Interview with Nicole Oquendo, Author of Space Baby

Following the release of their chapbook, Space Baby, author Nicole Oquendo sat down with Sundress Publications‘ editorial intern, Jacquelyn Scott. They talked about form, desire, violence and forgiveness.

Jacquelyn Scott: Can you talk about the three different sections? How do they speak to each other?

Nicole Oquendo: I imagine the speaker transitioning in different ways as the narrative shifts between sections. They begin infatuated in this rapturous love with our “villain,” only to reveal their true nature as the poems progress. I see the middle section as a realization that they aren’t satisfied with experiencing love in all the ways they have up until this point; nothing is enough. In that third section, desire for more burns everything. 

JS: What do you hope your work says about the violence we do to each other as human beings or as partners?

NO: This is a complicated question, as many people, me included, experience love as a violent thing, much like our protagonist. But there’s a fine line between consensual violent play and what seeps into our speaker’s destructive behavior. This is up for interpretation too, though, as their lover meets an end no more violent than the deaths we know he inflicted upon others. 

JS: How does our speaker interpret or give forgiveness? How far are they willing to go to forgive?

NO: I think the love present at the start was more important, more necessary, than any previous wrongdoing. And the nature of the wrongdoing is important, too. Sometimes we do things we feel we have to and find ourselves trapped within the constraints we’ve placed around ourselves. I believe this is the case for the speaker’s partner, but also for the speaker as well at first. Even that great love became a constraint that the speaker eventually burned free of. Forgiving ourselves is important, too, and perhaps that final burning is the truest act of forgiveness present in the book.

JS: What do you hope readers will take away from this act (or lack) of forgiveness?

NO: This book is in no way a guide on how to behave when you’re in love, but at the core, these are love poems, and I’m of the mind that loving freely requires a lack of constraint. We want to be bound, but we want the bindings to be the ones we choose.

JS: How does desire play a role in your work?

NO: Desire is a huge driving force behind most of my work, and in many ways, like a lot of writers, I end up creating art that validates my own worldview. My neurodivergent lens (and the fact that my “emotional regulator” is frequently broken), chronic pain, and disability, in general, make both experiencing the feeling of desire and acting on desire arduous at best, but in a narrative world of my own making, I can experience it in whatever way I want.  

JS: How did the written word limit or liberate that experience?

NO: Writing is beyond liberating, and the painting, as well. It doesn’t all have to be about pain, though pain plays a role here. What I was able to focus on was a strange joy that unfolds as the narrative does, and while some of this might be toxic, to me it’s beautiful as well. And I hope I’ve crafted an experience someone else can find beautiful.

JS: What characteristics of otherworldliness or space are essential in this chapbook?

NO: This love story is magical to me, and I wanted to set it against an appropriate backdrop. We talk about the desire to see the world, going from our default sheltered state to wide open, but raising the stakes, giving this protagonist the ability to have entire galaxies a short trip away, made things even more romantic in my eyes. The book might have started as Star Wars fanfiction, but the settings in these poems were all deliberate. 

JS: What do you hope readers take away from your work?

NO: My hope is that readers will feel the mood each poem is infused with and be able to follow this narrative arc to a satisfying conclusion. Most of all, though, I want the work to be fun. I’ve been writing a long time, and these poems are some of my favorites. I don’t think I’ll ever connect to a project that is unwaveringly happy on the surface, but I really think this protagonist finds a happy ending in their own way. 

JS: What projects are you working on right now?

NO: I wrote two fun books in a row, so, of course, now I’m back to chewing on more difficult content. I don’t have any poems from my book-in-progress published yet to share, but I can say that each poem is about different fathers growing in unusual ways and eventually meeting unusual ends. I’ll spend a few months at a time working on the projects that allow me to explore joy so I have the armor I need to tackle the work that’s more deeply rooted in trauma, or the more difficult stuff to deal with in general. This way, I never forget that writing is something I love. 

Nicole Oquendo is especially interested in nontraditional, multimodal compositions and translations in all genres. Their work can be found in numerous literary journals, as well as in the chapbooks some prophets, self is wolf, wringing gendered we, and Space Baby, and the hybrid memoir Telomeres. Nicole has also been serving the community since 2000, giving time as an editor to several literary journals and presses, and has been working as a writing educator since 2008.


