense of self that he maintains during his displacement. As he notes, “this string / I follow / and follow and / know I can / never stop” (Thorburn 52). This moors him to the present and past, but also tugs him relentlessly into an uncertain future; to end the collection, Part 4 investigates what it means to come back to one’s home after war.

String is not only about the disorientation that inhabitants of a warzone (and refugees) feel, but also about the way that comfort morphs in a war-stricken environment. Pianos, for example, are a symbol of comfort early in the book through depictions of the narrator’s family and friends playing together, and he revisits pianos in later poems as a way to show how comfort can rupture in times of war. After a bomb strikes, the narrator recalls how:

“bits of paper swirled behind my eyes

some with treble clefs with quarter

or half notes Uncle Albert penciled

years ago.” (Thorburn 34)

When the narrator’s physical home is obliterated, his mental comfort is as well. Perhaps no poem encapsulates this as well as “Shatterings,” which in part catalogs Uncle Albert (who was previously skilled on the piano)’s stroke. After the stroke, a gorgeous flow of notes becomes “a stutter of / knots nots notes nights / and days” (Thorburn 33). Much like war, the stroke turns order into disorder, blowing to pieces what made so much sense before.

Thorburn’s narrator can never really escape in spite of scattered efforts to either lighten the mood or escape reality entirely. Even as the narrator’s family friend tells him that “those wishing to sing / will always find a song,” the narrator recognizes that “only he spoke” (Thorburn 13). The narrator’s mother remains terrified in that scene as onlookers are completely unmoved by this man’s display of security. In another scene, the diversion of a magic show is repeatedly interrupted by war-related details like “the splintered tree out back,” bringing readers back to the painful reality of conflict (Thorburn 17). Reflecting on an old photograph of the narrator’s father, Thorburn remarks:

“Time stops the camera

says let me show you

how time hurtles on leaves

only this creased piece

of cardboard little square.” (6)

String as a whole is the narrator’s “cardboard little square,” the fleck of memory and hope he intends to pass on to the next generation.

All through his book, Thorburn is painfully aware of the frailty of nostalgia, the weaknesses present in any recollection. In language rich with horror and hope, Thorburn truthfully renders the human costs of war through the eyes of a single teenager.

String is available from Louisiana State University Press

Scott Sorensen is a junior at Dartmouth College studying English while performing standup, writing for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern satire magazine, and helping edit the Stonefence Review. Scott dreams of becoming the first Latvian man to win an MMA championship, which is pretty unlikely given the fact that he is not Latvian and has no idea how to fight.

Interview with Nnadi Samuel, Author of Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade

Book cover. Background is black hands wrapped in red chains on rough white background. Title appears in white lettering: Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade. Words Slave Trade and author's name Nnadi Samuel are in red at bottom.

Nnadi Samuel, the author of the newly released chapbook Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade, sat down with Sundress editorial intern Heather Domenicis to discuss themes such as violence, liberty, and individuality within the pages of Samuel’s book.

Heather Domenicis: Can you speak to the recurring use of militant language and imagery in this collection?

Nnadi Samuel: The collection itself speaks to a time of restraints, bondage, and gag order—achieved mostly through militancy. When the reader finds these reoccurring themes, it is more of a natural happening than a premeditated motif. The poem a “Glossary of Artilleryn Terms” is an example. As suggested by the title, we’ve survived such a barrage of hostile treatment that we coin new names for it. One line in particular attests to this: “To cherish where I’m from is to add guns to our part of speech.” It becomes part and parcel of our life’s syllabus; to attempt to purge it from our literature is to live in denial. A line from another poem from the manuscript states, “an editor tells me to tone down on grief, each time I begin a poem without birds. I would have him know, I lack the patience for soft feathered imagery, because we were raised to outpace bullets.” The conversation that birthed these lines did in fact happen and my response was the same. All this is to say we cannot shy away or turn a blind eye forever to the war which breathes fire daily in our faces—both at home and on sovereign soil.

HD: The titles of the poems heavily bleed into the poems themselves or assign context to the text, especially in “Praise for the Inner Lining of my Morphing Apparel” and “There is a Gnawing Need for Sugar.” How and when do you generate titles?

