Tag: Contemporary Poetry

Sundress Reads: Review of Toothache in the Bone

Sundress Reads

Toothache in the Bone (boats against the current, 2025) by Colleen S. Harris is a raw exploration of death, grief, trauma, and resilience. This poetry collection examines the body and its limitations under strain: diagnoses of bone damage and infertility; the death of loved ones; a marriage; and constant hospital visits and struggles with body image. Harris’s poems reflect on the human condition and the complexities of life with chronic illness, revealing physical and emotional scars with vulnerability that leaves an ache in the soul.

Throughout the collection, medical imagery is a recurring motif. Harris uses these vivid depictions to convey the physical experience of illness and show how it affects everyday life and one’s sense of self. Each poem is infused with visual references to needle jabs, broken bones, and allusions to medical terminology, such as macrophages and CRP (C-reactive protein) test numbers. These depictions of physical suffering linger with the reader, showing the deep influence of chronic illness on the speaker’s perception of everyday life.

In “Primum Non Nocere (First, Do No Harm)”, Harris writes: “First you must be patient, a patient / patient, who understands three months / of waiting for the chance to supplicate / to the physician could be worse… // When the day / comes, remember not to use the upper numbers of the pain scale, no nurse / believes anything above an eight” (23). These lines illustrate the speaker’s frustration with a healthcare system that does not adequately serve its patients. The endless cycle of waiting for appointments, enduring blood tests, and interacting with doctors who dismiss her symptoms renders the speaker drained. Her lack of agency in her medical treatment and constant pain creates a sense of helplessness towards her body: “Pain is a marriage, / a commitment, ‘til death do us part” (33). The speaker ultimately accepts that this senseless suffering will always be part of her life. Through this candid depiction of the intense psychological toll of illness, Harris guides us to understand the feeling of being trapped in a body that constantly betrays you. 

A central theme of Toothache in the Bone is coping with loss, grief, and the myriad complex emotions they evoke. Harris engages with loss in its many forms: the loss of health, the loss of reproductive possibility, and the loss of people. In “Rituals of Grief,” Harris grapples with reproductive loss through parallels with the mourning behaviors of elephants and crows. She writes, “Animals know the importance / of company, how a critical mass / of community can sustain grief // at a bearable level” (26). Later, she recounts the experience of losing a pregnancy, writing: “No animal, alone, I am buried / within these walls… // no crowd to wing with me, to step / in solidarity toward your body… // to prove that… I remain beyond your remains (27).

In contrast to the sense of community and shared grief found within elephant and crow groups, Harris highlights the alienation and loneliness that surround sudden loss among humans, particularly the experience of miscarriage. The societal stigma around miscarriage often forces women to grieve their miscarriage privately, internalizing their loss as a personal failure: What is wrong with my body? Why isn’t it working as it should? Without any community support to help her carry the weight of this pain, the speaker falls into a deep depression. Speaking openly about this issue is crucial to normalizing discussion around miscarriage and building community among women and individuals facing similar challenges. 

The thing I find most compelling about this collection is its unapologetic discussion of death and the nuances of the grieving process. Harris artfully describes the range of emotions that arise when navigating loss. In “On Letting Go of the Dying,” the speaker mourns both the death of her dog and her dying marriage. On witnessing the last moments of a beloved pet, Harris writes: “My mother / made me see his ribs pushing their way rudely through / his skin / I was not brave / when I carried him for the last / time… // Five / years passed before I could reach into the too small box to spoon // his ashes into a pendant…” (23). Through the use of visceral imagery, Harris illustrates the speaker’s confrontation with death, its brutality on the body, and its permanence. Death is often perceived as a biological, inevitable reality of life. Harris voices the fear and heartbreak of witnessing a loved one’s final days. It is a type of sorrow that never truly leaves you.

The latter half of the poem shifts in tone as Harris redirects the reader’s attention to the unhappy marriage. Harris describes it as a “skeletal, / gasping thing,” writing, “I needed // no memento, did not want to drown in the ashes. I wore my / good red dancing shoes instead” (24). Like shedding layers of old skin, the speaker is relieved to cast off her dying marriage and start life anew. Harris uses this juxtaposition to emphasize that accepting loss is not always negative; at times, it is a necessary process for growth and survival.

I have never read a poetry collection as devastating as Toothache in the Bone. I found myself moved by its honest discussions of illness, death, and body image, particularly in “Primum Non Nocere,” “Nel Mezzo Del Cammin di Nostra Vita,” and “I Dreamt I Was Unblemished.” Harris’s unflinching account of coming to terms with illness and loss reverberated deep in my bones, staying with me long after I finished reading. Her ability to articulate difficult human emotions, such as self-hate and sorrow, allows the collection to resonate with readers both with and without chronic conditions. In this collection, Colleen S. Harris masterfully gives voice to the hidden pain that our bodies hold.

A South Asian woman smiling and sitting on a green couch. She has black hair, half lying over her right shoulder and half down her back, and is wearing a wine-red turtleneck. Behind her are two closed window curtains, one light blue and floral print, and the other solid teal.

Tara Rahman (she/her) is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MSc in Global Development from SOAS, University of London. She is also a recent graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course in Oxford, UK. With a strong interest in culture, identity, and global history, her personal writing often focuses on intersectionality and the untold stories and experiences of marginalized communities.

An Interview with Sarah Clark and Ashely Adams, Editors of ALOCASIA: 99 queer writers on plants and nature

Following the release of ALOCASIA’s new poetry anthology, 99 queer writers on plants and nature, editors Sarah Clark and Ashely Adams spoke with Sundress editorial intern Tara Rahman. Here, they discussed the poetics of botanical terminology, the resilience of queer plant and human communities in surviving and thriving in harsh environments, and the important work of protecting and cultivating Indigenous identities, knowledge, and wildlife in the face of oppressive and exclusionary systems. Together, they imagine new possibilities of being with the natural world—of burning away the dry brush and clearing the way for new bonds to grow.

Tara Rahman: Why did you choose the plant name, ALOCASIA, as the title for this anthology?

Sarah Clark and Ashely Adams: The title of the anthology is derived from the magazine’s name ALOCASIA. Now, where did the magazine’s name come from? It’s the name of a plant genus found in the Aroid family (the family many common house plants are part of). They have an interesting growth habit where they spring up from tubers or rhizomes as bunches of stalks with these shield-like leaves.

They have also been endlessly manipulated for visual aesthetic. I’m not sure if there was a deeper meaning at the time than it was a good sounding name, and we were very much into houseplants. Funny enough, Sarah doesn’t even own any alocasias due to their tendency to pick up pests. (Ashely did, and they did indeed end up with mealy bugs every time).

TR: Can you speak to the usage of scientific or botanical names of plants in these poems?

SC and AA: While we can’t speak for the authors, our feeling is that plant names carry immense meaning. There is a poetry, a literacy, in botanical terminology. There’s a delight in learning and applying terms like petiole, umbral, or extrafloral nectaries. Someone could write a whole book on the implications of scientific names (a “universal” name derived from a long dead language) or how common names twist and turn over time.

For example: the false Solomon’s seal is a common perennial found across North America. Just looking at the name, we can infer that there is some sort of “true” Solomon’s seal and that some characteristic of it reminded people of Solomon’s seal. Furthermore, we can guess that this is a name that came after colonization. We can ask all sorts of questions from there. What were the Indigenous names for the plant? What about this humble plant inspired settlers to invoke religious iconography? What makes a thing the “false” version of another? We’ve generated so many things we could explore within poetry with just one plant.

TR: Gardens, succulents (e.g., saguaros), and other houseplants are recurring images throughout the anthology. What is their significance? How do they reflect the lived experiences of queer individuals?

SC and AA: We build so many connections to the plants we cultivate. As writers, we’re drawn to interrogate the connections we make, especially the ones closest to us. Beyond the “write what you know” aspect, there’s tension at the heart of cultivation. Change must happen both in the plant and the caretaker for the relationship to work, just as change must happen to ensure the survival (and hopefully more) of a queer person in often hostile environments. M.P. Rosalia’s poem, “sapling, taken from the northern pacific coast, kept in a jar” is a great illustration of this. The sapling, despite being cared for by the speaker of the poem, cannot survive within the confines of the jar. It is a being meant for sun and immense space.

TR: Many poems in the anthology consider ideas of queer sensuality, such as “Dry Love” and “looking for a soft place to land.” How does the image of nature connect to or embody queer desire?

SC and AA: Plants, from a human perspective, are very strange organisms. They communicate in chemical networks hidden to the naked eye. They create their own energy from water and sunlight. They reproduce through insect intermediaries, the wind, water, even from shards of themselves. They can be male, female, both, or neither. Everything we adore and survive on comes from the sexual peculiarities of plants. The question isn’t so much how does a plant embody queer desire but how it could be anything but?

TR: In “Plancestors,” Rebecca Kinkade-Black writes, “‘We are all connected’ / is not just some trite phrase / It is remembrance / that we are all unified by the molecules that make us.” Tell me about the importance of building community with our queer planty relatives, and the importance of recognizing the diverse “systems of connection” that make up our existence.