Jacquelyn Scott is a student at The University of Tennessee where she is a candidate for her Master of Fine Arts in Fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Mountain Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and The Write Launch. Find her on a hiking trail or on Twitter @jacquelynlscott.


The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Feed by Emily Mohn-Slate

This selection comes from Emily Mohn–Slate‘s chapbook, Feed available from Seven Kitchens Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

Emily Mohn–Slate is the author of THE FALLS, winner of the New American Poetry Prize (New American Press, Forthcoming, 2020), and FEED, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her poems and essays can be found in New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches middle and high school English, leads writing workshops in the community, and is a member of The Madwomen in the Attic Workshops at Carlow University.

Krista Cox is a poet, editor, artist, and community organizer based in South Bend, Indiana, but she’s always dreaming of somewhere saltier. Krista’s poetry appears in many fine journals, and she’s presently seeking a publisher for her chapbook How to Kiss a Monster. She’s the Managing Editor of Doubleback Review, a fledgling online journal that features work previously published at now-defunct journals, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection, the longest continuously-publishing online journal on the web. In 2013, Krista founded Lit Literary Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that hosts affordable, accessible writing retreats and otherwise serves her local writing community. Krista received an honors BA in English from Indiana University South Bend. Sometimes she draws fat unicorns and paints cute animals.

Lyric Essentials: Megan Merchant Reads Laura Van Prooyen

For this installment of Sundress Publication’s Lyric Essentials series, we’re joined by poet Megan Merchant, who reads two poems by Laura Van Prooyen. Megan shares the ways the poems resonate with her own experience as a mother, why the collection they belong to is one of her favorites, and details about her own upcoming projects. Thanks for reading!

Riley Steiner: Why did you choose these two poems?

Megan Merchant: There are poems that I come across that spark a little sucked-in breath of resonance or awe. These two, in particular, caught me in that way—they drew my attention from the machinery of the poem to the visceral way that I was experiencing it in that moment, especially in the last few lines of “Undoing Her Hair,” when the poet confesses, “She can’t believe / she ever thought / this girl belonged to her.” To borrow the phrase “they stopped me in my tracks” falls short of describing their impact and importance to me as a reader, mother, and poet.

Let me try it this way—I’m learning how to play the ukulele. It’s my first venture into music and music theory—which escapes me. I can hear and intuit when something is working, or when it’s off, but understanding the Circle of Fifths feels unattainable. However, once I learn a song, really learn it, so that becomes part of my body, then there’s the moment at the very end, when the last note or chord is winding into silence and the music is still vibrating my ears and the small bones of my chest—that moment is the closest I can come to explaining how these poems make me feel. They make me want to unpack everything and move into that space that was just opened by a shift in frequency. 

Megan Merchant reads “Undoing Her Hair” by Laura Van Prooyen

RS: In our emails, you mentioned that you picked Our House Was on Fire out of your list of favorite poetry books. What makes this one of your favorites? 

MM: I keep the same few books close to my desk, even though I can move through their poems by memory. They are not a reference, but more of a reassurance, or a community of sorts. I will pick them up, read a page, think, Look what this poet did—it is remarkable, then start to negotiate with the white space in front of me. 

Some of what has claimed space in that pile has to do with life-timing. I came across Our House Was On Fire when my youngest son stopped speaking. Our lives became a swirl of doctors, sleepless nights, and a narrowing into a diagnosis. I was writing through it all, but wondering how I would work those poems into a collection without overwhelming a reader, while also sustaining their impact. I wasn’t sure how much to divulge for the sake of clarity and still guard his privacy. Meanwhile, life was moving forward and poems about other aspects were wandering into the collection I was working on, asking for equal space. 

I picked this book because of the way it flows together as a whole. I was very taken with how her poems, which vary widely in their subjects and images, play off of each other, how they build and root deeper as they progress. For me, the poems about her child are interspersed in a way that feels like everything else is suspended by that gravity. And while she entertains other preoccupations—loneliness, love, heartbreak, memory, the natural world, and domestic life—that dull ache of motherhood is always just under the surface of image and sound. In raising a child with a diagnosis, I’ve learned how that becomes subtext to absolutely everything—to mundane food prep, to navigating relationships, to quiet moments between intimate partners, to hawks and ravens shadowing the trees. It’s more than background—its patterned into the fabric. Her book is a physical manifestation of that.

