Spotted in the Wild

My book Whiteout has been spotted loose in the world. A friend from elementary school posted a picture of her copy on Facebook, and to my knowledge that's the first one seen in the wild. I don't even have a copy yet! (Of course, I'm in Japan and that's the reason.) Anyway, this is exciting news! And I look forward to seeing more copies out there! Thanks, everyone, for your support.

Whiteout is Out

Although the official publication date for Whiteout is July 15th, it's actually available at the University of Chicago Press website NOW (they are distributing it for the University of Alaska, the actual publisher).

For those who don't know about it, here's a description:

Whiteout

64 pages | 6 x 9

The Alaska Literary Series

When she was a toddler, Jessica Goodfellow’s twenty-two-year-old uncle, along with six other climbers from the 1967 Wilcox Expedition to Denali, was lost in an unprecedented ten-day storm blasting winds of up to three-hundred miles per hour. Just as North America’s highest peak is so massive that it has its own distinct weather system—changeable and perilous, subject to sudden whiteout conditions—a family whose loved one is irretrievably lost has a grief so blinding and vast that it also creates its own capricious internal weather, one that lasts for generations. Whiteout is Goodfellow’s account of growing up in this unnavigable and often unspoken-of climate of bereavement.

Although her poems begin with a missing body, they are not an elegy. Instead, Goodfellow struggles with the absence of cultural ritual for the uncontainable loss of a beloved one whose body is never recovered and whose final story is unknowable. There is no solace here, no possible reconciliation. Instead, Whiteout is a defiant gaze into a storm that engulfs both the wildness of Alaska and of familial mourning.

Thanks so much for your interest and support.

Star 82

The quirky and interesting online journal Star 82 has published my first erasures from Eudora Welty's story collection The Wide Net. This journal has all kinds of interesting work, including microfiction, photography, collage and more. Check out this collage by C. B. Auder, for example. There is a treasure trove of interesting art and writing in this issue, and in back issues. Enjoy.

Three Pennies for your Thoughts

Please check out the 150th edition of The Threepenny Review, with contributors including Atsuro Riley, James Longenbach, Kay Ryan, Dean Young, and me, among others. My poem "Darwin's Conjecture" is one of the few included on the website as sample pieces, so if you have a chance, please check it out.

A Way with Words (for the Birds)

I am thrilled and grateful to have a poem I wrote during my residency at Denali National Park & Preserve read on the NPR-affiliated radio show/podcast 'A Way with Words' by host Martha Barnette. It's a great show/podcast about word usage, etymology, etc. You should listen to the whole episode (you should subscribe!), and if you do you'll hear my poem 'The Magpie' beginning at about 32:05.

You can read all my poems from my residency and learn about the residency program at the park website here.

I'm really grateful to have the support both of the park and of Martha Barnette and 'A Way with Words.' I hope to do as much I can to support them right back. So be sure help me out checking out what they've got to offer (see above). Thank you!

Update: You can now hear it here, without having to search for the correct time: