Latest Internet as Intimacy column on podcasts and having real feelings, a Twin Peaks chapbook, and #shipwreckSF

Spring 2020: It’s been weird and painful. If you’re out in the streets protesting police brutality, thank you. If you’re wondering what else to do, here’s just one collected list of organizations to donate to.

In less important news, the second installment of my Internet as Intimacy column went up last month: “Podcasts and Tarot Reading Showed Me How to Be Real Instead of ‘Good’.” It’s pretty much what it says on the tin: listening to particular new-agey and writing-related podcasts, and diving into a regular tarot practice, made me finally confront a lifetime of shrinking for the sake of peace. This essay’s existence has complicated a relationship or two. But the outpouring of messages I received on Twitter and Instagram and from colleagues, the hurt and the healing that strangers shared with me, moved me immeasurably. I’ve never cried so many happy tears. Isn’t this why we write? To remind each other that none of us are alone, not really?

Happily, editors Kristin Garth and Justin Karcher accepted my poem, “The Orchid’s Curse,” for inclusion in this beautiful hand-bound chapbook from APEP Publications. These Poems Are Not What They Seem (available here) is a collection for fans of Twin Peaks, and people who are generally into poetry, the supernatural, and uh, highly stylized acting. My poem is about Donna’s strange, sensual performance of desirability in the home of Harold, The Guy Who Loves Orchids, Diaries, and Privacy.

I wrote porn again for #ShipwreckSF. This was formerly an in-person event at The Booksmith in San Francisco, cohosted by Casey Childers and Amy Stephenson, before she moved to NYC. In mid-April, Amy got the proverbial band back together (meaning amazing smut-reader Baruch Porras-Hernandez and a ragtag crew of previous participants) for a Booksmith fundraiser. We wrote ridiculous fanfic of Jane Austen’s Emma, and, because we were (and are) self-quarantining, the event was called Homewreck. I did not win this time. I did not even place, because Joe Wadlington, Nate Waggoner, and Molly Sanchez are too funny. Maybe someday the episode will be uploaded as an episode of the ShipwreckSF podcast. And maybe, if you are not related to me and are not a child I have tutored, you may listen to it.

Reading this weekend at NYC Poetry Festival!→

“Bed of Dragonflies” by Claudia Amuedo, courtesy of wearegrimoire.com

NYC POETRY FESTIVAL

I’ve been in New York City for a little over a year now. It’s been a lot, hence some radio silence, but the summer is shaping up magically.

I am reading poems THIS WEEKEND at The New York City Poetry Festival! If you’re in town and feel like taking the ferry to Governor’s Island, you might see me:

• Reading with Litbreaker on the Chumley’s stage at 2:00 pm

• Selling chapbooks and swag at the Sweet Action merch table at 4:00

• Reading with Sweet Action Poetry Collective on the Chumley’s stage at 5:00 pm

Full schedule for the festival is here.

SOFT SKULL AND CATAPULT

In other news, I am now the editorial assistant at Soft Skull Press and get to spend my workdays surrounded by books!! Since last July, I’ve also been soliciting fiction and the occasional essay for Catapult and have published these gems:

• “Dusty Secrets and Sleights of Hand” by Crystal Carey

• “The Evacuation” by Sarah Blake

• “North to the Future” by Luke Wiget

• “How to Love a Rabbit” by Nahida S. Nisa

• “Marisa, the Pitch Pine” by Joe Wadlington

• “On Violations, Macarons, and the Pursuit of Beauty I Can Control” by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

• “The Day Nothing Remarkable Happened” by Kamil Ahsan

PUBLICATIONS

My recent and forthcoming publications, since last update:

“Of all the classes of people who ever lived” and “THE FINANCIAL BENEFITS OF CHIVALRY” — erasure poems in the forthcoming anthology Erase the Patriarchy (University of Hell Press), edited by Isobel O’Hare

“Guided Meditation with Inner Mother” — poem at Grimoire

"Temperance" and "Becoming the Magician" — tarot medicine poems at Yes Poetry

"The Empress" and "Poem about My Uterus" — poems at FORTH magazine

NYC reading for THEY SAID launch, and Jane Eyre fanfic on ShipwreckSF podcast

IMAGE COURTESY OF BLACKLAWRENCE.COM

IMAGE COURTESY OF SHIPWRECKSF.SIMPLECAST.FM

New York City friends! A little over two weeks from now, I am reading at the book launch party for They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing. It will be held at Shakespeare & Co. on Lexington Avenue, Thursday, July 26th, from 6:30 - 8:00 pm. RSVP on Facebook here, if you feel so inclined.

