The most formidable deadline I ever faced was in seventh grade. The end of the semester was approaching, and I suddenly realized I had five book reports due the next day. They were supposed to have been done over the previous months, but because there were no specific deadlines, I’d let them slip. The books had been read, but not a word had been written, and, being a serious student, I was appalled by my oversight. So I pulled the first—and only—all-nighter of my life, writing furiously as my family slept, the dark deepening, the house creaking, me cloaked in existential terror. I wrote until four or five in the morning and stumbled to school a few hours later with the five completed reports, so relieved to have gotten them done.
That experience marked me. For the rest of my time at school, I made sure I never came close to missing a deadline—and I carried that habit into my writing life.
In The Healing Circle, a bad new age mother abandons her family in California to pursue a miracle cure in Munich. Once she gets there however, she wonders if she might have already died.
Diane Thiel, author of Questions from Outer Space, had a poem, “Shadow and Light,” published on Verse Daily.
Pacific Light author David Mason has a new poem, “Windward,” in TLS.
Poet David Mason, author of Pacific Light, published “Shipmates” and “An Ancient Story” in The Hudson Review.
Portland Community College creative writing and composition instructor Thea Prieto published her debut novella “From the Caves” in 2021 and is quickly gaining recognition for her writing prowess.
Flutter, Kick comes out this November.
Poet and publicist Kim Dower joins Zibby to discuss her fifth book of poems, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom, which helped her grapple with her mother’s dementia and passing. The two talk about Kim’s journeys as both a writer and a book publicist — as well as how the two roles inform each other — and what the catalyst was for her to return to poetry after nearly twenty years. Kim also shares some of her favorite poets and what inspired her to write a number of the poems in this collection.
Yuvi Zalkow is an occasional YouTuber, a full-time tech writer, and the author of two books of fiction, A Brilliant Novel in the Works and the recently released I Only Cry With Emoticons (Red Hen Press). What I love about Zalkow’s fiction is how he zips so many of our contemporary anxieties into smart prose. His newest book focuses on Saul, who is desperately unmoored, and trying to do right by his son in the wake of a divorce.
I Only Cry With Emoticons is tender, searing, and consistently relatable. Zalkow takes the fragmentation of modern life—like our constantly beeping phones, our up-next streams, the very nature of the always-on internet—and transforms this digital garbage into a story that takes hold of the heart.
—Wendy J. Fox
Congratulations to Dariel Suarez, author of The Playwright’s House, and M. Soledad Caballero, author of I Was a Bell, for becoming finalists in the International Latino Book Awards for Best Popular Fiction – English and The Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award – One Author – English categories respectively!
Congratulations to David Campos and Maceo Montoya, poet and artist of American Quasar, and Carl Marcum, author of A Camera Obscura, for receiving Honorable Mentions at the 2022 International Latino Book Awards for the Juan Felipe Herrara Best Poetry Book Award! This is a tremendous honor and we are so proud and thrilled to have been able to play a part in both of these books’ journeys!
How do you build a creative practice around chronic pain?
It’s one of those writing nights where I am able to sneak away from family responsibilities to work on my novel, so I’m up in the attic trying to cram in a few words before I wear out. In the scene I’m working on, my fictionalized grandfather, the hero of the novel, gets drunk and has an epiphany. Or at least he thinks it’s an epiphany until he gets sober again. But for tonight he’s staying drunk because I have a headache, and this scene is as finished as it’s going to get.
Birth is a fundamental part of everyone’s human experience, so it’s no wonder that many people have vastly different experiences giving birth.
For Juneau author Emily Wall, bringing those stories to life, the good and the bad, was an art that was going under the radar — and she wanted to change that.
In her latest book of poetry, “Breaking Into Air: Birth Poems,” Wall compiles more than a dozen varying stories of childbirth mixed with her own experience as a mother to bring the poetry to life. The book, which also includes a poem co-written in the Tlingit language courtesy of X’unei Lance Twitchell, reflects on both the joys of childbirth and the pain of loss that can come with it.
“His background as an award-winning poet weaves a special storytelling precision as Charles Harper Webb makes his debut as a novelist with Ursula Lake. This thriller delivers a taut, captivating story, rich with its characters, settings and pace.”