NS: Yes! I love the spillover blessing that comes with the scenery in poems like these.
Sometimes, it is what gives rise to the poem. Other times, it is the nucleus/core around which the poem revolves. Either way, the titles of my poems have always been directly connected to the actual poems, so much so that you can substitute one for the other and still not lose out totally in its meaning and all that it has to say. In writing a poem, the titling starts almost immediately as the writing. Often, it happens right in the middle of it, and I am struck by one bright sentence which sums up the whole experience.

HD: Regarding “Praise for the Inner Lining of my Morphing Apparel,” can you elaborate on the significance of the “exit dress” and its role in the narrative?

NS: In most African countries, mode of dressing has been and still is one subtle way to profile and enslave individuals against their wish. This unfortunately has also slipped into the religious sectors, which are meant to be the soul of humanity. For example, in the line “I: asphalt glory. Color riot, in ways that put coffins out of fashion,” I am thinking of the numerous victims that tried to be different but ended up in a body bag (coffin)—perhaps, more beautiful and appreciated only in death. The one way to exercise freedom here is through rebellion, cut from same fabric as the dress: regaling oneself unabashedly in whatever manner one feels the most comfortable in. In between the inner lining of this dress is where they find closure, where they feel seen and heard. It is their long-sought door to liberty.

HD: Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade reflects on personal traumas as well as a broader, collective trauma. How do you navigate this intersection in your poetry?

NS: I started out wanting only to account for personal and remote trauma within my reach—things I could in a way control. However, I discovered that in speaking about my personal hurt, I couldn’t ignore the larger sense of it felt across borders. I cannot tell a story of an assaulted cousin back home without the same experience being applicable to yet another Black person outside the country—baton for baton, or even worse. Both experiences are intertwined, irrespective of clime, and I felt the need to address with the title. Here, I began with some close-to-home issues and lent that voice to account for an overall collective grief. It rains everywhere, you know.

HD: Alongside trauma, resilience is also a recurring theme. Do you believe poetry itself plays a part in your own resilience?

NS: I pride myself as having always been resilient in whatever field I find myself. However, encountering poetry unlocked a level of resilience which I never thought I could attain. I watch myself in recent times, stretching to my limit and springing back to shape even stronger. I have become more bendable. Being a poet does this to you. This doggedness has transformed my life and spills into my poems as a currency for changing the narrative and systemic bias.

HD: Many of these poems contain vivid and at times gory bodily imagery. How does the body inspire your work?

NS: The body is one of the most fragile, delicate parts of us. Whatever harm comes to us first encounters the body, before pain is felt across all organs. It bears the damage for all our battle scars, trauma—seen or hidden. Therefore, it is ours to own, love, and cherish. Sometimes, it is the only place we seek asylum. The body imagery in my work seeks to connect the individual to the hurt and make sense of the wound on a more physical level. Our traumas are mostly internal, hidden and unaccounted. The body is a signpost, a showroom that tells these tales in bold blood.

HD: Some of these poems, such as “Nebulous Strike in Minnesota” and “Poems Like This Refuse Sound, My Cramp Bears Music Enough” contain multi-generational family stories and broken families, too. How do you think about inheritance in your poetry?

NS: I come from a very dysfunctional society with so many familial battles, sibling-inflicted scars, and bad blood. While some of this is self-created, some is inherited. When we pose together for a family photo, it all seems a façade. There are so many cases of trauma fought within, which never sees the light of the day. Without institutional ways to address these wounds, the hurt spirals down to yet another family and forms a multi-generational history of broken homes. I think about inheritance as the curse (be it good or bad) we put a face to and live off until our death. That albatross on the neck that just wouldn’t let go.

HD: There are a few mentions of religion in this collection. Can you speak to religious influences in your work?

NS: I grew up in a very religious home and have witnessed both the beauty and beast in religion. Two case studies here give an insight. When I alluded to “christening” a colleague’s daughter in the poem “Schwa: in a Sound Where All Consonants Means Loss,” I was referencing the potency of my religion. And then in “Poems Like This Refuse Sound,” the line “Sorrow playing Jesus, playing Lazarus cheap for those buying it—” condemns the pontification of this same religion by men of God who know of this familial trauma and instead of preaching against it, turns sorrow to sweet sermon. There is so much to unpack here, which I am exploring in a body of work titled Biblical Invasion, that might end up being my third chapbook in 2024. Fingers crossed for that one.

