"A Dead Bird at Daycare" by Courtney Hitson in NAP

"I Hate Amy Adams" by Lauren Becker and Andrea Kneeland in wigleaf

"Long After the News" by Emily Jern-Miller at failbetter.

Erin Keane with "The Living Dead" at The Collagist.

And then you remember to read Stevie Smith.  



Also on my mind:  

Joanna Klink

This poem by Jules Gibbs 

Donora Hillard in > kill author

A Kirsty Logan piece

Elizabeth Ellen's "Panama City by Daylight"

There's this piece from my friend Nadxieli Nieto Hall up at Everyday Genius.

And this piece from my friend Nina Puro over at Boxcar Poetry Review.

And I think, my oh my: do these friends know their way around poems... 

It's ninety-something (million?) degrees here and I'm spending my days with excellent, curious students and singing to Palace on the 405.  I'm also...

...imagining myself a ghost in Venice (Gia Tolentino at The Billfold).

...learning to be a better friend to women (Roxane Gay at Jezebel).

...considering birds (Anna Joy Springer at NAP).

...considering all of NAP, actually.

...revisiting Lydia Davis.

...remembering the fireworks (after all, it still feels like July).  (Leesa Cross-Smith in Juked).

Okay, these aren't new things, but they're good things.  This is how I wiled my final summer days....

My friend, Maria Korol, is a painter (I sat for her sometimes when she lived out here, and she'd let me read or drink tea or bug her while she did it). Her work floors me and I found some of it online.  You should check it out and be floored too.

I listened to this Other People podcast with Sarah Manguso as I drove through the Mojave desert by myself.  In this interview, the wonderful Brad Listi asks her about the process of researching and writing The Guardians: An Elegy, a book about a close friend's suicide.  This podcast series transforms L.A. traffic--every one I've heard just thrills me--but I found this particular piece smart, startling, and deeply moving.

These "digital quilts" by Rachel P. Glaser!

Allison Carter, Kit Frick, and Gina Keicher bring so much good-ness to DIAGRAM 12.4.  (You might just want to read the whole issue).

As an educator, I'm fascinated by Chaska Conrow's account of teaching in a charter school for a San Francisco jail.

"What's a forty-letter word for sunshine?"--Catherine Lacey in September's elimae

I'm no artist (<--see sad cake from painting for non-majors class), but I love visual work and right now I'm loving in particular the work here by artist Heidi Yardley. She says that she explores "the sinister world of dreams and subconscious desire", which might be the reason I've visited these paintings more than twice. (Not to mention the other lovely-weird-compelling images on her website).

The new special issue #2 of Specter is killer.  Specter is always killer, and I love the diverse group of voices and styles they champion.  But this all-women issue is a standout (and with some wonderful first-time folks, too).

And: I'm a little late on it, but this n+1 piece about "ladyblogs" is excellent. Check it out here.  (Especially if you're a fan of ladyblogs). 

I love this piece by Roxane Gay, "How to Be Friends With Another Woman", which was included in the How-To Issue Blog (a response to the New York Times Book Review's How-To issue).  

I love this essay in the Atlantic and its moving claim for why "having enough" > "trying to have it all".

And I love this wild ditty by Mureall Hébert in the final issue of >kill author.

I'm fascinated with writing that addresses the body (like the essay I linked to in my previous post--it does so in stunning, heart-smashing ways). This interview of ex-gymnast and writer Chelsea Bieker over on The Hairpin is a very different kind of body piece but excellent, too. I appreciate how, in addition to sharing her experience of competing in a demanding sport, she explores the relationship between criticism of the body/the body's performance and criticism of writing. And as someone who never learned to cartwheel but admired those 96 Olympic girls, I found it super fun to read.