The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing the Speculative Diaspora,” a workshop led by Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin on Wednesday, April 8th from 6:00-7:30 PM EST. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: SAFTA).
Every story is a diaspora story, and every diaspora story is speculative in nature. In this craft talk and workshop, open to all genres, students will gain an appreciation for diaspora stories and be able to spot and understand the presence of the speculative within them. We’ll discuss perspectives on diaspora narratives from authors such as Ocean Vuong, Viet Thanh Nguyen, R.F. Kuang, and Ling Ma; diaspora stories’ role in challenging western storytelling conventions; and how diaspora pushes against genre, concepts of truth and authenticity, and the confines of individuality and representation. We’ll then discover the speculative diaspora form and its potential, and explore the speculative diaspora through writing prompts such as truth/lie (“speculative truth”)/dream activities and a collective storytelling exercise.
While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin via Venmo: @kylayen or PayPal @KylaYenHuynhGiffin
Kyla-Yến Huỳnh Giffin (they/them) is a queer and trans, biracial, Vietnamese American diaspora writer whose speculative work focuses on diaspora, transness, ecology, empire, and intergenerational histories. They are a Press Editor for Half Mystic Press, a Co-Coordinator for Sundress Publications’ Poets in Pajamas, and an Associate Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review. Kyla-Yến’s work has been nominated for Best of the Net, and appears in The Offing, Oroboro, Vănguard, and other publications. They have been awarded residencies, workshops, and/or fellowships from Tin House, the Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), Seventh Wave, Abode Press, and more.
I wrote my first book when I was six years old. Of course, this was not what you would typically think of when someone says they’re writing a book. This was a stack of printer paper that I had stolen from my mother’s printer, folded in half, and stapled carefully down the spine to make a book-like shape. Then, I wrote the story of a troublesome kid named Henry inside, affectionately named after my kindergarten best friend. By the time I was done, the pages were riddled with misspelled words, badly drawn stick figures, and accidental pen markings. But I had finished a book, and that was the first time I felt like I had actually accomplished something.
For years, I continued this pattern, making my mom viscerally angry by “wasting” her perfectly good printer paper. Then, I found out that I could use spiral notebooks instead, and I began to write there. Most of the time, these little stories were never finished. My brain was always swirling with ideas, and each time another would come up, I would think it was better than the last and immediately get to work on it instead. It wasn’t until I discovered my very first book while cleaning out my desk one day that something clicked. I had loved that story so much because it had someone I loved in it. I had used my own experiences, as well as his, to create a story that meant something to me. And when I showed the original Henry, several years after they had already moved to a different school, the tears in their eyes showed me that it meant something to them, too.
From that moment on, my approach to writing changed. I was no longer looking to empty the contents of my brain’s creativity on the page; I was looking to make people feel, to find a way to evoke the same feelings I had when I read my favorite books. Even before I could analyze literature properly, I knew what their authors were trying to say. Every novel that I loved and cried over had a message, and I began to find ways to put my thoughts and opinions into my own stories.
Now, I find that writing is power. In an era where critical thought and originality is shunned rather than celebrated, all I can do is write. Sometimes, that means writing think pieces that will never see the sun in my journal. Other times, it looks like poring over the third draft of my debut novel, looking for meaning in every word. Either way, the writing I do alone empowers me to write for others, to share stories that makes people think, feel, and see themselves represented in a space where they may not have been previously.
If you take one thing about me away from this post, let it be this: my writing is my activism. The world can be an incredibly dark place, but it is up to us to not only find the pockets of light but to create them and share them. In truth, my writing has never been about me; it’s been about the people I love, the people I have met and have yet to meet, and those who cannot write or speak for themselves. It’s been about you, the person who is reading this blog post, and those who have already passed and will never get the chance to. The written word has a long history, one full of pain and joy. I aim to tip the scale and make the joy a little bit greater than the pain.
“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
— Edith Wharton
Shelby Hansen (she/her) is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.
On my sixth, Barney the Dinosaur-themed birthday party in our small, but festive, house in Damascus, a close friend of mine named Sarah gifted me my first ever English book— every six-year-old’s dream. A fairytale book for every day of the year that her mom had probably picked out, it had a light pink hardcover filled with knights, princesses, dragons, and castles. As a little girl who just wanted some Barbie’s and Build-A-Bears, I was a little disappointed by such an underwhelming, educational present. But now, almost 16 years later, that gift is the only one I remember and the one I am most grateful for.
My traditional Korean father was always busy when we lived in Syria: he constantly had to travel to Asia for his fabric business, so he would usually be gone for three to four weeks at a time. Yet he never missed any of my birthdays, and my sixth was no exception. We spent, without a doubt and without any excuses, every day from my sixth to seventh birthday reading a fairytale out of Sarah’s book. Even though each story was relatively short and simple (almost half a page), it took me hours to read because my English vocabulary had not yet been developed. With the help of my father, I learnt a lot of big words in 2008 like “immediately”, “specifically,” and “nonetheless,” just to name a few. From that year onward, I picked up English much more easily than my Syrian peers.
Because of Bashar Al-Assad’s dictatorship and the war in 2011, my family and I were forced to relocate to Cairo for two years before moving again to Jeddah in 2014. In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as a confused and angsty teenager, my love for books really grew and I was able to find what I gravitated toward as a reader and writer. I loved read anything and everything. Even more than that, I loved talking and arguing about anything and everything. I would spend lunch time in my social studies teacher’s room (thanks Mr. Daniel) with my three best friends talking to him about the world, books, the school system, and anything that came to mind. My inquisitive and curious quality that was fostered in that classroom has been a core part of me as an adult. I was devastated to have to say goodbye to him in 2017.
In high school, my father advised me to begin reading Camus, Sartre, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard, sparking my love for literature and philosophy. These authors inspired me to write more, and I began exploring my creative and artistic side, joining art classes, choir, and even picking up where I left off with playing piano. I was able to truly discover my two passions, literature and music, and chose to pursue them at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I am grateful for the opportunity to do what I love at Sundress Publications, and I am excited about what life has to offer me.
Noor Chang is a writer and aspiring editor with a rich, multicultural background. Half-Syrian and half-Korean, she spent most of her life in the Middle East, specifically Syria, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates before moving to Knoxville, Tennessee, to pursue higher education. She is a student at the University of Tennessee, double majoring in English Literature and Jazz Studies. Noor’s diverse upbringing has shaped her perspective and fueled her passion for storytelling, leading her to explore a variety of creative avenues, including writing, music, and cultural exploration. An avid pianist, Noor enjoys playing music with friends and immersing herself in different genres. Her love for travel allows her to experience new cultures and she hopes to continue traveling for the rest of her life. In her free time, Noor is often found with a good book, making music, or working out to stay active and grounded.
When I first moved to the United States four years ago, I took a carry-on bag filled with books I was desperately worried about creasing and breaking. Out of all of my Korean, Arabic, and English books, these were the chosen ones—the books my mother and father were willing to give up from their long-inherited lineage of novels, comics, and short stories. In addition to the select books that were lugged across the Atlantic Ocean, my current bookshelf is an accumulation of classic literature and music books that I have collected during my time at the University of Tennessee pursuing my English and Jazz majors.
Every major classic literature book pertaining to my literature degree is present: the Complete Jane Austen Novels for my 1800s British Lit class, Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina for my Russian Lit class, a collection of Shakespeare’s plays for my 1600s Lit class, and finally a collection of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Baldwin for the best class I have ever taken, Modern American Novel with Dr. Jennings. Additionally, on my bedside table (not pictured), there is a collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories and poems that I read before bed. Equally as enthralling as my classic literature collection, I have a decent-sized amount of philosophy books, specifically Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky.
I feel strangely sentimental toward my books, but I wouldn’t say I’m attached to them. I feel as though, much like the people in my life who have come and gone, the books in my life have never been continuously present—I don’t remember the oldest book I own or the first book I was ever given. I have never been able to have a collection as revered as my parents’ bookshelf back at home and I can’t imagine I ever will. Half of my collection tends to be sitting in different tote bags, backpacks, luggage, or even the back seats of my car.
As organized and neat as I am, I tend to scribble on pages of my books: annotations, markings, stickers, notes, coffee stains, bleeding pens, pressed flowers and foliage—anything you can think of is probably in a book somewhere on my small shelf. Every book I own is heavily used but always bought new in the hopes of making it feel like my own. I hold each book I was ever gifted really close to my heart, making sure to never lose it.
Having a rich cultural background with roots in Syria and South Korea, Noor Chang has lived in Damascus, Cairo, Jeddah, Dubai, and Knoxville, making her a citizen of the world. Chang’s unique perspective growing up as a foreigner under Bashar Al-Assad’s dictatorship in the midst of the Arab Spring grants her a nuanced political and cultural understanding of the Middle East that fuels her passion for journalism, traveling, and creativity. Chang is completing her final year at the University of Tennessee as a jazz pianist and an English Literature major. Her experience includes scholarly research, teaching, freelance writing, and performing.
Language and storytelling. Analyzing it, creating it, and sharing it with others. I truly believe it is the reason we are all here. To experience, perceive, imagine, and record. Those are my bread, butter, oats, and OJ. I am the individual toaster that seals everything into place. A hearty Literary Breakfast to carry along wherever I go and remind me that life isn’t always so scary, and when it is, I just have to write about it or read a good book.
To say that my passion for storytelling began with just one book or just one author would be an overstatement. on January 27th, 2001, I was born to two beautiful people with big dreams. Their dreams were so large that they had to take a backseat for their baby girl. My mother had her sights on journalism. This is something I truly admire: her desire to know and share vital information, and shed light on the news of the world that maybe the next journalist wouldn’t.
My father, however, taught me the beauty of writing, and storytelling through his music. My dad wanted to make it as a music engineer and lyricist. He taught me all about the structure of a story within a song and letting your heart and soul craft a melody. For that reason, for me, the processes of creating music, creating literature, and even analyzing it go hand-in-hand.
The first time I was unable to break myself away from a book, I knew I wanted everything to do with them. I was seven years old, and it was a biographical title on the Titanic. It was the only book in the house, and I was determined to read it cover-to-cover. The next time I got that feeling, I was nose-deep inside a Barbie book. I forget the name of it, but Barbie and friends go to summer camp and hilarity ensues. It was a glossy hardback with about sixty pages. At least it felt like sixty back then.
The two titles that have most influenced my tastes today and my writing overall have been Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”and Roald Dahl’s“Lamb to the Slaughter.” Being introduced to those masterpieces in the eighth grade, I thought, “Yes… this is where I want to live,” so I moved in and I never left. Sure, I thought that giving praise to these titles made me edgy and that somehow made me feel better, but I know there was something more than my teen angst powering that feeling.
I see my journeys with writing and reading as markers for where I am in life. For example, when I first began writing as a preteen I wrote from pain, and as a form of escapism. Now I write because I have such beautiful visions in my head, and I want to make them real. Now I write and read because I may have something important to say or to learn.
My perspective changed when I was about seventeen, during a shift at my barista job. I was finishing Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning during a lull period, and the next person who came up to buy something got an earful of analysis and praise for the book that he didn’t ask for as I frothed his latte. I expected him to engage but he didn’t… rightfully so. I probably seemed like a crazy person. He simply took his coffee, gave me a “You have a good day now,” and left.
I could only laugh at myself at that moment and forgive myself for being so moved by something that I would talk to a stranger like I’d known him for decades. Everything has been kind of light and airy since then, more or less, and I find something ethereal to fuel me in everything I read, and I try and put a strong message in everything I write.
Jahmayla Pointer is a three-time National Goofing Around Award winner and specializes in consuming gothic literature and horror films. Jahmayla’s playful and observant nature, and deep love of horror, magic, and literary thrills led her to pursue an English and Creative writing degree four years ago. She began taking creative writing workshops in her senior year of high school and fell in love with working with others on various projects. During her sophomore and Junior years at Southern New Hampshire University, she’s also done Men-tee and beta reading work for authors local to Cincinnati, most notably Victor Velez, author of A Triduum of All Hallows. Jahmayla was an ACES member briefly through which she received several beneficial developmental opportunities including courses through the Poynter Institute. During her downtime, she likes to spend time with friends and family, dance, write short stories, and read in copious amounts. Something that means a lot to Jahmayla is grassroots work and helping people directly through mutual aid and acts of service, she puts this passion into action by working with a group of good friends to develop education tools and encourage high literacy in her local neighborhoods.
Following the republishing of his bookWhat 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.