SC and AA: We want to give an answer beyond the practical reasons (like “need food”). Society pressures queer people to act a certain way, to be normal, be natural. However, when you study plants, you find that what thrives in nature goes beyond anything that humans can imagine. Anyone who really opens themselves to learning the realities of biology opens themselves to the possibility of being. As Kinkada-Black illustrated, our furthest relatives are our relatives and we can draw on their ways of survival to benefit our own.

TR: Ashely: Tell me more about your choice of language, syntax, and form in “Prescribed Burn,” such as the use of dialogue and definitions.

AA: I’m a sucker for a braided essay. I love putting disparate elements together and letting a reader build connections. I like to think it creates personal narratives in less expected ways. I also confess I kind of hate writing in the “I” voice in my nonfiction. This is definitely one of my more “personal” personal narratives.

I also love using the language from the natural sciences. My first degree was in fisheries and wildlife. I am always excited when I can bring together that life into my writing. There’s always that tension when you sit the scientific next to more lyrical writing. I feel that tension gives you a better appreciation for each type of writing. I certainly didn’t come to appreciate everything I learned in my undergrad until I switched to creative writing pursuing my advanced degrees.

Finally, I think all these tensions can allow us to look at discourses we’re saturated with (in this case, gender-based violence and discrimination) with a sense of surprise and curiosity. It pushes a reader to think of the quiet ways oppression shapes the way we look and approach the world. A hike in the Florida scrub is laden with risk and privilege and burden.

TR: In “Mother of Thousands,” Nikki Wallschlaeger writes, “…I ask you to take the batteries out of the clanging wall clock before I go to sleep to prevent the supremacist art of domestication from permeating my dreams.” How does capitalist exploitation and domination over the natural world intersect with systemic inequality and the marginalization of certain communities?

SC and AA: This is the flip side of your question on connections. To maintain hierarchies, there has to be a breaking of bonds–not just between people, but the land they occupy as well.

When you break these bonds, you get this cascading system of exclusion and oppression. I think Marcy Rae Henry demonstrates this well in the poem “Los saguaros are being destroyed”. Boundaries are drawn on fluid landscapes for nation-states to claim. The claim leads to oppression of the beings who dare to occupy the space in contradiction of the nation-state’s will, no matter how long they were there before the powers that be: “…saguros can live two centuries / As long as this country has been / Longer than this f r o n t e r a”.

The poet correctly states that the removal of the saguaro is done as a means to remove people. And these ideas of worth and humanity are fluid, ever shifting depending on what those at the top of the hierarchy deem as valuable. One area of wilderness is a wasted economic opportunity while another is a paradise worthy of utmost preservation. The removal of saguaro is a serious crime unless it’s done in service of a border wall.

TR: Many of these poems juxtapose imagery of the natural world with capitalist, corporate landscapes, such as in “i want clean water dammit,” “the office // the after,” and “An Anti-Pastoral.” How can we reconcile this “simultaneously / medicinal & poisonous” (from “An-Anti Pastoral”) relationship between humanity and the environment that surrounds us? How can we reimagine our relationship with the natural world?

SC and AA: Despite the aims of capitalism and bigotry, humans inherently crave connection. It’s arguably the reason the species has been so successful. It’s our instinct to bond with other beings, even non-human ones. It’s one of the deeply charming things about humans. We’ll look at a plant and declare it our friend and confidant, 1.5 billion years of evolutionary separation be damned. Obviously, human development imperils many organisms, but we hope the writers of this anthology show ways we might build partnership with the natural world, even as we become more urbanized. A spider fern in an apartment window can be a challenge to the corporate world–an existence based not on monetary value, but its beauty and tenacity and plain existence.

TR: In “Prescribed Burn,” the speaker states, “Still, I bend down…and think a better future is possible. One where we listen to those who have suffered. One where we let the fires burn.” How can we imagine a future that is more sustainable for marginalized communities, both human and plant? What kinds of burnings would need to take place?

SC and AA: When you suppress fires in fire-dependent ecosystems, dead vegetation builds up into dangerous fuel loads. These fuel loads are one of the reasons we are now experiencing some of the most devastating wildfires in modern history. Much like our land, our communities are being buried in these fuel loads, ready to ignite into radicalization and stochastic violence. To survive, we must find ways to remove this dead weight, these dry ideas and systems, and allow something new and healthy to grow in its place.

TR: Which poem in this anthology resonate most with you and why?

AA: One of the pieces I was drawn to was arushi (aera) rege’s poem “nuclear winter, burning planet”. I’m a sucker for an apocalyptic vibe and the challenge that comes in imagining and even loving a life in ruin.

SC: They’re all my babies (or should I say propagations)! It’s so hard to choose just one, but…

The use of National Park Service information cards as a format to explore trans identity and desire and anxieties. The metaphor of a trans person’s life as a nurse log, a tree that sustains the life of other young trees and plants, is really affecting.

The expectations, realities, and hope in Talicha J.’s “another year sprouts” connect with me profoundly. I’ve gotten so many ming aralias, and tell myself this time it’ll be different, this time I’ll be different.

Sreeja Naskar’s three poems “i unsaint myself in front of the mirror,” “after they left, the garden wouldn’t bloom / but the weeds did,” and “she left in autumn and everything I’ve planted since has grown teeth” that are an emotional journey linking the botanical world with profoundly queer love and equally profound loss are perennial favorites.

With the world being what it is, who doesn’t want to just smoke some oui’d with the ancestors surrounded and held by green space? June Beck’s “A text message to a New York Navajo” totally gets it.

Anangookwe Wolf’s “i want clean water god dammit” begins with a remembrance interrupted by the insistence of colonialism, industrialism, capitalist expansion and extraction.

It weaves through the centuries of loss of indigenous identity and wildlife, our struggles and strides to protect and cultivate it, and then culminates in the ferocious, but reasonable demand “i don’t want concrete                                I want clean water.”

I feel this one in my marrow.

ALOCASIA: 99 queer writers on plants and nature is available to order now!

Sarah Clark is a disabled two-spirit Nanticoke editor, writer, and freelance editor and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at ANMLY, EIC at beestung, and Co-editor of the Bettering American Poetry series, and a Board member at Sundress Publications. They were co-editor of two folios at Apogee Journal, #NoDAPL #Still Here folio, and their series WE OUTLAST EMPIRE and Place[meant]. You can find them at: https://linktr.ee/sarah_clark.

Ashely Adams is a Michigan-based writer and educator whose work explores both present and ancient ecologies. Her writing has appeared in Flyway, The Fourth River, and other places.

Tara Rahman is a Sundress editorial intern with a BA in English Language and Literature from Smith College and an MSc in Global Development from SOAS, University of London. With a strong interest in culture, identity, and global history, her personal writing focuses on intersectionality and the untold stories of marginalized communities.

Sundress Reads: Review of Souvenirs from Another Life

Sundress Reads

Leah Browning’s Souvenirs from Another Life (Quiet Ocean Studio & Press, 2026) is the first full-length short fiction collection from the author, but the latest in a long line of chapter books, non-fiction, and poetry. With over thirty publications having originally featured many of the stories, this collection is an amalgamation of multiple years of work and dedication to the craft. At its core, the collection is a series of vignettes featuring life at its truest: in relation to others. From first loves to last days, the shutter closes on glimpses of parents, children, friends, lovers, and strangers as they navigate what it means to live a life.

In form, Souvenirs from Another Life is diverse. Its diversity is most evident in its inclusion of everything from full-length literary fiction to microfiction. The variation in the length, content, and perspective of each story maintains an engaging pace. With every page turned, completely new expectations are set. In theme, it feels almost voyeuristic, looking on at these faceless characters as they navigate the most arduous or joyous days of their lives. They have plain names and minimal physical descriptions, lending to that anonymity. We absorb these moments in singularity, often completely unaware of their backstory. 

This book is the embodiment of the feeling when you are sitting at a cafe, sipping on your americano, when two best friends sit down at the table beside you. Just over the noise of the busy street, you overhear fragments of their conversation. One of them is breaking up with their boyfriend or dealing with a terrible landlord. You know you are eavesdropping, and you know you should not, but curiosity gets the better of you. That quiet thrill is what keeps you reading Souvenirs from Another Life.

In particular, the collection truly shines in its briefest stories. While the few plots that were linked were always fascinating, I found myself most struck by the ones that lasted a few mere paragraphs.

As I read on, I was particularly intrigued by the idea of absence. Without being able to sit with a character for very long, there is an intentional lack of intimacy between the reader and the narrator. You are being held at arm’s length by the form while Browning’s high stakes and distinct characterization pull you closer. But the less there is to know, the more room it gives for the reader to insert their own thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations. It invites an open dialogue, encouraging you to contend with the story and reflect on your own memories.

“If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” Often wrongly attributed, the quote can be traced to a philosopher, Blaise Pascal. During my undergraduate studies in Creative Writing, my professors often cited a similar idea. Series are easier to master than a standalone novel. A short story is painstaking. A poem is completely, utterly excruciating. A single sentence can torment you.