HD: Which poem(s) in this collection is/are closest to your heart?

NS: I deeply connect to all the poems in this collection, especially “Schwa: in a Sound Where All Consonants Means Loss.” However, the poem “A Boy Ago” seems the closest to my heart, majorly for its nostalgic effect and childhood memories.

Download your free copy of Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade!

Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) holds a BA in English & Literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published or are forthcoming in Suburban Review, The Seventh Wave, Native Skin, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, FIYAH, Fantasy Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, The Deadlands, Commonwealth Writers, Jaggery, Foglifter, The Capilano Review, Lolwe, and elsewhere. He was the winner of the 2020 Canadian Open Drawer Contest, the 2021 Miracle Monocle Award for Ambitious Student Writers, the 2021 Penrose Poetry Prize, the 2021 Lakefly Poetry Contest, the 2021 International Human Rights Art Festival Award New York, and the 2022 Angela C. Mankiewicz Poetry Contest. He was the second prize winner of the 2022 The Bird in Your Hands Contest and the bronze winner for the 2022 Creative Future Writer’s Award. He also received an honorable mention for the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest and the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize. He is the author of Reopening of Wounds. He tweets at @Samuelsamba10.

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

Sundress Publications Seeks Craft Chaps Fiction Editor

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

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

We are looking for applicants with the following qualities:

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

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

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

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

Meet Our New Intern: Halsey Hyer

Photo by Elwyn Brooks (2022)

I didn’t know I grew up in Appalachia. 

Or that I could even begin to consider myself Appalachian at all.

Everyone learns to play “Smoke on the Water” on a lap dulcimer to pass fifth grade. “Crick” and “crans” (“creek” and “crayons”) were just how you said it.  Pittsburgh is the place only ever referred to as the city, and if you live there, as I do, that means you made it (out). 

I’m from Mars. Pennsylvania, not the planet.

I’ve always said It would make more sense if it were the latter. I’ve always thought myself to be simply alien(ated).  

I couldn’t read until I was seven. Everyone else could. Not me.

Numbers and letters might as well have been the same. I got by with sheer memorization of words or phrases. My parents required I read to them—my mother Goodnight Moon, my father Good Night, Gorilla. Slow speech curling from tongue & teeth in tandem with the drag of my mother & father’s fingers beneath sentence fragments. I stop when they stop. I start when they start. 

Kindergarten had one Y2K Apple desktop & two CD-ROMs, Oregon Trail and Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and the teachers instituted a two-book reading mandate in order to play. Games were the only thing motivating me through the drum of childhood.

I was strategic—I was sure to gun for the books when it was time to choose so I’d make it to the shelves first, select whichever we read during story time because they were fresh in my mind. 

I performed for my teachers.

I took my time. 

Dragging my pointer finger along the bottom of each sentence, lingering on the cliff of it, & I knew if they quizzed me, I’d be able to make them believe I read the two books required. I’d do anything to button mash my way from Paris to Minnesota to Australia searching for Carmen, or to risk dying of dysentery on the way to some new frontier home.

Anything but learn to read.

I’d have chosen to scour a pixelated world for pictures for images for clues as to what life was like for others who weren’t from Pennsylvania like I was. I wanted to know anyone who wasn’t like me. I learned young that who I was wasn’t someone I was supposed to like. I knew the world was kept from me, & I wanted to know. 

I didn’t know the empowerment of words. I didn’t know books other than the Bible could send me to ethereal worlds not otherwise known.

My mother became so desperate for my literacy that she took me to the next town over to peruse the library’s shelves in the hopes I’d delve into a book beyond my disapproving look of the front and back cover. The library was the only place she didn’t censor me.

There I found books about betrayal and vengeance, secrets and alienation, love without adverse consequence.

There was where words became worlds.

There I became empowered to explore word-worlds and build my own world of words.

Here I must invoke a quote from Audre Lorde—the writer whose words I rehearse in my head as I lie in bed at night and look at this Justseeds Artist Cooperative Celebrate Peoples History poster:

“and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.”

“Litany for Survival.” The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde

Without words, I have no worlds.

Halsey Hyer (they/them) is the author forthcoming full-length hybrid collection, Divorce Garter (Main Street Rag, 2024). Their microchapbook of micropoems, Everything Becomes Bananas (Rinky Dink Press, 2022), was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023, and their debut chapbook, [deadname] (Anhinga Press, 2022), won the 2022 Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. Based in Pittsburgh, PA they’re a collective member of The Big Idea Bookstore and the 2022-2024 Margaret L. Whitford Fellow in Chatham University’s MFA in Creative Writing. Find out more on their website—www.halseyhyer.org.

Interview with Tennison S. Black, Editor of A Body You Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability

Following the release of our new e-anthology A Body You Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability our Editorial Intern Max Stone spoke with editor Tennison S. Black about the importance of sharing and amplifying work by disabled writers, their editorial vision for the anthology, the story behind the title, the inclusion of visual art in the collection, and more.

Max Stone: Could you talk about the title of the anthology? Why this title? Where did it come from and how do you see it unifying this collection of work?

Tennison S. Black: The thing about me that few realize is that I have to coach myself through chronic pain to complete basic tasks. Sometimes I’m really kind to myself, “Okay, here we go. You’ve got this.” And sometimes I’m irritable with the pain or outright inability to accomplish what I want, “Just do it. Oh for fu**’s sake.” But the thing is that I talk to my body all the time. Opening a car door requires a conversation in my mind, “Focus on the ring finger and let it do the work—don’t use the thumb—okay maybe just hook it then turn your shoulders and it’ll work as leverage.”

My primary disability seems hell-bent on taking out my hands, especially. Though I’ve had this disease since 2001, in recent years it’s increased the toll and I seem to be steadily losing my access to the use of my hands. So I talk to them a lot. But also to my knee, my left hip, my shoulders, neck, and spine. I guess it depends on the task but I coach my parts toward cooperation.

In the summer months there’s something about the way my bedroom door was originally hung and so when it swells in the heat, it’s really difficult to open. Every day is hard, but when you combine that with a flare in my hands, I can easily get stuck in my room because the doorknob and the strain of opening the door causes me extreme pain but also because I just can’t pull hard enough to get it to open anymore. At some level my instinct is to sit on the floor and have a good cry until I’m rescued. But no one is coming to rescue anyone else, it seems, and also, that’s not who I want to be in this life—I don’t want to give up. Except when I really really do. The way I bridge the difference is to talk to—I don’t know—the arm, the hand, the disease that puts me in that position, myself for eating something the night before that I know could cause me additional pain—all of it. The hot summer air and humidity that causes my door to do this. The inability to pay for someone to fix it—yes and yes and yes. So I have one of those bodies that you have to talk to just to get through the day. From opening a can or jar, yes even with tools, to carrying my bag, to pulling on my clothes, I need a coach so I coach myself. And in this way, I’m not alone.

MS: Why was it important to put together an anthology of poetry on contemporary
disability at this current moment?  

TSB: I haven’t always been good at saying I’m Disabled. It’s not in my nature to disclose my feelings or my struggles. There are a lot of reasons for this, but mostly I think it came from raising my kids as a single parent with no family or friends, and feeling utterly terrified that if anyone knew the amount of pain I was in on a daily basis, or how much I was struggling, I’d lose my kids. Now, that may seem irrational today, but I can’t overstate how alone I was in those years, and how I was just trying not to die. So it took a lot for me to even begin to understand my own disability, and what it may mean to be Disabled in the world, and also what to do with that information. I was trying to just get by, walking to food banks—got evicted, and on and on. Anyway, I’m not always great at it, and I struggle still, but I feel like I need to do better.

There’s not yet been a time when being Disabled wasn’t a radical act. Yet Disabled writers are still routinely excluded in many presses and open calls. Listen, there are several incredible anthologies of this type so we’re not breaking new ground here but until it’s routine and expected that a certain percentage of writers in every anthology are openly Disabled, we all (meaning presses) have work to do. As for Sundress, this won’t be our last effort toward this end, it’s just our most recent. But I still hear from publishers that Disabled writers are “difficult,” or that we “can’t handle touring and promotion,” and that we’re just “too much,” so we still have a long way to go.