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.
Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Kara Dorris joins us to discuss the work of Molly McCully Brown, video games as a source of inspiration for titles, metaphor, and disability poetics. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.
Ryleigh Wann: Why did you choose to read these poems specifically?
Kara Dorris: When choosing which poems to read from Brown’s The Virgina State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, I decided to pick the first poem, a proem, titled “Central Virginia Training Center.” This poem does the work of a great first poem by setting up a personal connection and reaching towards the broader, universal truth of disability as a social construction. “New Knowledge for the Dark” takes on the persona of an inmate and explores the abuse, the dehumanizing that has occurred in many psychiatric institutions around the country. In contrast, “Without a Mind” takes on the persona of a worker making their rounds, showing an ingrained ableism, a seemingly integrated presumption that disability is punishment for sin and a waste of a life. Each poem is compelling, revealing yet another injustice, and I can’t recommend this collection enough.
RW: Your collection, HitBox, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2024. What does this collection explore and what was your writing process like?
KD:HitBox feels very different from my previous two collections—it feels angrier, less ready to accept what we are told by so-called authority figures yet hopeful that empathy, inclusiveness, and equality will triumph. As I wrote these poems over the past few years, I didn’t really consider it as a “book” or think to connect the poems consciously. But when it came time to arrange a manuscript, I noticed the violence, I noticed the questioning and the hitting occurring within the poems. I struggled with a unifying theme—beyond punches and feminist anger. Then I came across the term “hit box” used in video games and lightning struck. A hit box is the space around an avatar that registers when a punch lands, or when your avatar scores a hit and the connecting points. This hit box seemed the perfect metaphor for the “hits” the world throws our way, that knock us off our axis. Plus, I am constantly annoyed at the skimpy, over-sexualization of female video game characters, so a cohesive, angry, and hopeful book was born.
RW: When was the first time you read Brown’s work? Why did it stand out to you? How has their writing inspired your own?
KD: This is Brown’s first poetry collection, and I think the title is what really drew me in at first: The Virgina State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Since then, I have also read her essay collection Places I’ve Taken My Body. Writing the disabled experience is challenging; oftentimes, disabled writers are considered too narrow or too personal or as trying to elicit pity. Oftentimes when disability is portrayed it focuses on the individual disability or impairment, not the social construction of disability that makes it hard to navigate through this world. Wonderfully, Brown’s collection shows disability as personal, but does not neglect the social stereotypes that create the larger experience of disability. Partly personal/speculative/what if—Brown wonders if she had been born just a few decades earlier, would she have ended up in this place? In this place where women were institutionalized forcibly sterilized, where patients were really inmates without rights or dignity. The poems are also part historical research—Brown embodies the voices that had no voice. Through persona poems—from wards and warders—we understand the helplessness of the inmates and ableist mindsets of those who assumed they knew what is best for the disabled population. I find this poetry collection fits into ideas of crip aesthetics, which shows that disability is socially constructed and celebrates differences; it shows the long history of forced institutionalization, even positioning us into locations such as the Blind Room and the Infirmary, inviting readers to walk through these doorways with the speakers, to never forget our harmful, ableist past.
RW: Who else have you been reading lately, and who else has been inspiring you in your own craft?
KD: I think we should all read more disabled poets: Sheila Black, Stephanie Heit, Petra Kuppers, Rusty Morrison, Jillian Wiese, and torrin a. greathouse. All these poets have inspired my writing and the way I write about disability. Growing up no one mentioned disability, even though I was born with a genetic bone disorder. In graduate school, I was never offered a disability studies class or a literature class that interrogated disability representation. For a long time, I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe my experiences, to put words to the socially constructed ideas of shame revolving around disability. These poets helped me find these words, and I will always be grateful.
Molly McCully Brown is the author of the essay collection Places I’ve Taken my Body— which was published in the United States in June 2020 by Persea Books, and released in the United Kingdom in March of 2021 by Faber & Faber— and the poetry collection The Virginia State Colony For EpilepticsandFeebleminded (Persea Books, 2017), which won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. With Susannah Nevison, she is also the coauthor of the poetry collection In The Field Between Us (Persea Books, 2020).