See, an excerpt from “WORLDS,” a story that, in length, was under a page:

“But in the middle of the night, she’d lent me a toothbrush, and I’d watched her floss her teeth” (Browning 95).

In under twenty words, Browning masterfully presents setting, character, and action. Newness, uncertainty, and awe permeate the world of the narrator. There is an air of domesticity working in contrast to unfamiliarity. It is almost tangible. The cool night air, the white tiles, the silence. But all of that is there without actually being said. It is that absence that allows you to make a world feel whole without a whole novel to bring it to life. The story is colored by your own memory of longing. It is an invitation to reflect.

The intent of the collection is epitomized in the title story of the collection, from the point of view of an unnamed character:

“The photographs I found all over the apartment were proof that these things had happened: my courtship, my wedding, the birth of my child” (Browning 142).

At its most literal level, the narrator examines souvenirs of a life that was once hers but no longer is. We feel her grief, her regret, and her remorse. Many of these emotions permeate these stories, prompting the audience to use an insular moment to imagine a life that they are not privy to. Perhaps it even evokes nostalgia for former versions of ourselves. Times when we were still in love with that girl, living with our college roommate, or simply a time in which we did not understand heartbreak in the way we do now. The stories in this collection are steeped in sentimentality for life, in all its beauty and all its discomfort. It is an act of remembrance about what it means to be human. 

The last line of the collection reads, “As she crossed the yard, Stacy had watched her, feeling the metal of the house key, warm against her skin” (Browning 220).

As we cross into the next chapter of our lives, may we always use Browning’s examination of memory as a reminder to look at our own souvenirs with grace and reverence for our past selves.

Souvenirs from Another Life is available from Quiet Ocean Studio & Press.

Reina Maiden-Navarro is an editor, writer, and photographer. She recently graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in Film & Media Studies and a minor in Creative Writing, cum laude. She also works as an Editor at Prompt and an Outreach Coordinator at Bookstr. If she is not reading or writing, she can be found traveling, painting, or baking cookies.

An Interview with Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, Author of An Interview with Fear

A sage green book cover with the large heading reading "Craft Chaps" at the very center top. Below the heading is the book's title, "An Interview with Fear" in golden yellow font, and beneath the title is the author's name, Xochilt-Julisa Bermejo. The cover features an 8x6 grid of green squares gradually transitioning into a lighter shade of green and developing rounded edges as they reach the bottom edge of the cover.

Upon the release of her craft chap essay, An Interview with Fear, author Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo spoke with Sundress Publications editorial intern Rachel Bulman on political memory, the difference between monuments and memorials, the sensitive nature of writing about others’ grief, and what it means to write in community with those you love.

Rachel Bulman: How did you decide the structure of the text and the balance of chronology? 

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo: I was on residency at Jentel in Wyoming when I wrote this essay. Being in residency gave me many unobstructed hours to read and think, which allowed me space to excavate my memories differently and to expand beyond one experience in one place and one  time. For example, I was reading Melissa Febos’ Body Work. In her essay, “A Big Shitty Party,” she writes, “When I think of narrative truth—the truth that lies beyond the verifiable facts of an  event—I picture a prism, with as many facets as there are people affected. When a writer chooses  to publish their version, the facet becomes the one visible beyond the scope of people involved… It is hideously unfair.” (95) While I was writing about a residency at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania and the racism and war glorification I experienced there, Febos’  words encouraged me to think beyond Gettysburg to a story about a friend’s grief and Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen. It also allowed me to ask my friend for permission to write about her, which I’d never done before.  

RB: The reflections in this piece are not solely from time spent on your residency, so how do they reflect a wider experience of your life as a whole? 

XJB: While composing this essay, what came to the surface was the connection of public places for memory and monument. Being a poet in residence at Gettysburg was a strange experience. It’s a battleground and cemetery. Over 50,000 people died over a three-day battle. I was living on hallowed ground, but it’s also a museum. While death changes and transforms all things,  Gettysburg is insistent on not changing. That’s kind of what we’ve been facing as a nation. There  are people desperate for change. It’s a matter of life and death, but the powers that be want to  keep the status quo. While I was in Gettysburg, I felt a lot of fear and confusion. Being able to compare it to another public place of death and memorial helped me better understand why I was there in the first place. In the end, I’ve learned that I grow and change from the experience of knowing the women in my life, from honoring my ancestors, and from honoring the ancestors of  my sisters. I’m grateful for the experience gifting me this new understanding of myself and the world.  

RB: At what point in the writing process did you reach your conclusion on the purpose of facing fear; not just to understand but to overcome?  

XJB: Writing is about process for me. I don’t know where a piece will go when I start it. I have an idea. I have something I want to write about—a lesson, an experience, a memory—but the why presents itself through the writing. I would have never made the connection between death and transformation, or the difference between monuments and memorials, if it weren’t for being in residency at Jentel and having all that time to read and think, and to try something new. It’s  what I love about residencies. They let you be brave.  

RB: Of the myriad themes and takeaways from this book, why did you decide to conclude on the transformational power of love?

XJB: It’s what I write about. It’s who I am, or who I want to be, at my core. I recently had a near-death experience (sounds dramatic, but true), and rereading this essay made me realize that my work, what I do, prepared me to meet this newest scary moment with some tools, as small as they were. I just hope I can help other people know that love is always there if they need it. There are so many scary things happening in our world, but what matters, I think, at least today, is how we meet the moment and stay open to what’s possible through care, comfort, and love.  

RB: As is clear in the opening, you don’t shy away from political commentary in the text. Was  there anything you chose to omit from the book, or anything you included but had reservations about? Why? 

XJB: I’ve always been outspoken. I don’t know. I was a teen in the ‘90s, and everything I read and watched told me to be outspoken. It’s only recently that I’ve started to think more about how I speak about current events, especially in interviews like this, because interviews are perceived  differently, and you don’t always know what parts will be used. But when it comes to my art, when it comes to crafting and composing, I will always be outspoken and say what I want to say in the most beautiful way I can. 

RB: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is described as a reason you applied for the residency, but in what ways, if at all, did its contents and message influence this book, or you, as you were writing? 

XJB: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was all I knew about Gettysburg when I first went. It’s a marker of my naiveté in the situation. Again, I grew up idolizing Lincoln, King, X. I loved John Lennon. I watched A Different World and The Wonder Years. Newsies was one of my favorite movies. I was either going to be a hippie or a union organizer. My senior year of high school, I was reading books about the Chicano Movement. My freshman year of college at San Francisco State, I attended my first police brutality rallies. I grew up thinking we all wanted a just world,  but seeing what’s happened to our country in the last 10 years has been a great shock to my  sixteen-year-old self. The Gettysburg Address is a symbol of that tragedy.  

RB: You say “Monuments are men’s work. Memorializing, women’s.” Can you speak further to this end, and the gendered divide you observed during your residency? 

XJB: Of course, this is a generalization, but it seems to me that patriarchies only care about keeping power, and often through intimidation. Monuments are not for remembering good works. Monuments are for keeping the populace in line. They are stone examples of “Big Brother,” if you will. On the other end of the spectrum, matriarchies are about mutual aid and community care. Memorials are about honoring those who came before us that made today (and tomorrow) possible. They’re about creating space for care. 

RB: In terms of pushing back against fear with comfort and community, could you talk more about how you felt equipped to face the ghosts, so to speak, at the Klingel House?

XJB: For one, I don’t do anything alone. Any story or poem I write, any publication, any award or opportunity, is only made possible by the support I receive from my family and my  community. I write in community. I submit in community. Gettysburg was the same way. I was very scared, but thankfully, there were people in my life willing to hold that fear with me. A friend drove me to Gettysburg and stayed the night. Two other friends travelled from New York City on separate weekends. I like to think of myself as an independent person. I like to wander  away from the crowd and see what happens when I turn the corner away from everyone, but I can only do that because I know my people are watching me go. I’m never too far out of reach.  

RB: The text engages head-on with fear, but what were some of the fears you faced while  writing it? 

XJB: The biggest fear I had was how to write about other people and the opportunity as a whole. The residency was an award and a gift, so it’s a tricky situation. You don’t want to bite the hand,  and all. But I also have to honor my truth, so how do I do that in the most respectful way? And then there are the other people in the story. Usually, when I write, I go tunnel vision into my own  perspective. It’s mine after all—don’t I own it? But this time I wanted to practice another tactic. It’s scary to try something new. It was difficult to ask my friend for permission to write about something extremely painful that happened to her. Thankfully, she supports my writing and was grateful for her and her son to be included.  

RB: Could you speak to the inclusion of the “Interview with Fear” workbook at the end of the text, and how a reader should approach the tasks? 

XJB: Typically, these craft chap series include prompts. I thought it would be fun to include the activities I use in class, and to make it more like a workbook. I encourage writers to try them, and I encourage teachers to think about how to incorporate them in their classes. Writing is scary! One thing I hope this craft chapbook shows is that there are ways of making the act of writing a little more comforting and fun. 