MS: How do you see these poems contributing to the conversation on disability and creating more space and empathy for disabled people in the world? 

TSB: Not all of the work in this anthology is about being Disabled except in as much as everything everyone does is influenced by their identity—Disabled and non-disabled alike. But this anthology is not necessarily intended to focus strictly on the experience of Disability as much as it’s intended to offer one more outlet, one more space for Disabled people to speak their minds or to place their art. It’s another marker saying that we’re here. In some cases these artists and writers are responding to other Disabled writers and artists. But in many cases they’re just representing themselves and saying hey, I want to be included in the conversation, please. And what else is there?
 
MS: Talk a little bit about your editorial vision for this book; what considerations did you make when choosing which poems to include? A variety of different voices, disabilities, intersecting identities, and poetic forms are represented; was this a conscious, deliberate choice that you made? 

TSB: If I could have accepted every submission, I would have. But what was my vision—I mean here we sit in this world with fascism rising all around us, trying to gobble up and kill everything good. My daily vision is to defy that push, to offer space where people can be in love and in sorrow, in pain and in hope with each other. And to offer that space up to those who are living in defiance of all that is horrid and terrible in the world.
 
MS: Are there specific poems by different poets that you think speak to or resonate with
each other? If so, which ones and how do they conversate, both in terms of content and
form? 

TSB: There are many pieces in this anthology that speak to one another. I’d prefer not to point them out because first I want the reader to have room here. But, too, I want every writer and artist herein to know that I value their work, none above any other, but with immense gratitude nonetheless for each. They’re all special to me and I chose them for that reason alone.
 
MS: The COVID-19 pandemic is a recurring theme in this anthology. Can you expand on the intersections of disability with the pandemic and the choices you made in selecting poems relating to the topic? Also, did you have an idea of how much of a presence you wanted the pandemic to have in the book going into it? 

TSB: There hasn’t yet been enough said about the impact of the pandemic on our community. Personally, I spent the pandemic with a medically suppressed immune system because it was either that or lose my ability to walk as my disease ravaged my joints. And in fact, it took multiple specialists AND me losing my ability to walk for several months to finally agree to do it because of the pandemic. But my story is far from unique or extraordinary. If you faced the pandemic with a disability, you likely had increased pressure in all of the ways that everyone else had—just more so. From loneliness to financial pressure, to physical challenges and worries amid a potentially deadly pandemic to which many of us were more susceptible—especially to the worst outcomes. I didn’t feel that I could approach the topic of disability at this stage and not also talk about the impact of the pandemic—something many of us are still facing, even if most people have decided it’s over.
 
MS: Several art pieces are also included in the anthology. Can you speak about your thought process in choosing these pieces? 

TSB: Honestly, if it weren’t for capitalism, we’d all be able to lay around and make art and write and tell stories. And I wouldn’t want to be a part of extricating one of these from another. Wherever my writing is, there will always be room for art. And I hope to include art in every editorial effort I undertake. My thoughts in the selection process here were to include pieces that spoke to or advanced the narrative of the whole and some of those were more visual than others.
 
MS: Disabilities that aren’t visible are often overlooked and ignored. How do you see A Body You Talk To tackling this issue and making such disabilities, and the people who experience them, more visible and acknowledged?  
 
TSB: For twenty years I was invisibly Disabled. My disabilities have only become really visible in the last few years, and even then, they again can be invisible to those who don’t understand what they’re seeing. Like so many of us, I have been screamed at for parking in an accessible parking space, or for using the accessible stall in the restroom. I’ve been asked by a very prominent Disability rights advocate why I was there at a disability event and how they could know I was Disabled because I didn’t look disabled to them. It’s awful to be put in these positions so I just don’t think we need to justify ourselves. We don’t owe our medical information to anyone. It’s not really for me to make other Disabled people more visible but to offer them a platform to make themselves more visible (if they choose) is something I can do. And acknowledgement might be nice but what I want is universal accessibility. I want us all to be able to get in and out of buildings and to get around the world without so much difficulty or the need to justify ourselves to others. A Body You Talk To is a place for some Disabled writers and artists to be heard and to publish their work. That alone is, I hope, enough. It’s a room. The real work belongs to the writers and artists contained therein.

