Dropped Candy, Edition 8, Confessions Turns 3 & Phoebe the Optimist
This week, CONFESSIONS OF A CANDY SNATCHER, published by Candlewick Press with illustrations by Theodore Taylor III, turns three-years-old. I’ve finally adjusted to informing new acquaintances, upon being asked what I do: “I am a Co-Executive Director of a nonprofit community center, a facilitator, and an author.”
For twenty years, I’ve cultivated identities that I coyly summarize as: writer, wanderer, friend. These roles, and the newer ones above, are how I move through the world. I heard someone once say that author is a temporary identity, useful upon the publication of one’s book in order to help shepherd it into the world, after which one converts back to writer. That works for me!
As a kid, I assumed I’d someday be published but I wasn’t aware of the possibility of straddling traditional publishing (CONFESSIONS), independent publishing (TONIGHT’S SPECIALS), DIY publishing by way of zines (42 and counting) and fan fiction (9 works, including a poem I wrote when I was 10!)
Some of life’s surprises are delightful. Others, of course, are difficult. Like many around me, I’m challenged by this social and political moment: my values of collaboration, diversity, kindness, and creativity are being met by new and long-established drives toward division, weaponized bias, cruelty, and restrictions on creative expression.
Back in the spring, not far from where I work, a Turkish graduate student and member of the local “kidlit” community was detained by the US Department of Homeland Security for speaking out (thankfully released in May 2025.) Many nonprofits where I’ve been an enthusiastic patron have lost Federal funding. This summer my household installed air conditioning in response to dangerous heat (previously, our condo was just naturally cool.)
It’s a lot. It’s a reminder that deep community connections and access to resources aren’t a nice-to-have, they’re a must-have. I’m grateful for what I’ve grown and been gifted: my partner and family and dear friends, my neighbors and neighborhood, my three jobs, my writer’s group of two decades, this writing space where I look over Boston’s historical State Street —near where Phillis Wheatley Peters was delivered to the colonial city as an enslaved child and wrote her way to freedom, becoming a published poet.
I’m honored to sometimes be a resource for others: talking through what’s-hard with friends, engaging in collective visioning and action, and developing stories that encourage young folk to dream themselves into a world where belonging is a given, where societal struggles are addressed through a range of methods developed by our foreparents, which we build upon.
Sound optimistic? I’m okay with that, as the descendant of enslaved Africans, of Blackfolk who took a chance on the North as part of the Great Migration, and child of a self-described “hippie” and a “revolutionary.” This summer I spun this inheritance, my values, and ideas into a new picture book manuscript, bringing my nearly-ready-to-sell projects up to two. More on this in the future!😉📚
Meanwhile, I’m behind on sharing recent book news: my first time hosting a workshop at Boston Comics in Color in the spring, Table for 7’s anthology launch in June, and attending the Swinger of Birches writer’s retreat in Plattsburg, NY, on Lake Champlain. As this newsletter has gotten long, I’ll save these for the next edition.
🌈 Bonus Question Results From, uh, January 🌈
You made it all the way to the end! Your prize is ❌ WRONG ANSWERS ❌ for four well-known nursery rhymes, supplied by newsletter readers / bonus question respondents who were willing to humor me at the start of 2025. Enjoy.
Baa baa, Black Sheep, have you 🐑
Chamomile tea?
Baa!
Lil Miss Muffet, sat on her tuffet eating 🍄
Chicken tikka masala with a side of garlic naan
Cheetos
Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran 🐭
The Boston Marathon
like heck!
Brown girl in the ring, tra la la la la la, she looks like 🍯
Sugar in a kiwi, kiwi, kiwi
Itsy bitsy spider climbed 🕷️
Half dome
Across the basement
TTFN
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Ahhh! I love it. So glad we got to meet at Swinger of Birches! You are amazing!