Welcome Back, Literary Roundup!

I'm excited about this roundup!

After a few month hiatus I am back to poeming and back to rounding up literary delights. I had an incredibly busy August, September, and October. Two weddings on the east coast. Writing for ModCloth 30-40 hours a week average. I started teaching in October as well as coordinating for Poetry Out Loud. Since I was so busy with other projects, plus a few personal struggles, I gave myself a vacation from writing. If a poem came out of me spontaneously, then I wrote. But it rarely did. Writing product descriptions, particularly the fun creative ones I write for MC (such as this one I'm proud of), for 6-8 hours just taps out all of my delicious creative syrup.

So I'm back on the writing wagon and kicking things off with a poem-a-day challenge for November. I'm mostly keeping up. It helps to have a group of lovely writers holding me accountable. The poems don't have a ton of focus. A lot of poets like writing projects. I've tried once. I think I'd have to be really motivated or have a lot to say on a particular topic and then give it some structure. Like persona poems for each Zodiac sign. That's kind of a cool idea....

Enough about me though. Without further ado, here's my latest gathering of literary nuggets from around the interwebs. Please help yourself!

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Janice Anderson's essay "How to Move in One Direction While Flying in Another" won the Grand Prize in Hippocampus Magazine's Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction. This is a powerful narrative about Janice's experience following a sexual assault. She submitted as part of Submission Bombers, despite being tentative about submitting in general. And she won. The Grand-Frakkin-Prize. Huge CONGRATS to Janice!

Sarah Leavens' gorgeous poem "Natural History" was featuring in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as their Saturday Poem feature. I love that my hometown newspaper publishes poems regularly. If you've ever been to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, you might remember the PaleoLab where you can watch museum preparators removing dirt from fossils. Here's a picture:

photo from Weird and Cool Stuff

The 56th Issue of Right Hand Pointing features a bunch of Submission Bombers! If you aren't familiar with RHP, it's an awesome journal that publishes super short poems and stories meant to be read in order. You don't even have to scroll! It's satisfying to read the whole issue at once, I promise you. Plus, D. Gilson is published in this issue and he is adorable. Don't believe me? Here is proof:

adorable D. Gilson with two FLP chapbooks

Two Eduardo Milán poems over at Asymptote beautifully translated by John Oliver Simon. Seriously you don't want to miss these lyrical, image-rich lines. Mary Stone Dockery has some creepy-meets-beautiful prosetry at Menacing Hedge. Always love her work. Beth Gilstrap's flash fiction piece "I Am Barbarella" appears in Blue Fifth Review's Blue Five Notebook Series. This story is almost prosetry and exactly what good flash should be. Finally, I have two poems at Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review. Dig in.