An Interview with Fear is available to download on the Sundress website now

A headshot of a Chicana woman looking off wistfully to her right side. She wears a silver pendant necklace, an elegant black top, has black curly hair that is graying at the roots, and she stands against a completely black background.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a Chicana poet, educator, and community organizer. She is the author of Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites and Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured in Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and in the anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, highlighting her growing national recognition. Inspired by her Chicana identity and her experiences as an activist, Bermejo’s work seeks to cultivate love, resilience, and comfort in chaotic times while amplifying marginalized voices. 

The side profile of a pale-skinned woman wearing glasses and a grey baseball cap as she looks off to her right side. In the background is a scenic body of water, greenery on the horizon line, and a clear blue sky.

Rachel Bulman (she/her) holds a BA in English and Creative Writing as well as an MA in Publishing from the University of Exeter, specialising in interactive and children’s fiction. Her written work, from non-fiction to poetry, script and prose, has appeared in Wolf Grove Media’s The Book of Choices, Velvet Fields, and Exeposé, among others. Find her eclectic portfolio on Instagram @worm.can.read, through her online portfolio, or ask the bridge troll who taught him his riddles three.

Sundress Reads: Review of Blind to the Prairie

Sundress Reads black and white logo featuring a bespectacled sheep drinking tea, reading a book, and sitting on a stool.
Book cover of Blind to the Prairie featuring blues and yellows, including an illustrated farm as seen from above.

Blind to the Prairie (Bottlecap Press, 2025) by Tate Lewis-Carroll is a slow and tender reflection on seeing. In this collection of haiku, Lewis-Carroll captures the rhythms of the Midwestern landscape, capturing the very moments of its emptiness and subtle abundance. The chapbook invites the reader to slow down and notice the thin seam between perception and disappearance, in contrast to the fast-paced, modernized world around us. Through astonishing precision and modesty, Lewis-Carroll transforms the ordinary scenes of fields and geese into revelations of mindfulness, weaved between the philosophies of to see and to be seen.

Blind to the Prairie might appear deceptively small, yet each “breath-length” poem expands into an entire ecosystem of sound and silence. The chapbook opens with a preface in which Lewis-Carroll elaborates on their belief in the connection between haiku, nature, and peace of the mind. It reads like a manifesto, saying, “Our bowls are too easily filled. Our bones have become too dense for flight.” Haiku, a Japanese poetry form interwoven with the emptiness of the natural world, serves as a practice of unburdening, of learning to be filled with nothing. That philosophy reverberates through the collection, where the poet’s eye does not seek meaning in the prairie, so much as dissolve into it.

Early poems establish Lewis-Carroll’s blend of humor and careful, creative observations, reading,

“spring recital—

the clarinet section

wets their reeds.” ( Lewis-Carroll 3)

Through a simple metaphor, Lewis-Carroll makes the ephemeral tangible, depicting spring as a performance of lively beings rather than a season of unmovables. Similarly, they also draw the stagnant into the living through seven, simply syllables: “morning mist— / my neighbor’s silo comes and goes” (3), whereby personifying a man-made to be transient as fog, Lewis-Carroll captivates us into a world where the economic, sturdy beings are humbled to the natural world, creating a harmonious collaboration between what has been perceived as nonintersecting. Later, in a delightfully wry turn, “storming— / sunny / on TV” (4), the poet captures the absurd disjunction between mediated weather and lived weather, creating a funny contrast between the storm outside and the screen’s detached forecast.

These brief poems, though light in touch, are deeply anchored in observation. Blind to the Prairie documents a world in motion yet perpetually still. In “beyond fields, more fields,” Lewis-Carroll encapsulates the endlessness of the Midwest, the wandering of infinity where the flatness is perceived as both a physical landscape and a philosophical stance. Here, the repetition of “fields” suggests monotony and wonder, in which Lewis-Carroll sends forward an invitation to see sameness as an art of infinite variation.

Midway through the book, the haibun “White Prairie Fringed Orchid” acts as centerpiece, rooting the entire collection. Written in prose, it begins as a travelogue through Illinois farmland and turns into a reflection on the effects of environmental neglect. The narrator observes “litter glitters in sunlight among the overgrowth of clovers and poverty grass,” before discovering the endangered white prairie fringed orchid, framed as a delicate survivor in a field of monocropping corn. When the poet calls to the farmer, asking him to name this rare bloom, the farmer replies, “Weed.” That single word sets up the book’s tension, crafting and navigating the distance between human attention and voluntary blindness. The haibun does a great job of setting the scene and theme of the entire chapbook— which revolves around the often neglected details of nature. The piece prose highlights the theme of environmental pollution and contamination, weaved in between the scenes of nature appreciation.

This haibun recalls the ethical waves of Bashō’s journeys, yet it is distinctly American in its landscape and critique. The Midwest, with its “27 million acres of Illinois farmland” (10), becomes a mirror for human detachment from the natural world. Lewis-Carroll writes without scolding, and instead layers the piece with a blend of irony and tenderness: even in describing environmental destruction, there remains a tone of gratitude for what survives.

Lewis-Carroll’s language is spare yet sophisticated. Each poem functions under a haiku lens, bending light just enough to reveal the subtle textures of daily life. There is restraint in their use of sound with soft alliterations and consonants that mimic the rhythm of breath and the soft, capricious winds of nature. Their attention to line breaks is also impeccable with intentional designs of pauses. Take “ball of twine— / holding nothing together but itself (11)” as an example. The line break embodies the poem’s meaning: a taut suspension that almost, but not quite, holds.

Blind to the Prairie stands out for its craftsmanship. Bottlecap Press’s presentation of a crisp layout and generous white space, along with the luminous cover painting by Harold Gregor, all supports a minimalist aesthetic. The design and aesthetic of this book feels like an extension of its content, the sprouting of profoundness in the unassuming.

These poems in Blind to the Prairie will make you look twice at roadside weeds, moonlight and the cadence of your own breath. They restore wonder to the everyday and ask what it means to see truly. In a culture that moves too quickly, this collection offers the potency of stillness as a form of resistance and pensive, astute observation.

Blind to the Prairie is available from Bottlecap Press

Penny Wei is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She can be seen on Dialogist, The Weight Journal, Inflectionism, Headmistress Press and elsewhere. She has been recognized by The Word Works, Longfellow House and more. She loves cultural journalism.

Sundress Reads: Review of At the Window, Silence

Sundress Reads logo, which shows a sheep reading, with glasses on and a book. Logo is black and white.
Cover of book "At the Window, Silence." Cover image shows a dainty plant in autumn or late summer.

Part modern and part reminiscent of Romantic era poetry, At the Window, Silence (Fernwood Press, 2025) by Kenneth Pobo elicits the reader’s emotional side through combining commonly identifiable experiences with arresting phrases. The first half of the collection, titled “Inside,” traipses through a wide variety of topics, from family to religion and beauty, while the second half, titled “Outside,” homes in on the garden and plants, often using them to explore philosophy and self-reflection. Gardeners will enjoy the specific plant references, both the lovely, wanted chosen and the horrid, unwanted weeds. You might be taken by surprise, as I was, to find Pobo’s words and stories grip your heart and squeeze tears out.

Although “Inside” spans diverse themes, the stories, and often frank method of telling them, keeps the reader intrigued. My favorite poem from this section, “Marriage and Canned Peaches,” transports the reader into the exact scenario of the story, mentally and emotionally. Many of us have experienced being in a long-term, and rather sad, relationship. Pobo really captures the hopeless despair when he writes:

  “We sit on opposite sides
   of her sad eyes, then talk of work,

   the moon trapped like a key
   that broke in a lock.” (Pobo 18)

Other poems have a touch of humor, like the set that explores the sin of Adam and Eve and asks, “Why do our kids never ask / about our pasts?” (Pobo 39). This set needs basic biblical familiarity to appreciate, but both Christians and non-Christians alike will identify with the questions and points. Pobo points out that sometimes God can be harsh: “One mistake and you’re out” of the garden of Eden (Pobo 39). Pobo advocates for mercy, saying that everyone makes mistakes, and maybe we should “get some fireproof tongs” to pull out those sent to Hell for just one mistake (Pobo 41).

Just as abruptly as Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden, we leave the myriad collection of “Inside” behind and step into “Outside,” the more focused and fine-tuned part of the book. With Romantic-type connections between nature and emotions, Pobo uses different plant species to study aspects of his own history and self. Everyone will find something emotionally pretty outside: dreams, fragility, and surprising loves.

The piece that gleams most brightly for me in At the Window, Silence is “Blue Himalayan Poppy,” in which the blue poppy represents something you want, but really won’t work with your current life, yet you illogically avow to possess anyway. Pobo orders his precious blue poppy, despite not being in the right climate for it. There are some things we can change about our lives and some things we can’t. Since he cannot move to the paradise of the Pacific Northwest where both himself and the blue poppy would flourish, Pobo proclaims he will help it thrive nonetheless in sweaty Pennsylvania, and “Blue petal waves / will find our yard’s shoreline, / break and break all spring long” (Pobo 61). Pobo makes the best of his life on the East Coast, filling his garden with his dreams.