RS: “Plum” offers an intimate, rather unsettling look at so-called “domestic” moments, like the shadow puppet theater put on by the speaker’s daughters and her husband painting the walls of the bathroom. How do you think Van Prooyen makes these poems accessible even to readers who, for instance, may not have children or be married or otherwise involved in that kind of traditionally “domestic” life?   

MM: There’s a willful abstraction at play, one that creates a layering of meaning in these poems. Take, for example, the last few lines: “In the dark / the sound of your painting mimics breath, / and I listen: grateful we are together even like this.” Her placement of “even” both holds the line and breaks it wide open. Throughout the book, she offers enough footholds so that the intended moments carry weight and have impact, but also offer enough freedom for interpretation. Instead of narrowing down, the poems expand. Also, within the domesticity and themes of motherhood, there are the fingerprints of tenderness, loss, fear—all very relatable human experiences. These feel more like codes in our DNA than in our life designs.

Megan Merchant reads “Plum” by Laura Van Prooyen

RS: Has Laura Van Prooyen’s work influenced your own? And, going along with that, do you have any projects you’re currently working on that you’d like to tell us about? 

MM: I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be influenced in this distressing time in history, where we are being targeted by constructed narratives specifically designed to play upon our emotional states and beliefs in order to sway our thinking.

However, one beautiful aspect of influence in art is that it’s not trying to sell you a life philosophy, or membership to a limited way of thinking—it is asking you to engage critically and be open to possibility. It’s showing you how one voice found an authentic way to express what it means to be human in this world. It’s not asking you to parrot, or steal—but to be bold enough to open to your own expression. In order to do that, though, you have to first be awake and able to simultaneously hold dynamic and opposing facets of thinking and being.

Laura Van Prooyen’s collection achieves this with grace and heart. I am grateful to have found this poet and her work, to have the opportunity to engage with it and, in doing so, gain insight into how another mother shapes language and imagery to express her experience with what can be overwhelming concepts—love, loss, vulnerability, memory, and strength.

As for my own work, I have a few projects that are currently competing for time. I’ve been working closely with my editor at Stillhouse Press, doing line-by-line edits for my forthcoming book, Before the Fevered Snow. That will come into the world in March 2020.

I’ve also just finished reading submissions for Pirene’s Fountain‘s “Bridging Divides” and will be working with the incredible staff at Glass Lyre Press to help bring that into the world. But, right now, my favorite project is working with my father to transcribe my grandfather’s letters home from WWII. He was prolific, so there are hundreds of letters, but almost all written in pencil and most on aged and torn paper. The work is a bit tedious, but I’m getting to know him and his history, as well as the details and mentality of war, in a very beautiful way.

Laura Van Prooyen is a poet from San Antonio, TX. Her first poetry collection, Inkblot and Altar, was published in 2006 by Pecan Grove Press. Our House Was on Fire, her second collection, won the 2015 McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press and the 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Poetry Book Award. Van Prooyen earned her MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson College and now teaches in Miami University’s Creative Writing MFA program.

Further reading:

Visit Laura’s website
Purchase Our House Was on Fire from Ashland Poetry Press
Read more of Laura’s poetry in The Adroit Review and Frontier Poetry

Megan Merchant lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ, with her husband and two children. She holds an MFA degree in International Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and is the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award Winner, 2017), and Grief Flowers (2018), along with four chapbooks and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Philomel Books). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera; the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize; and most recently, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She is an editor at Pirene’s Fountain and The Comstock Review. You can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet. 

Further reading:

Read Megan’s poetry in Mothers Always Write
Read two of Megan’s poems in Rattle: “The Years We Lived in the Desert” and “Road Closure, Aleppo”
Read an interview with Megan in Little Myths

Riley Steiner graduated from Miami University, where she studied Creative Writing and Media & Culture. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she enjoys baking, cheering for the Green Bay Packers, and spending way too much money at Half Price Books. Her creative work has recently appeared in the Oakland Arts Review and Collision.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Feed by Emily Mohn-Slate

This selection comes from Emily Mohn–Slate‘s chapbook, Feed available from Seven Kitchens Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

Emily Mohn–Slate is the author of THE FALLS, winner of the New American Poetry Prize (New American Press, Forthcoming, 2020), and FEED, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her poems and essays can be found in New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches middle and high school English, leads writing workshops in the community, and is a member of The Madwomen in the Attic Workshops at Carlow University.