Kara Dorris is the author of three poetry collections: Have Ruin, Will Travel (2019) and When the Body is a Guardrail (2020) from Finishing Line Press, as well as HitBox forthcoming from Kelsay Books (2024). She has also published five chapbooks: Elective Affinities (dancing girl press, 2011), Night Ride Home (Finishing Line Press, 2012), Sonnets from Vada’s Beauty Parlor & Chainsaw Repair (dancing girl press, 2018), Untitled Film Still Museum (CW Books, 2019), and Carnival Bound [or, please unwrap me] (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020). Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, RHINO, Tinderbox, Tupelo Quarterly, Puerto del Sol,Harpur Palate, Cutbank, Hayden Ferry Review, and Crazyhorse, among others as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (2011). Her prose has appeared in Wordgathering, Waxwing, Breath and Shadow, and the anthology The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked (Cinco Puntos Press, 2016). Recently, she edited the poetry anthology Writing the Self-Elegy: the Past is Not Disappearing Ink (SIU Press, 2023). She is an assistant professor of English at Illinois College. For more information, please visit karadorris.com
Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in HAD, The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com
The editorial internship position will run from January 1 to June 30, 2024. The editorial intern’s responsibilities may include writing press releases, composing blog posts and promotional emails, proofreading manuscripts, assembling press kits, collating editorial data, research, managing spreadsheets, and more. The intern may also be responsible for writing copy, conducting interviews with Sundress authors, reviewing newly released books, and promoting our catalog of titles.
Applicants with social media experience or who would like to gain social media experience should make a note in their cover letter. Social media responsibilities include scheduling and posting promotional materials on our social media channels, maintaining our newsletter, and promoting our various open reading periods, workshops, readings, and catalog of titles. This will also include creating promotional graphics, digital flyers, logos, and social media images.
Preferred qualifications include:
A keen eye for proofreading
Strong written communication skills
Familiarity with WordPress, Microsoft Word, and Google Suite
Ability to work under a deadline and multitask
Knowledge of and interest in contemporary literature a plus
This is a REMOTE internship with the team communicating primarily via email and text messages and is therefore not restricted to applicants living in any particular geographic area. Interns are asked to devote up to 10 hours per week to their assignments.
While this is an unpaid internship, all interns will gain real-world experience of the ins and outs of independent publishing with a nationally recognized press while creating a portfolio of work for future employment opportunities. Interns will also be able to attend all retreats and residencies at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at a significantly discounted cost.
We welcome, encourage, and are enthusiastic to see a diverse array of applicants in all areas, including race, ethnicity, disability, gender, class, religion, education, immigration status, and more.
To apply, please send a resume and cover letter detailing your interest in the position to Staff Director Kanika Lawton at sundressstaffdirector@gmail.com by November 30, 2023.
Doubleback Books announces the release of Michael Meyerhofer’s What To Do If You’re Buried Alive. The poems in this collection are tenderly masculine, self-deprecating and humorous. They are the poems of an adult male poet looking back at childhood and puberty with anything but rose-colored glasses. He shows us how we see ourselves often through time—with a mixture of cringe and understanding.
Mary Biddinger, author of A Sunny Place with Adequate Water, writes, “With a compassionate eye, and his trademark sense of humor that hooks readers from the very first page, Meyerhofer sends us back to our earliest memories, and shows us a world of heartbreak and wonder.” And Jon Tribble, author of Natural State, adds “Through pain and loss, Meyerhofer’s poems are harrowing prayers searching for ‘the charms of language’ that might lead to forgiveness, to redemption, to love.”
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.
Stephanie Sauer’s Almonds are Members of the Peach Family (Noemi Press, 2019) is a masterful multimedia project that weaves together prose and craftsmanship, bringing light to buried historical narratives. While this is her second traditional prose book, Sauer also has multiple art books that demonstrate her experience with a wide variety of mediums, such as quilting, archiving other’s works, and stitching, specifically of clothing. Her writing is skillful, untangling her family’s history, but it merely accompanies the quilt she crafts throughout the book, the true star of the show. This quilt serves as a work of healing as she begins to reconcile the history all around her.