A Body You Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability is free and available to download on the Sundress website

Tennison S. Black (they/she), a queer and multiply disabled autistic, is the author of Survival Strategies (winner of the National Poetry Series, UGA Press 2023). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, Hotel Amerika, Booth, Wordgathering, and New Mobility, among others. They received an MFA at Arizona State University. They are the Managing Editor at Sundress Publications and Best of the Net. Though Sonoran born, they reside in Washington state.

Max Stone is a poet from Reno, Nevada. He has an MFA in poetry and a BA in English with a minor in Book Arts and Publication from the University of Nevada, Reno. He was born and raised in Reno, but has lived in various other places including New York City, where he played soccer at Queens College. He is the author of two chapbooks: Temporary Preparations (Bottlecap Press, June 2023) and The Bisexual Lighting Makes Everyone Beautiful (Ghost City Press, forthcoming July 2023). His work has been published by & Change, just femme and dandy, fifth wheel press, Bender Zine, Black Moon Magazine, The Meadow, Night Coffee Lit, and elsewhere.

Sundress Publications Social Media Internship Open Call

A square promotional image with pale pink and orange blends, similar to tie-dye, with black text over top. The text at the top of the image reads, "SUNDRESS PUBLICATIONS." The curved texts below reads, "apps now open," and the text under that reads "EDITORIAL INTERNS AND A SOCIAL MEDIA INTERN." At the bottom of the page, the text shares the application deadline and where to find more information: "DEADLINE: MAY 18TH, 2023 MORE INFO: SUNDRESSPUBLICATIONS.COM."

Sundress Publications is seeking a social media intern. The social media internship position will run from July 1 to December 31, 2023. The intern’s responsibilities include scheduling and posting promotional materials on our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), maintaining our newsletter, and promoting our various open reading periods, workshops, readings, and catalog of titles. This will also include creating promotional graphics, digital flyers, logos, and social media images. Applicants for this internship must be self-motivated and be able to work on a strict deadline.

Preferred qualifications include:

  • Familiarity with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and/or Canva 
  • Familiarity with social media scheduling tools
  • Ability to work under a deadline and multitask
  • Strong written communication skills 
  • Knowledge of and interest in contemporary literature a plus

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

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

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

To apply, please send a resume and cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Staff Director Kanika Lawton at sundressstaffdirector@gmail.com by May 18, 2023.

Sundress Publications Editorial Internship Open Call

A square promotional image with pale pink and orange blends, similar to tie-dye, with black text over top. The text at the top of the image reads, "SUNDRESS PUBLICATIONS." The curved texts below reads, "apps now open," and the text under that reads "EDITORIAL INTERNS AND A SOCIAL MEDIA INTERN." At the bottom of the page, the text shares the application deadline and where to find more information: "DEADLINE: MAY 18TH, 2023 MORE INFO: SUNDRESSPUBLICATIONS.COM."

Sundress Publications is seeking editorial interns. The editorial internship position will run from July 1 to December 31, 2023. The editorial intern’s responsibilities may include writing press releases, composing blog posts and promotional emails, proofreading manuscripts, assembling press kits, collating editorial data, research, managing spreadsheets, and more. The intern may also be responsible for writing copy, conducting interviews with Sundress authors, reviewing newly released books, and promoting our catalog of titles.

Preferred qualifications include:

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

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

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

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

To apply, please send a resume and cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Staff Director Kanika Lawton at sundressstaffdirector@gmail.com by May 18, 2023.

Sundress Reads: Review of Bird Body

Content warning: Sexual assault mentioned

A sketched bird lies in the center of the book cover amid drawn ferns. Bird Body is written above in lowercase italics. Below the image is written "poems by Zoë Fay-Stindt"

What does it mean to inhabit a woman’s body in a world that tries to break it? This is what Zoë Fay-Stindt explores in their poetry chapbook, Bird Body. Fay-Stindt weaves intricately between birds and the stories of women to shine a light on women’s and femme’s experience in our misogynistic world. Fay-Stindt writes of the speaker’s emotional pain and exhaustion following their sexual assault. Here, healing can take the form of being picked apart by birds even as our speaker is devastated by their own inability to help others with their pain.   