Not all plants are things of beauty like the blue poppy, and our days are often filled with weeds that need pulling up. Another poem very relevant to our modern lives is “Weeding Borders,” which discusses the topic of boundary setting. Pobo points out that even if we plant strong borders with those we love, those borders start to grow weeds and will eventually disappear without maintenance. It takes effort to keep gardening what we want to grow, and to keep even our most beloved inside their borders. In simple, relatable language, Pobo says:

  “Tonight

   I’m going to sit by Stan
   and not talk about work,
   neaten the border, make it
   possible for beauty, slowly,
   to come into blossom.” (Pobo 63)

Throughout this collection, one recurring idea is that although “to err is human,” as Alexander Pope has said, we must keep trying. Weeds will try to grow, and we must continue to pluck them out. Work will try to invade our personal lives, and we must set boundaries with our time. Loved ones might try to make unfair demands, and we must balance our own needs. Pobo communicates that we should approach mistakes with understanding and forgiveness. We’ve all regretted some action, and Pobo reminds us it’s just a part of our humanity. In this book, even Adam forgives Eve, saying he might have done the same, if the snake had found him first, and

  “Maybe Judas, freed,
   will email Jesus and say,
   Hey, I goofed. Sorry.” (Pobo 41)

And that’s all that’s needed.

At the Window, Silence offers everyday loveliness and mercy for everyone, and I recommend it for most adult readers. Home gardeners will especially appreciate the “Outside” poems. This collection is best enjoyed either in private or with close friends, in case it sparks strong emotion, and is best read in your own backyard. I would also like to recommend the following tea pairing with this book: Garden Therapy Herbal Tea. This tea combines familiar and soothing herbs with a touch of special verbena, allowing you to relax in a quietly fresh garden scent while reading from either side of your window.

At the Window, Silence is available from Fernwood Press

Ana Mourant sitting on grass reading a book. She has light skin and blonde hair, has a sunflower in her hair, and is wearing a green sundress.

Ana Mourant (she/her) 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, edits, and proofreads, as well as provides 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.

Sundress Reads: Review of small earthly space

Sundress Reads logo, which shows a sheep reading, with glasses on and a book. Logo is black and white.
small earthly space book cover, which shows a red poppy blossom with a starry sky in the background

With an intriguing curlew bird guiding the reader on a journey of metaphysical thoughts and poppies dancing us from page to page, small earthly space (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025) by Marjorie Maddox is an enchanting collection of poems that mix the everyday with the spiritual and preternatural. Part nature writing and part musing on the human experience, this book will cause you to pause and reflect, both to appreciate the grandeur of the prose and to enjoy being struck by the meanings. Unique artworks by Karen Elias are perfectly paired with each poem, and I would personally love several of them displayed on my wall next to their inspirations.

Divided into five parts, small earthly space begins with an introduction to the messenger—the curlew—who has some saintly connections it forages for, when not burrowing deep for its own sustenance. “How far down would you go for wisdom?” (Maddox 23) we are asked, while the curlew takes us to the depths of the ocean before showing us the fine line that separates heaven from earth above. At times, the poetry has a mysterious vibe, and at other times, a more worldly one. The curlew sketches the spiritual for us, after which “another Babel [is] reconstructed in our own image” (Maddox 24) and we enter the human-focused world.

Part II brings us sharply to poetry about the everyday: about a mother sitting quietly, about a home, and about eating blueberry pie at a cemetery. We’re walked through a junkyard and deathbed before getting to rejoin nature with a gentle poem of clouds and dandelions. After the more transcendental topics of Part I, Part II feels like we’ve landed on the ground, and are walking around observing everyday life from within rather than soaring around it. Part III contains a few poems about an intense wildfire that happened in the town of Curlew, Washington. We meet our curlew bird again, this time as a witness to the destruction from the wildfire. Topics of devastation and danger feature in this section, along with some environmental poetry about endangered species, including humans. Our curlew witness calls out into the loneliness of the wildfire-ravaged ecosystem and gets no response. Maddox helps the reader experience the loneliness of the burned landscape before we’re whisked away to Part IV and a more stellar atmosphere.

A curlew bird is bending down, examining a bright red poppy it has just discovered. The ground is grey and seems desolate, as if it might be on the moon or an alien planet. In the background is a starry sky with a purple nebula and a crescent moon or planet.
Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy

My favorite poem from this collection opens Part IV: “Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy.” The curlew remembers the beauty of the poppies before the destruction and

  “un-buries instead the curved
  brilliance of joy, hallucinates
  a happiness addictive enough
  to be real.” (Maddox 76)

The reader feels wonder and awe again, at the beauty Earth offers us. We then sail through a set of poppy-themed poems, each lovely and paired with a custom artwork, as seen in the accompanying image here by Elias. As a fan of nature poetry, I love seeing this themed section. We read of a poppy’s connection with a cedar tree and glimpse the poppy’s personality (sometimes shy, sometimes bold), which introduces us to the last part of this book called “Bloom.”

Most of the pieces in this book fit on one page or two opposing pages, but two pieces are longer: “Made to Scale” and “Hues of the Hollyhock.” “Made to Scale” treats us to a more extensive writing about beginnings and endings and opportunities. In a forest of possibilities, everything depends on your own views and actions. Maddox repeats the following idea in multiple ways throughout the poem: “It is only a door if you enter or leave” (Maddox 47). After all, if you don’t use it, what may be a door might as well be a stone wall.

The second long poem of the book opens Part V, meditating on the many “Hues of the Hollyhock.” Unlike what you might expect, only one featured hue is a pink. We see a ghostbloom, blood flowers, and black hollyhocks, all written about with dark words and topics. An excerpt from “Hues of the Hollyhock”:

  “O ghost
    of Seasons Past, if these shadows

  remain unaltered by the Future …,
    will only black smoke and drab ash,
  ubiquitous soot and too-late regret
    populate our abandoned gardens?” (Maddox 90)

The poem ebbs and subsides with a light show in a kimono blossom brightening our senses before transitioning to a quiet amber calm, then, a final splash of rainbow color.

Most of the writing in this collection treats the prosaic with elegance. Maddox infuses her style into each poem, whether the theme is nature or more Gothic like death and destruction. The book touches the spiritual while keeping us grounded with bold visuals, traveling through both the unknown as well as the “imaginative and geographical locations we call home” (Maddox 17).

small earthly space has broad appeal, and I recommend it for most adult readers, for both casual or thought-provoking reading. This collection can be enjoyed both in public or private, but is best read somewhere where you have space for peaceful contemplation. Your own backyard or a public garden or park would be ideal. I would also like to recommend the following tea pairing Bird Nerd Birdwatching Tea. This tea combines the familiar into a unique blend that will both sooth and gently stimulate your senses, enriching your similar reading experience of small earthly space.

small earthly space is available from Shanti Arts Publishing

Ana Mourant sitting on grass reading a book. She has light skin and blonde hair, has a sunflower in her hair, and is wearing a green sundress.

Ana Mourant (she/her) 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, edits, and proofreads, as well as provides 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.

Project Bookshelf: Ana Mourant, Nature Writing & Indigenous Peoples

A medium-sized wooden bookshelf with books neatly upright between two owl and petrified wood bookends, and sunflowers decoratively arranged on top of the books. The books are a combination of nature writing and Indigenous Peoples books. In the background is a window with trees.

When someone asks where I’m from, sometimes I say “the mountains,” both because it’s true and because it’s fun to see people’s reactions. After all, why should we identify with a political state rather than an environment? Many times I’ve felt that I have more in common with someone who also grew up in wild places, whether in Alaska (like me) or in Africa, rather than someone who grew up in an urban setting. The natural environment we’re raised in, or the lack of one, affects us more than changing politics and monetary systems.

I’m sharing some book recommendations on nature writing and Indigenous Peoples today, for those of you that desire to immerse yourself in nature, even for just an hour. Take a mental break from urban life and pick up one of these unique reads. I’m presenting this bookshelf in three sections: nature writing, Indigenous Peoples, and nature-themed poetry. I’ve also selected one book to be the special feature of this collection. Feel free to skip to your section of interest, or dare to be tempted to read them all. Each book listed here is selected for its distinct content. Some are famous in their genre, and some are obscure treasures. For an immersive experience, read these outside in nature, at a local park, or even just by your window. I will give some immersive reading location ideas for each book below, tips on whether the physical book or e-book is recommended, and a suggested tea pairing for each. Enjoy.

Nature Writing Book Recommendations
A medium-sized stack of nature writing-themed books, with sunflower blossoms resting on top.

From top to bottom:

The book How to Read Water lying open to a page showing some text and some glossy photographs of water.

Tristan Gooley, a.k.a. The Natural Navigator, is one of my top three favorite authors. This book is exactly what the title says: It literally teaches you how to read water. Learn what different types of waves mean, how to forecast weather, and how even the reflection of light can reveal what’s beneath. From humble puddles to rivers to the big, open ocean, everything is discussed here in lovely prose. This book works well in both print and digital editions. Note that the hardcover edition pictured here does have a few glossy pictures inside. His other books are wonderful as well and can be found on The Natural Navigator website.