Krista Cox is a poet, editor, artist, and community organizer based in South Bend, Indiana, but she’s always dreaming of somewhere saltier. Krista’s poetry appears in many fine journals, and she’s presently seeking a publisher for her chapbook How to Kiss a Monster. She’s the Managing Editor of Doubleback Review, a fledgling online journal that features work previously published at now-defunct journals, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection, the longest continuously-publishing online journal on the web. In 2013, Krista founded Lit Literary Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that hosts affordable, accessible writing retreats and otherwise serves her local writing community. Krista received an honors BA in English from Indiana University South Bend. Sometimes she draws fat unicorns and paints cute animals.

Sundress Announces Graphic Design Internship

Sundress Publications Seeks Graphic Design Intern

Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit publishing collective founded in 2000 that hosts a variety of online journals and publishes chapbooks, full-length collections, and literary anthologies in both print and digital formats. Sundress also publishes the annual Best of the Net Anthology, celebrating the best work published online, and the Gone Dark Archives, preserving online journals that have reached the end of their run.

The design internship position will run from November 2019 to April 2020. The design intern will assist with creating flyers & brochures, constructing graphics, book-making, etc. Responsibilities may include designing the interior and exterior of e-books, formatting manuscripts, and/or designing and editing promotional materials.  Applicants must be self-motivated and be able to work on a strict deadline.

Preferred qualifications include: 

  • Familiarity with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and/or Illustrator
  • Experience with book-making, print-making, and/or letterpress 
  • Graphic design experience 
  • Knowledge of contemporary literature a plus

Applicants are welcome to telecommunicate and therefore are not restricted to living in the Knoxville area. 

While this is an unpaid internship, all interns will gain real-world experience in the designing books and promotional materials for a nationally recognized press while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Interns will also be able to attend all workshops at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at cost. 

To apply, please send a resume and a brief cover letter detailing your interest in the position by October 15, 2019 to the Managing Editor, Erin Elizabeth Smith, at erin@sundresspublications.com.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Feed by Emily Mohn-Slate

This selection comes from Emily Mohn–Slate‘s chapbook, Feed available from Seven Kitchens Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

Emily Mohn–Slate is the author of THE FALLS, winner of the New American Poetry Prize (New American Press, Forthcoming, 2020), and FEED, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her poems and essays can be found in New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches middle and high school English, leads writing workshops in the community, and is a member of The Madwomen in the Attic Workshops at Carlow University.

Krista Cox is a poet, editor, artist, and community organizer based in South Bend, Indiana, but she’s always dreaming of somewhere saltier. Krista’s poetry appears in many fine journals, and she’s presently seeking a publisher for her chapbook How to Kiss a Monster. She’s the Managing Editor of Doubleback Review, a fledgling online journal that features work previously published at now-defunct journals, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection, the longest continuously-publishing online journal on the web. In 2013, Krista founded Lit Literary Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that hosts affordable, accessible writing retreats and otherwise serves her local writing community. Krista received an honors BA in English from Indiana University South Bend. Sometimes she draws fat unicorns and paints cute animals.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Feed by Emily Mohn-Slate

This selection comes from Emily Mohn–Slate‘s chapbook, Feed available from Seven Kitchens Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

Emily Mohn–Slate is the author of THE FALLS, winner of the New American Poetry Prize (New American Press, Forthcoming, 2020), and FEED, winner of the Keystone Chapbook Prize (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her poems and essays can be found in New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches middle and high school English, leads writing workshops in the community, and is a member of The Madwomen in the Attic Workshops at Carlow University.