Birds, Fay-Stindt appears to say, have levels of meaning and such a depth of representation that even we are birds. Sometimes we are brutal, then too-easily crushed by the world, yet containing within the cages of our ribs wrathful howls and cries of mourning and the ability to, despite it all, keep “opening [our] eyes every morning.” In such exploration, Fay-Stindt offers us the great gift of understanding what it is to survive in our problematic world.

Much of the chapbook is around the assault of the speaker and the emotional aftermath, although the assault is itself never described in much detail. Instead, much of the focus is on the effects and the ways that society compounds them by teaching the speaker to invalidate her own experience, even telling her (when she does begin to write about it in poetry) that she speaks of it too much. Bird Body dives deep into the emotional effects of something that is so innate to many women’s experiences, as 1 out of 6 women in the U.S. face sexual assault in their lifetime and 90% of sexual assault victims are women (“Scope of the Problem: Statistics.” RAINN).    

In “that’s it, now” Fay-Stindt compares the speaker to the mourning dove in her grief and exhaustion, imploring the reader to not pity the dove (or, perhaps, the woman) as she weaves laments yet still opens her eyes each morning, holding her “tremor and her great loud voice / in the same body.” This emotional depth and exploration makes clear the impact of an event that many still invalidate, bringing forth shockwaves from the event in all directions so that it can be fully felt—and understood—by the reader.

Bird Body also looks at the way terrible events echo backward, affecting the speaker long before it even happened through the fear women must live with. Through such writings, Fay-Stindt connects us in community, building bridges between us in order to share often overlooked and unspoken experiences. Fay-Stindt writes of the prelude to the rape, “I’ve been training for a lifetime—my body / knows the drill: I won’t yell. Instead, / offer a bargain: not tonight, or I promise / I’ll make it better next time, or I owe you one.” As a woman, this line had a profound effect on me because it touched on something not often discussed; the way that we spend our lives preparing for the possibility of an assault, finding responses to catcalls and men who approach us, finding the ways to battle our own instincts of rage in an attempt at survival. And this prevalence makes it all the more necessary to discuss.

Fay-Stindt expands the examination to include our human fallibility, broadening the chapbook’s relevance for all potential readers. They write in “a robin at the bus station” of the devastating inability in the face of others’ pain to do more than “build beds, soft spaces to land,” and show how our best attempts at help can make matters worse when the speaker accidentally kills a robin in “swallow.”

Yet, as the chapbook explores, there is so much more to a woman’s experience. From their relationship with their mother, to breast cancer, to pap smears, to finding a connection with and healing in nature, to having one’s body picked apart and prodded like it’s nothing more than a vessel, Fay-Stindt touches on much important and often-overlooked aspects of what it means to be a woman or femme in their poems.

But let us not evade how the speaker’s body is treated as a visceral vessel throughout. Their body is picked apart by a heron, washed clean, then squeezed and entered by a doctor during a pap smear. In this way, although both situations are geared toward healing, a comment is made on the objectification of women and femmes as nothing more than a body, how they are treated as such by society.

Bird Body is a vital read since it shows these experiences without flinching away, and makes obvious that you cannot completely tell a woman’s story—or understand it—without showing the grief, the connection to nature, our helplessness to aid each other, our objectification by society, and so much more. Fay-Stindt creates a vibrant, moving ode to women, femme people, and our bodily experiences by shining the spotlight on aspects of our lives that are often overlooked, and in so doing allows us to understand ourselves, and even humanity in all of its cruelty and struggle.   

Bird Body is available at Cordella Magazine

Solstice Black (she/they) is a queer poet and novelist living in the Pacific Northwest. They are currently undertaking a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chautauqua, The Fantastic Other, and A Forest of Words, among others. They hope to pursue an MFA in creative writing and a BFA in visual art in the next few years. Her cat is both her greatest joy and torment.