This was my first time collaborating with a living writer. It's going to be strange to read the poem alone after writing it with Isobel O'Hare. Now it's hard to tell whose lines are whose, whose voice the poem is in, because it feels like something beyond us. I can't wait to see the rest of the collaborations and read how other contributors approached working jointly. You can preorder the book here from Black Lawrence Press.

IMAGE COURTESY OF ALY SCHAEFER

In other news, after a few years of experiencing the literary ribaldry of Shipwreck as an audience member, I participated as a writer for the first time back in February. The gist of Shipwreck is for the writers to wreck good books with humor, satire, and gratuitous sex scenes. (Amy Stephenson and Casey Childers are responsible for this.) The thespian-in-residence, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, reads each story with equal drama (and preserves the anonymity of the writers). The audience gets to drink booze in a bookstore and vote for their favorite story, and someone is crowned a winner.

February's book was Jane Eyre! And the podcast, a recording of the night of the contest, just went up a couple of weeks ago. If you are not related to me and I don't work with your children, I invite you to give a listen to the Jane Eyre episode of the ShipwreckSF podcast here. The text version might be posted eventually. I don't want to spoil too much, but I was crowned smut queen for the evening and invited to participate again.

Shop update, a note on Tarot Medicine Poetry, and Many Moons 2018 Vol 2 stockists

Hello, friends. It's been a whirlwind couple of months in preparation for my move to New York City! I'll be road-tripping across the U.S. from June 8th - 14th, so orders are temporarily closed for both editions of Inevitable What.

Tarot Medicine Poetry is coming soon! I'll be opening up a few spots in July, when I will have access to all of my decks, stationery, my printer, and a post office again. I'll announce in my newsletter when these spots are opening, so if you haven't yet, you can sign up for announcements here.

In the meantime, you can secure a "Reading from the Road." This is a simple 3-card emailed reading, no poem, to be done along my road trip route. A postcard of sorts. I'm doing one per day for seven days.

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Image courtesy of https://www.instagram.com/gottesss/

With all of the moving-related hullabaloo, I missed announcing the preorders window for the current and final volume of Many Moons, a workbook I help to edit. But! As of today, June 4th, you can snag a copy from these stockists:

• The Radder
• Scarlet Sage Herb Co.
• Otherwild

If that doesn't work, take a look at Sarah Faith Gottesdiener's full stockists list at the bottom of this page. Note that you may need to call these stockists; the books may be in-store only, not available online.

I do not have any copies for sale, unfortunately. Sending you a little magic mojo so that you can track down a copy of your own!

Rumpus retirement, Dream Pop publication, and a sweet newsletter shoutout

After four years working on Rumpus Original Fiction, I've decided to step down to focus more on my own writing. Upon ROF's inception in 2013, I served as an Assistant Editor briefly under Andrew Foster Altschul and then under Jessy Goodman before stepping into the role of Editor in 2015. ROF first ran as a feature in a phone app called The Weekly Rumpus, then ran stories on the site and in a monthly newsletter called the Book Report, and now runs solely on therumpus.net.

I'm proud to have showcased such thought-provoking, funny, touching, bizarre stories over the years, and to have published so many first-timers in the fiction world, including PEN Award-winner Amy Sauber, C. A. Carey, Kamil Ahsan, Lauren Friedlander, Siobhan May, and Jason Phoebe Rusch. Thank you for trusting me with your words and visions.

I'm grateful to Rumpus staff, particularly Marisa Siegel and Lyz Lenz, and to all of the slush readers I've worked with. Very excited to see what Karissa Chen—the new Fiction Editor—and Dennis Norris II (Karissa's assistant and a host of Food 4 Thot, one of my favorite podcasts :P) have up their sleeves!

“The sea of red is violent and sensual; the surrounding text a well-known tale of overt and overly masculine narratives that do little good in the name of women; the poem, a small thread, rising from these backdrops and finding its own self, unapologetically. ”

— Andrew Sargus Klein

In writerly news, two of the erasure poems from my On the Road series are up at Dream Pop Press! All of Issue #2 is up here, with a direct link to my pieces here. There's a nice write-up about "she apologized" up at wildness, an imprint of Platypus Press. The full article is available here.

Poet/memoirist/novelist/BinderCon founder/everything doer Leigh Stein featured me in her newsletter, The Finishing Touch, this week: "How to write even when you're not writing." Leigh's letter is all about strategies to both produce and finish creative work. I talked about editing by hand and priming my subconscious to revise for me during the day while I drive, do other work, and live my life. I'm not sure if it's possible to get in on the letter that just went out, but if you're as jazzed on creativity strategies as I am, you can subscribe for future letters on Leigh's website.