[Tin House]

I am very excited to share the news that two of my poems appear in the December 2010 issue of Tin House magazine. Last March, on St. Patrick’s Day to be exact, I received a call from Tonaya Thompson, senior editor at TH, asking if “The Prelude After” & “The Crocus Thief” were still available. While I might want to pretend I was nonchalant about the whole thing, I must be honest that I remember jumping around my apartment for a full five minutes before I became aware of much else. TH is exactly the kind of journal that it’s cool to geek out over, & I did. I was so thrilled by the news that a half hour later I realized I could hardly remember any of the details of the conversation! And when, many months later, I received the issue to discover I have the honor of sharing a binding with ADRIENNE RICH (!!!), well I was somewhat beside myself once again.

So the point is that I have been & I am excited. But truth be told, I really want to take a moment to send some gratitude to the kind folks at Tin House. Tonaya, Cheston Knapp, Brenda Shaughnessy, & everyone else—they were all real pleasures to deal with. Yes, we’re only talking about two poems, but it’s always a joy when a great journal turns out to be the creation of lovely people. (As an aside, they also happen to run an excellent indie publishing press as well. I recommend checking it out.)

Of course, I hope you’ll go find my poems in the new issue of the magazine. You can get your hands on Tin House pretty easily in most Barnes & Noble stores, not to mention many cool independent book shops. Take a look. Support the journal by buying a copy if you like it. Besides my work, there’s 200+ pages of quality magazine there—of which I’m proud to be a part.

Click on the image & you’ll get whisked over to the “Current Issue” section of the Tin House website.

[Dislocate]

Receiving packages from the US is always a treat here in Romania, particularly when they come to the normal post office and don’t require me to go down to the special customs office. Yesterday I received an unexpected bunch of contributor’s copies of Dislocate‘s newest, Issue #5. I thought my contributor copies were headed to my family in New York, so I was happily surprised to find them arriving here in Transilvania!

The issue is great, too. There’s a feature called “Grace House,” featuring nonfiction writing from women in a halfway house, responding to paintings by Jacob Lawrence. There’s also a debut English translation of Haitian poet Jacqueline Beauge-Rosier, photographs by Kyle Rand, and contributions from Tom Fleischmann, Joshua Ware, and others. Good company, if you ask me.

The best part of having my nonfiction piece, “Apotheosis,” in Dislocate, though, is appearing in the same issue as my good friend Jesse Donaldson. Since our days at Kenyon College, Jesse and I have had some excellent times outside the fishbowl, and he remains someone I enjoy talking to about writing, living in the American south, and choosing local roads over interstates. That both of us should appear together is a nice reminder of all those conversations, as is his short story, “I Thought Ohio Was Supposed to be Flat.”  As is evidenced in his story, Jesse has really honed the ability to give his characters genuine voice, meaningful experiences, and real lives: “Literalists of the Imagination” pay attention.

So, if you’re interested, I hope you’ll support Dislocate and check out the issue (it isn’t listed yet, but you can send them an email on the page listed to order it). Not only is the issue lovely, but the people who put it out are super nice.

Now I need to go back to reading the issue and listening to the new God Help the Girl single, “Come Monday Night,” on endless repeat.