Best Places to Read: On the ocean, by a lake, or near a river. Imagine you’re out in the Atlantic, sailing from the UK to Iceland.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Beach Reads by Chapters Tea

A package of Beach Reads tea, which has a picture of beach chairs on a beach with palm trees
The book Mountains of the Mind, propped open facing down, so that the book looks reminiscent of a mountain

Few authors have the ability to draw huge in-person crowds like Robert Macfarlane. Now practically a celebrity in the nature writing genre, he got his start with this book: Mountains of the Mind. Just as I like to say I’m “from the mountains,” Macfarlane writes about his own “forays into wild, high landscapes,” and combines those with a fascinating history of mountains’ impact on the human psyche. This book works well in the e-book edition so it can be easily transported and read outside, if you’re not married to paper versions in general. It has some black and white photographs that view fine in the e-book as well. All his books are treasures, and I detail two more of them below. Note that Macfarlane doesn’t have his own website, but a quick google will bring up all his books, which have been published by a variety of different publishers.

Best Places to Read: On or near mountains, or with mountains in your distant view. Imagine you’re in the Cascades of America’s Pacific Northwest.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Spice Chai Mélange by Chapters Tea

A package of Spice Chai Mélange tea, which has a picture of mountains on the package
A black and white drawing of a holloway: a tunnel made of trees

If you’re in the mood for something mysterious with perhaps a bit of Gothic vibe, Robert Macfarlane will take you through the deep holloways (a “hollow-way” is a tunnel formed by trees and erosion) of England, formed over centuries and millennia, some dating as far back as the Iron Age. This is a quick read that includes some shadowy poetry and swarthy black-and-white pictures, which look just as spooky in the e-book as the hardcover.

Best places to read: The forest, the subway, or a cemetery. Imagine you’re deep among unknown, small roads in some backwoods of England.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Ancient Forest Tea by Mountain Rose

A tin of Ancient Forest Tea
The hardcover book Is a River Alive? without the book jacket, showing the shiny illustration of a river on the cover that is reminiscent of a blood vein

I have a signed copy of this one—Robert Macfarlane’s latest release—that I scored after getting to meet him at his packed book release event in Seattle last month. There must have been several hundred people there. It seemed like half of Seattle poured in to get their signed copy and meet one of our planet’s most-revered nature writers. Macfarlane was just awarded the 2025 Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing last month as well. Starting with an introduction titled “Anima,” Macfarlane takes the reader on a journey of both philosophy and travel, profiling rivers in Ecuador, India, and Canada, and exploring their souls and fates. Although I’m proud to own this special signed hardcover edition, the e-book of this is also just fine. Stay tuned for future titles by Robert Macfarlane as well. I’m convinced anything he writes will be outstanding.

Best Places to Read: By or on a river, or with a river in view. Imagine you’re floating along the Mississippi river, streaming through time as well as space.

Recommended Tea Pairing: In the Flow Tea by Fresh Pickins

A package of In the Flow Tea, which has a label in blue stripes

Imagine setting off on an epic backpacking trip, bringing artists’ supplies, and stopping at whim to paint interesting tiny things you see along the way … That’s exactly what author Rosalie Haizlett did, and the result is this lovely book. She strikes an amazing balance of creating a book that has bright appeal to both adults and children, comprised of research, personal trip notes, and charming watercolor illustrations. This is one book you really want the hardcover edition of, and currently it’s only sold as such.

Best Places to Read: Somewhere out in nature near an ecosystem boundary, where there are mountains as well as lowlands nearby. Imagine you’re in the Appalachians of West Virginia, in the middle of nowhere.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Appalachian Sunrise by Red Rooster

A tin of Appalachian Sunrise tea
A photo of Helen Thayer, dressed in clothing for extreme polar weather, with her dog Charlie, on skis, hauling a sled across the ice and snow of the arctic

Quite simply, I think Helen Thayer is one of the greatest women explorers of our time. She has walked across the Sahara, Gobi, and Death Valley deserts, kayaked the entire length of the Amazon river, lived with wolves, climbed some of the world’s highest mountains, and, in this book, skis to the magnetic north pole alone, with only her dog to help alert her for polar bears. This official National Geographic Explorer writes of her journey to the magnetic north pole (and back!) in this real-life explorer thriller. She survives polar bear stalkings and forms a close bond with her brave dog Charlie in this harsh tale of the reality of doing things no one else has ever done before. This book has some compelling black and white photos that show well in the e-book as well the paperback.

Best Places to Read: Somewhere cold, with a blanket. Turn up the AC and imagine you’re in the arctic.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Polar Bear Dreams by Kobuk

A package of Polar Bear Dreams tea, featuring polar bears and the aurora borealis on the label

Indigenous Peoples Book Recommendations
A stack of Indigenous Peoples-themed books, with sunflower blossoms resting on top

From top to bottom:

The book Two Old Women, open to the title page, showing a sketch of the two old women hauling sleds

This book is famous throughout Alaska, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an Alaskan who hasn’t heard of it, and most have read it. “An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage, and Survival,” this story by Velma Wallis is a retelling of an Athabascan Alaska Native legend, telling how two old women who were abandoned by their tribe not only survived, but … (I don’t want to spoil the story!) This is a must-read if you’re interested in Indigenous or arctic culture, and is a wonderful lesson about the value of elders as well. This is one book that would be excellent as an audiobook. The original legend was passed down orally.

Best Places to Read/Listen: Somewhere you can see elderly people, perhaps a retirement community or local garden. Imagine you’re out in the wild somewhere that is foreign to you, and the elders might have knowledge to pass on.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Hawthorn & Hibiscus Tea by Traditional Medicinals

A colorful box of Hawthorn & Hibiscus tea

An old black-and-white photo of Ada Blackjack, wearing a long parka with the fur hood up

This book has wonderful epigraphs and structure, as well as authentic content. There are other arctic survival-type books, but none of them quite capture the reality of a tough expedition combined with real research, news articles, and journal entries. This is the story of a young Iñupiaq woman just trying to make some money by signing on as a seamstress for an expedition, who ends up being the sole survivor. This is a bit heavier, but very engrossing, read. There are photos that are best viewed in one of the physical editions. I haven’t seen the hardcover in person, but the paperback contains photos on special, glossy photo paper.

Best Places to Read: Somewhere you can be alone and totally absorbed in the book. Imagine you’re in a remote cabin somewhere, and no one knows where you are.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Wild Blueberry by Republic of Tea

A tin of Wild Blueberry tea, which has a pretty, blue illustration on it of water with blueberries floating in it
A picture of the partial cover of the book Myths and Legends of the Pacific Northwest, zoomed in on the photo of Mount Rainier. The cover is green, brown, and blue to reflect the colors of nature in the Pacific Northwest


A collection of classic Indigenous lore, mostly from Washington and Oregon, including creation stories, animal stories, and stories that pass on values. There are many different editions of this book, but the e-book is clear with good pictures. This would also be a wonderful audiobook, but is not currently available as such as of this writing.

Best Places to Read: In or around an Indigenous community center or museum, such as Daybreak Star in Seattle, or the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. Imagine you’re sitting in a quiet corner, and an elder sees the book you’re reading, stops, and tells you a story.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Crater Lake by Oregon Tea Traders

A tin of Crater Lake tea
A map showing where the Noatak River is. The Noatak River is located in northwestern Alaska, originating in the Gates of the Arctic National Park and ending in the Bering Sea.

This is an older book—pictured above is my signed first edition hardcover from 1966—that details daily life of the Inupiat people of Alaska in the early half of the twentieth century, when many more Inupiat traditions than today were still practiced. It gives a glimpse into Indigenous Alaskan customs from a kind outsider’s point of view. The author, Claire Fejes, lived in villages there for a couple years and wrote about the people and customs. Some of the details strike home for me, like reading about how she would play pinochle with the villagers, which was also the most common card game I played with my family growing up. This book is only available in physical editions, and I recommend getting an older, used edition for the charm.

Best Places to Read: This is a good book to read casually on the sofa with family around. Bring this one home for holiday reading and discuss various tidbits with others in the room.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Inukshuk Tea by Culinary Teas

A tin of Inukshuk Tea, which features an inukshuk on it (large stones stacked to resemble a person)
A black-and-white photograph of two male Yupik dancers, wearing traditional clothing and masks. This is the same photograph that is on the cover of the book Agayuliyararput.



Read about the fascinating uses of masks by my people, the Yupik of Alaska. This book draws on the remembrances of elders born in the early 1900s and is a treasure trove of traditions and values.

Best Places to Read: This read invites reflection and is best read alone somewhere quiet. Somewhere in your home that has artwork helps to prompt thoughts.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Meditation Moment by Buddha Teas

A box of Meditation Moment tea
The book The Birchbark House, open to the "Summer" subtitle page, which features a sketch of a birchbark house. The opposite side of the book is curled under to resemble birch bark.



This Indigenous classic is on almost every Indigenous reading list. It won several awards, and although it’s in the young adult category, it’s a fun read for older adults as well. It reminds me a bit of an Indigenous version of the Little House on the Prairie series, which personally I still enjoy.