Krista Cox is a poet, editor, artist, and community organizer based in South Bend, Indiana, but she’s always dreaming of somewhere saltier. Krista’s poetry appears in many fine journals, and she’s presently seeking a publisher for her chapbook How to Kiss a Monster. She’s the Managing Editor of Doubleback Review, a fledgling online journal that features work previously published at now-defunct journals, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection, the longest continuously-publishing online journal on the web. In 2013, Krista founded Lit Literary Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that hosts affordable, accessible writing retreats and otherwise serves her local writing community. Krista received an honors BA in English from Indiana University South Bend. Sometimes she draws fat unicorns and paints cute animals.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Truth Is by Avery Moselle Guess

This selection comes from Avery Moselle Guess’s book, The Truth Is available from Black Lawrence Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Krista Cox.

Avery Moselle Guess is a recipient of 2015 NEA Fellowship for Poetry, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and residencies from the Albee Foundation and the Ragdale Foundation. She is a PhD student in creative writing, poetry, at University of South Dakota and assistant editor for poetry at South Dakota Review. Recent and forthcoming publications include poems in Crab Orchard Review, Moon City Review, Thrush, Rogue Agent, Tinderbox, Glass, Rust + Moth, and Deaf Poets Society and creative non-fiction in Entropy and The Manifest-Station.  Her chapbook, The Patient Admits, is out from dancing girl press, and her first full-length collection of poetry, The Truth Is, was published in April 2019 by Black Lawrence Press.

Krista Cox is a poet, editor, artist, and community organizer based in South Bend, Indiana, but she’s always dreaming of somewhere saltier. Krista’s poetry appears in many fine journals, and she’s presently seeking a publisher for her chapbook How to Kiss a Monster. She’s the Managing Editor of Doubleback Review, a fledgling online journal that features work previously published at now-defunct journals, and an Associate Poetry Editor at Stirring: A Literary Collection, the longest continuously-publishing online journal on the web. In 2013, Krista founded Lit Literary Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that hosts affordable, accessible writing retreats and otherwise serves her local writing community. Krista received an honors BA in English from Indiana University South Bend. Sometimes she draws fat unicorns and paints cute animals.

Doubleback Review Seeks Associate Poetry Editor

Doubleback Review Seeks Associate Poetry Editor

Does rifling through poetic lost and found bins sound like your idea of a good time? Do you hate to see good poems disappear into the void? Do you have a weird thing for poems, zombies, and zombie poems? 

Join the Doubleback Review team!

It can be disheartening when a journal where you’ve published goes defunct, taking your work with it. Enter Doubleback Review! We only accept work that was previously published but is no longer available online or in active print circulation. We resuscitate dead art and release it back into the wild. And you can help!

Doubleback Review is looking for an Associate Poetry Editor. This is a remote, volunteer position. Responsibilities include reviewing poetry submissions for bi-annual issues, logging comments in an online database, and participating in virtual editorial meetings a few times a year. We’re looking for someone who is passionate about poetry, communicates openly and skillfully, and is able to self-motivate to work toward long-term deadlines. Previous editing experience is preferred but not required.

If you’re interested, please send your resume and a short cover letter telling us why you’re a good fit for Doubleback Review to Managing Editor Krista Cox at krista@doublebackreview.com.

Upcoming Special Calls for The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe Seeks Manuscripts for Upcoming Special Calls

As a part of Sundress Publications’ ongoing commitment to providing a platform for marginalized voices, Sundress Publications is accepting submissions of previously published books by women and nonbinary authors that honor the following holidays: 

  • November 1: National Authors Day
  • November 20: Transgender Day of Remembrance
  • November 25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
  • December 1: World AIDS Day
  • December 3: National Disability Day

We at Sundress hope to champion writers whose work highlights human struggle and challenges misconceptions. We are looking for work to shed some light on the various topics encompassed above. 

Authors or publishers of books published in the past twelve months may submit to The Wardrobe. To do so, please forward an electronic copy of the book (PDFs preferred), author bio, photo of the cover, and a link to the publisher’s website to wardrobe@sundresspublications.com with the holiday of your choosing in the subject line.  In addition, we request that one print copy be mailed to:

Sundress Academy for the Arts
ATTN: The Wardrobe
195 Tobby Hollow Lane
Knoxville, TN 37931

Submissions to The Wardrobe will remain eligible for our “Best Dressed” selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library. 

For the complete details and rules, please see The Wardrobe website at:
http://sundresspublications.wordpress.com/the-wardrobe/