Five-ish Things: It's Been a Long September, Which Isn't Even Over Yet
The fun thing about middle-age is all the time you want to slow down, speeds up (nothing makes this more apparent than your kids going from two to twelve to twenty two, all in what feels like five minutes), and all the time you want to go faster (work, colonoscopy prep) slows to a crawl. And those two competing senses of how time works are just constantly colliding for me.
Story Problem: How is it already the end of September, but also, how has it only been 10 months since January 20? (Wrong answers only!)
I was honored to be a part of the Claudine Literary inaugural issue at the beginning of the month, please check out Family Patterns: Cyanocitta cristata, a story about bluejays and grief. The whole issue is a banger, with work by Melissa Llanes Brownlee, Tiff M.Z. Lee, Diane Payne, plus terrific reviews of Allison Field Bell's Edge of the Sea, and Rory Say's The Marksman.
It’s early, but it’s official: I’m going to be at AWP 2026 in Baltimore! I’ll be hanging out with the SmokeLong folks, and am genuinely excited for this chance to see so many people in person that I talk to regularly online!
Skelly is buried in their beach chair under a pile of bullshit, and they are pissed about it, because they have a backlog of books to tell you about. I’ve been informed that I have one week to get my shit together, and get those up on Bluesky.
I’M JUST ASKING QUESTIONS, BRO!
Photo by Alfred Viola, Northeastern University, Bugwood.org