Best Places to Read: This is an easy read that can be enjoyed just about anywhere. Bring it on your commute, on vacation, or home for the holidays.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Original Maple Tea by The Metropolitan Tea Company

A wooden box of Original Maple tea, featuring quaint artwork on it
A colorful Navajo sandpainting of two people


This is the definitive, and enjoyable, reference guide to learn about Navajo (Diné) sandpaintings. Another part of my cultural heritage, I appreciate that Diné traditions are still strong throughout much of the Southwest. This is a slim book with many photos and works well as a coffee table book and a craft guide. It’s only available in paperback, which works well since this is one you really want to be able to look at the pictures in a physical edition.

Best Places to Read: At your project table at home, where you can start making your own sandpainting after reading it.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Cota Wild Tea by New Mexico Tea Co

A box of Cota Wild Tea, which has a photo of the American Southwest on it
An Inuit artwork, possibly a mask, resembling a creature half-human and half-walrus perhaps, with ivory tusks and side whiskers

This is a large, museum-type book that deserves a hardcover. Full of color photos of Inuit and Inupiat carvings, this book discusses the traditional legends of the Inuit and Inupiat people, and the meanings behind various carvings. It makes an intriguing coffee table book, and is best read piece by piece, to enjoy and contemplate the discussion of the artworks.

Best Places to Read: Your coffee table, when you need an art-viewing break, or perhaps a cabin if you want to sit, do some serious study of it, and maybe do some carving of your own.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Stone Root Tea by Tea Haven

A package of Stone Root Tea
Nature Poetry Book Recommendations
The book Haiku Illustrated, open to a random page in the middle, showing some beautiful Japanese artwork on one page and a well-designed haiku poem on the other

This magnificent work of art is a collector’s item. With a sewn binding and elegant Japanese artwork with each poem, this haiku collection is a beauty just to gaze at. Add in the poetry, and you’ll find yourself reading this every day. This book is rightly only available as a hardcover.

Best Places to Read: This high-quality book shouldn’t be damaged by transporting it around. This is best read at home, with clean hands (no snacking with this one) and natural light to appreciate the artwork.

Recommended Tea Pairing: First Spring Blend Matcha by Naoki

A round container of First Spring Blend Matcha
A page from the National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry showing a nature poem with a photo of autumn leaves


A collection of poems from around the world on full-page National Geographic color photographs, this beauty can be enjoyed by the whole family, kids and adults alike. I often open it up to a random page, read a few poems at a time, and gaze at the photos. With all the high-color photographs, it’s only available as a hardcover.

Best Places to Read: This is a larger, heavier book, so is best read at home. It’s pleasant both alone or with family and friends. Try leaving it open to a favorite poem when you’re expecting a visitor.

Recommended Tea Paring: Explorer’s Blend by Fortnum & Mason

A fancy tin of Explorer's Blend tea

Featured Book: Native Plant Stories by Joseph Bruchac
A photo of the cover of Native Plant Stories, with sunflower blossoms around it
The book Nature Plant Stories open to a page showing a sketch of a story with a native design in the corner, and text on the opposing page. The book is held open and upright by two owl bookends.


From the origin of cedar baskets to why evergreens stay green, this set of stories from eight different Native American tribes explain plants’ connection to humans and our mythology. It’s easy to read one story at a time, or read the whole book in one sitting on a quite afternoon. Illustrated with light sketches on many pages, it’s a read for the curious mind.

Best Places to Read: At the edge of a forest, by a meadow or lake. Imagine you’ve gone back in time and need to learn to use the plants in your environment not only survive, but make a comfortable life for yourself.

Recommended Tea Pairing: Roasted Dandelion Root Tea by Traditional Medicinals

A box of Roasted Dandelion Tea, featuring an illustration of dandelion blossoms on it

A photograph of the author, Ana Mourant, wearing a traditional Alaskan parka and Sorel-brand boots, standing on a bridge made of ice. It's dark outside and the bridge and some items in the background are lit up with colored lights.

Ana Mourant (she/her) 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.

An Interview with Michael Meyerhofer, Author of What To Do If You’re Buried Alive

Following the republishing of his book What To Do If You’re Buried Alive this past month, Michael Meyehofer spoke with Doubleback Books editorial intern Camelia Heins about the choice behind the title along with reasons behind his references to religion, connections to the Midwest, and the use of comedy. 

Camelia Heins: Your title really hooks people in and the title itself is the name of one of your poems. What inspired you to name this collection of works What To Do If You’re Buried Alive? Why did this poem specifically stand out to be the name of the entire collection? 

Michael Meyerhofer: The original version of that poem was about three pages long and was inspired by research I did on actual people throughout the ages who’ve been inadvertently buried alive but lived to tell the tale. Gradually, though, I whittled it down until it ended up as the fairly short poem it is now. Since that one already felt like an allegory for dealing with depression—or, really, any kind of struggle that feels overwhelming and insurmountable, but probably actually isn’t—and a lot of my poems can have a bit of darkness or sardonic humor in them, it seemed like a fitting title poem for the collection.

CH: You section off the book into two sections, “Scars” and “Tattoos.” I think these words are particularly interesting, especially with how tattoos themselves can be seen as scars or as art. What is the significance behind sectioning off the book this way? Can you explain your reasoning behind choosing these two words? 

MM: To be honest, I actually have to credit my late friend and mentor, Jon Tribble, for that! Many years ago, I was at critical mass in terms of having way too many poems that I was trying to fit into manuscripts, and he kindly volunteered to take a look at what I had. It was his idea to arrange the manuscript in two sections, with “Scars” and “Tattoos” used to distinguish between formative events and later, more deliberate choices. I eventually added what became the title poem and tweaked a few small things, but overall, it’s still as he arranged it. Jon was a kind, brilliant man, and like hundreds of poets out there, I owe him a lot!

CH: Many of your poems include some sort of unexpected twist or may catch people off guard. What influences can you attribute this style to? What kind of impact do you intend to make with these twists in your poems? 

MM: I’m sure I’m far from the first person to say this, but I feel like there’s a lot of similarity between poems and Zen koans. I’ve always loved how koans end on a twist that makes sense in a way that’s wild and transcendent but can’t really be articulated—the way they tug our brains in directions we didn’t even know were possible. For most of my writing life, poetry has been an exercise in teaching myself to stop white-knuckling whatever story or meaning I’m trying to get across and just trusting the piece to end itself.

CH: It’s clear your work contains a touch of comedy and satire, seen in poems like “My Mother Sent Me” and “Dear Submitter.” Can you talk about how you use comedy and satire and what kind of effect these elements have on your work? 

MM: There’s something transcendent and almost spiritual about humor—how it can let the air out of the worst tragedy and remind us in an instant that there’s a touch of absurdity in all our struggles and grief. Some of that might also come from growing up in Iowa, a state that’s beautiful but also rather stark and isolating, where deadpan humor is a must for getting through harsh winters surrounded by icy roads and fallow fields.

CH: You make quite a few religious references in your work, mentioning Catholic school, confessions, and more. Are you religious? How does your own religious background, whether positive or negative, influence your work? 

MM: I grew up in a pretty religious small town and attended a Catholic school—I was even an altar boy, and spent many hours in a white robe seated at the impaled feet of a graphically carved Christ! As you might imagine, I was also dreadfully emo, pondering mortality and suffering from a very young age (inspired, I’m sure, by all the time I spent in hospitals because of birth defects and health problems). So I was fascinated by religious stories because they were the first places I went looking for answers. Later, I took every religion and philosophy class I could in college (I’m the annoying guy who could sweep the Bible category in Jeopardy). Ultimately, I came to realize that my religious interpretations weren’t Catholic so much as Zen Buddhist, and to really chafe at the sense of bashful shame and unnecessary guilt that seemed to permeate a lot of those early lessons—but those feelings and religious iconography will always be with me, I’m sure.

CH: As someone with a connection to the Midwest, I found it interesting and personal that you included many connections to the Midwest region and suburban/rural life. The poem “Suburbia” particularly stood out to me. How do you think a non-urban, more suburban/rural background shapes your work? What’s the appeal of focusing on suburban or rural life? 

MM: I’ve lived in cities (of various sizes) for pretty much all my adult life, and I’ve come to see California as my home these last 9 or so years—but if you cracked my skull open, you’d probably still find a lone farmhouse surrounded by fields and tree-covered hills. The beautiful starkness of the Midwest has always seemed to me to be the perfect illustration of what it means to be human—there are people who love us, sure, but ultimately we’re on our own, so you’d better start figuring stuff out.

CH: I love your poem “Strata,” especially the imagery of lying on someone’s grave to understand the universe. I just have to ask, have you ever done that? And whether you did or didn’t, what was your reasoning behind choosing to use an image like this? 

MM: Thank you! Yes, I have done that, actually. I don’t recall where the idea came from, but I’ve more or less always had the sense that if you want to reach any kind of understanding, you have to keep your lens clear and cast off as many inhibitions and taboos as you possibly can. That might be why I’ve always had a great deal of respect for spirituality and curiosity but almost none for ritual and dogma. I think irreverence can be an amazing artistic, spiritual, and intellectual tool, so long as it’s sincere and not just performative.