From the first paragraph, Sauer establishes the idea of quilting as suture, a word typically used for stitches used to hold a wound together. Her first chapter, “Patchwork” opens with pictures of the messy back stitching of something Sauer has sewed. Counterposing these images, Sauer moves readers to Rio, one of the many places the author has lived through her travels. She describes the city as hungry, its sharp mouths constantly searching for bones and blood. She writes, “I bump into one on the way to buy groceries and it slices my arm. I hold the cut with my opposing hand and an incision form from the inside of my skin, letting air in but no blood out” (Sauer 4). Sauer uses suture here to refer to her attempts to find healing via crafting.
She returns to the concept again on page 103, acknowledging that she can not be the first woman to make this connection. Sauer always makes sure to credit those who came before, saying, “Education, I find, has less to do with knowing things and more to do with the crafting and recrafting of oneself” (Sauer 104). She references Dr. Gladys-Marie Fy’s Preface to Stitched from the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Ante-Bellum South, which documents how slave women would quilt their diaries due to being denied traditional educations.
As a whole, Almonds are Members of the Peach Family pulls historical vignettes through time. Sauer carefully intertwines the story of her grandparents with her own life. Their lives mostly exist in Nevada County, California, where readers are introduced to the version of her grandmother, or Billimae, that Sauer is most familiar with—the caretaker: “She ladles the brine into a bowl and serves it with oyster crackers. She spreads the heart with a butter knife on toast and tells the child to eat, to help herself to more” (Sauer 8). Sauer’s writing peels back these small, tender moments for readers to reveal their quiet intimacy.
The descriptions are transparently honest, transitioning from the above heart-wrenching moment of connection between a younger Sauer and her grandmother, to her grandmother’s description of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband. The transition is jarring, laying out her Grandpa’s veteran status and referencing a friend once saying, “‘Where is my purple heart? My father got one in Vietnam, but what about the rest of us who still have to fight the war he brought back home?’” (Sauer 9). The audience isn’t spared her grandparents’ suffering, and by the end of the section readers are primed to see Sauer coping by way of the sound of her sewing machine.
The collection expands as it continues, becoming less interdisciplinary and more plain prose as Sauer tells Billimae’s tale. Here, the writing is truly given a chance to breathe comfortably, showcasing every side of Billimae, even the uglier ones. “It is family shorthand to call Grandma crazy. The screaming, the secrets, the lies, the sneaking of sweet things into hidden places all over the house, into her mouth. The cussing at and blaming of Grandpa for everything,” Sauer explains (59). The family villainizes this woman in her old age, some waving away any mention of domestic abuse towards her as fabricated. Sauer writes, “Now, Grandma is crazy because calling her this is easier on us. Pinning it on the woman excuses our own complicity in the normalizing of her pain” (59). She criticizes this simplification of everything her grandmother is, recognizing the depth in her past that has shaped her into who she is now.
Sauer is constantly reckoning with her history and family lineage, crafting and writing in an attempt to find some kind of answer. Between stories, readers watch her turn “pulp into pages… stitch linen thread between their creases and bind them to one another” (Sauer 71). Her language around the act is gorgeous, finding imagery in the household chores she idolizes through her words, reclaiming work that patriarchal society deems less than. For example, “I haul up bones from the river and sit, listen to the screaming left in them. I hold up each bone to the light, wipe it clean of debris, realign it back into its skeletal form” (Sauer 146). While her word choice turns morbid at points, it only adds to the passion behind her work and her desire to make something of it all.
Things do not end for Sauer here. After uncovering the bones from the graveyard, one can never truly be the same. Seams weaken over time, and eventually they’ll need to be reinforced: “I wake up late (6:50am), read for a few hours. I make coffee, toast a slice of bread, scrub the sink with borax, shoo away ants, re-hang the quilt, write in my slip, alternate between pushing back and suturing a heartache” (Sauer 149). In the face of it all, though, what Sauer has to do, and what we all have to do, is keep on living.
Izzy Astuto (he/they) is a writer majoring in Creative Writing at Emerson College, with a specific interest in screenwriting. When not in Boston for college, they live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His work has previously been published by Hearth and Coffin, Sage Cigarettes, and Renesme Literary, amongst others. He currently works as an intern for Sundress Publications, and a reader for journals such as hand picked poetry, PRISM international, and Alien Magazine. You can find more of their work on their website, at https://izzyastuto.weebly.com/. Their Instagram is izzyastuto2.0 and Twitter is adivine_tragedy.