CH: Outside of your poetry work, I notice you also write fantasy novels. How would you say the idea of fantasy plays a role in your poems, if any? 

MM: I’m a terrific nerd in real life! I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, so for me, there’s not that much difference between a poem, a novel, a short story, etc.—just slightly different attempts at the same thing. There are countless ways that I think fiction has helped my poetry, and vice versa—from imagery and storytelling to maybe a bit more awareness of how something actually sounds to the reader. Both sides also feed into my nerdiness too. When I’m not reading or writing, one of my favorite things is to watch documentaries about science, history, religion, etc. In fact, I love lifting weights (probably another thing tied to my childhood) and will often exercise while playing videos in the background on physics, mythology, and strategic analysis of battlefield tactics used a thousand years ago—it all gets thrown into the blender that is my brain for later use.

What To Do If You’re Buried Alive is available to download for free from Doubleback Books

Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five poetry books, six poetry chapbooks, and two fantasy trilogies. He has won the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Prize, the Whirling Prize, and other honors. He earned his B.A. from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He grew up in Iowa where he learned the value of reading novels, lifting weights, and not getting his hopes up. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review and lives in Fresno, California. For more information and at least one embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.

Camelia Heins (she/her) is an undergraduate student studying English & Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Born and raised in Orange County, California, Camelia has been active in her community through service, engagement, and both creative and journalistic writing. She enjoys reading and writing poetry, listening to several of her Spotify playlists, collecting plants, and playing with her cat, Moira.

We Call Upon the Author to Explain—Zoë Fay-Stindt

Zoë Fay-Stindt’s Bird Body offers readers a fresh mythology, one that is avian and ardent, through which we may better understand ourselves. There are no black and white solutions, but there is humidity, desire, breath. The poems explain that, by accepting the harm our bodies have housed, we can find the wings to evolve, if not to escape. In their responses to my questions, Fay-Stindt discloses the transformations their manuscript underwent to become Bird Body.

A small bird, perhaps a chickadee, lays prone against a background of pinnatisect leaves. Both the bird and the leaves are drawn in soft shades of grey on a white background. Above the image reads "bird body," and below the image reads "poems by Zoe Fay-Stindt."

Marah Hoffman: The collection’s three sections–the priming, distress signal, and finally soft places to land–and their accompanying epigraphs gracefully provide context for the poems. How did you decide on these sections?

Zoë Fay-Stindt: Thank you! I’m glad they land—no pun intended. As a trauma recovery narrative, non-linearity is a really important element of Bird Body’s structure, so organizing the poems into clean, legible sections seemed really strange. That said, finding clarity through the containers that each section offered was such a relief for me! I owe that relief, actually, to the literal floorboards of Sundress’ Firefly Farms: I had all but given up on Bird Body when I came to Sundress for a writing residency, and I decided to give the chapbook one last overhaul to see if it might be salvaged. Spreading the collection’s pages out on the floor let me step into the mess of the project for the first time in several years, and from that chaos, these three sections gathered themselves up. These are the magic moments of writing: when it feels like the work is more in charge of itself than you are and you just have to step back to let it do its thing.

MH: Specifically in the section the priming, the poems pulse with wanting and the shame that follows. In “the last summer of innocence” are the lines, “I the shameful/leader of our trespasses, horrified/at my appetite, blooming predator” (15). And in “pap smear,” “my consumption/far beyond the suggested amount” (17). As the collection progresses, consumption continues to be a theme. How can birds help us understand our desires?

ZFS: Mmm, that’s an interesting question. It makes sense that want, shame, and consumption show up a lot. Writing this chapbook, I was trying to wrestle with the lessons that the body—especially an AFAB body coming into sexuality, desire, queerness, and hunger—gets taught about its worth as a sexual object. This first section, the priming, tried to hold these ideas of shame and desire up to the light without offering any clear answers. The poems in here speak to the real messy process of trying to make sense of that “priming,” and the language of shame that I microdosed all through adolescence.

ZFS: To answer your question about the birds, I’m actually not sure I know how they can help us understand our desires! But in Bird Body, at least, they helped me find a surrealist escape that wasn’t anchored in dichotomies of good/bad or right/wrong. Moving beyond the human world, I could let go of the shame I had inherited around my body, my desire, and the violence I had experienced.

MH: There is a tone of reclamation that sparks in distress signal. The speaker proclaims, “In my mythology…” (24). Overall, the poems express invention: symbols metamorphose, archetypes take flight. I say all this to bring me to my question, what was your research process like? It’s clear that amidst your experimentation is an awareness of the Bible, fables, and mythology.

ZFS: The speaker in these poems—and the younger version of me—was really hungry for a mythology that could step outside of the virgin-whore complex and greet their body as the beautiful, confusing animal that it was. My research process wasn’t very structured for this project, actually, but I did tuck into a lot of varying mythology to think about how birds have been represented in religious texts across the centuries, and birds often appeared as creators—or at least present during the creation of life. If birds were our guides or creators rather than a man-like figure, what kind of possibilities could that offer to envisioning a world beyond violent legacies?

MH: Were your poems inspired by any particular landscapes and/or seasons? I noticed a few pieces describe settings that are warm and wet–traditional descriptors of fertile places, despite the collection’s complicated relationship with maternity. To add a second question, would you like to speak to this juxtaposition?

ZFS: Oh, yeah. I was raised humid: growing up in North Carolina swamp country, the world around me was a rich and thick place. I still feel most alive when I’m in sweat-wet places—so much living goes on there! I love that humidity seeped through the poems so much.

MH: I am a huge fan of the second person, and I noticed you are too! “You” has many different owners throughout the collection: birds, a lover, the speaker’s mother, the speaker themself. What were your goals for point of view (and pronouns) as you wrote Bird Body?

ZFS: I think I’d be lying if I said I had any explicit goals for this, but thank you for the generosity of your question! Thinking about it retroactively, second person often takes hold in my poetry as a response to an always-shifting sense of distance between myself and the “outside” world. The boundaries around me feel forever in flux, and second person allows me to simultaneously hold the world at arm’s length (with boundaries, even as they fluctuate) while still stepping into deep intimacy. Beyond the page, that feels true to my experience of the world: I’m always in direct address. Always in conversation with you—you, Marah, or you, heron, or you, Mom, or you, cypress. These beings crowd my sense of self—delightfully, strangely—and the second person lets all those creatures in. I love how even that phrase, the second person, acknowledges a presence. A doubling. That feels true.

MH: While acknowledging the aches and ruptures, Bird Body spotlights awe. The personification of good’s malleability seems to be the heron, this otherworldly creature that can both swallow baby birds and bless a horizon. Would you mind explaining why herons are significant to you? What do they have to say about the notion of ‘good’?

ZFS: Hmm, that’s a really interesting question. I think, as I mentioned before, that a lot of my process of writing Bird Body was trying to figure out what the hell “good” meant in this world. Also, what does that even mean? The heron in Bird Body often appears as a complicated figure—a healer, a companion, but also, as you point out, a creature who hunts, who hungers. This felt important to me to sit with, and to, once again, step into a reality that’s almost never as black and white as we’d like to imagine.

MH: Lastly, a question I always love to ask is, what was your revision process like? Any advice to other writers who are compiling a poetry manuscript?

ZFS: Whew! Yes. An important question with an always-messy answer. As I mentioned earlier on, my revision process usually involves a lot of printed versions of the collection to make sense of the work as an embodied, separate being. Who are these poems, and what are the conversations they’re having? Spread out on the floor, I can get a real sense of them. I also like to take myself to a café and sit down with my manuscript-in-process to meet her again: who is she? What is she doing? What’s she been up to while I was sleeping, eating, taking a bath? After gathering a draft of my manuscript together and putting it down for a while, I like to come back to the work, read through it as a whole, and write down my general sense of what the collection is working towards and what questions it’s raising. I’m almost always surprised. I think that’d be my general advice: leave your manuscript alone for a while. Go for a several months-long walk. Then let yourself listen to what the work is telling you beyond what you thought you wanted the work to say, and see how you can honor that.

Bird Body is available on Zoë Fay-Stindt’s website

A portrait of a person with sunlit skin and dark hair that is tied back and framing their face. A red sleeveless top is visible, and they stand against a grey-green slatwall.

Zoë Fay-Stindt is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American South. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University, poetry editor for the environmental journal, Flyway, and a community farm volunteer. You can learn more at www.zoefaystindt.com.

A person with pale skin and shoulder length blonde hair smiles widely at the camera. Their smile shows their teeth, and they are wearing red lipstick. They wear a white sleeveless top and stand in front of a brown door and a grey wall.

Marah Hoffman has a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Lebanon Valley College. In college, she served as co-poetry editor of Green Blotter Literary Magazine and Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society president. From the LVC English department, she won The Green Blotter Writer Award. She has been featured in journals including Green Blotter, LURe Journal, Oakland Arts Review, Beyond Thought, and Asterism. Now, she supports Sundress Academy for the Arts through her role as Creative Director. Marah loves creative nonfiction, intertextuality, whimsicality, cats, lattes, distance running, and adding to her personal lexicon. Her list of favorite words grows every week.