(A guest post for the Wicked Writing Corner, November 2020.)
I write both poetry and fiction. Viewed as separate activities — wearing either my poetry hat or my fiction hat — I have little to add to the voluminous advice already out there. But I do have thoughts about what happens if you try to jam both hats on your head at once. In particular, I have thoughts about the unwise practice of writing book-length, hard-to-market, epic narrative poetry.
(A guest post for the World Fantasy Convention 2020 blog, April 2020.)
In recent years, there’s been an increasing awareness of the importance of diversity in fiction, including diversity in gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, wealth, and age. Along with this has come a discussion of own voices, and the extent to which it matters whether a story about, for instance, a lesbian unicorn, is written by a lesbian. Alas, I have yet to find a unicorn story written by a unicorn, lesbian or otherwise….
(A guest essay at imaginED, November 2019.)
I read a great deal when I was growing up. I read in my backyard, in bed, at meals, on trains, while walking home from school. I read Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Gaskell, and James Herriott. I read short stories, magazines, poetry, novels. I read widely, voraciously, and acquired a particular taste for science fiction. Probably because of this, when I imagined my future, I dreamed of being an astronaut, or, failing that, a scientist or mathematician….
(An essay for the periodic table issue of C&EN, Volume 97, Issue 31.)
My work appeared in Science for the first time in August 2017, one of the proudest achievements of my life. Yet the published piece wasn’t a scientific article. It was poetry. One hundred nineteen haiku to be specific, one for each of the 118 known elements of the periodic table, plus an extra poem for element 119, ununennium, not yet synthesized….
My poem “On Dragon Food” is in the new dragon-themed issue of Eye to the Telescope. This is my twentieth appearance in Eye to the Telescope 🙂
Jeff Georgeson’s interview with me is now online at Penumbric 🙂
I am honored to have two poems included in The Heartbeat of the Universe, a poetry anthology of work from Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction, edited by Emily Hockaday 🙂
Two of my poems — Silver Linings + What the Hero Didn’t Do — are included in the new issue of Star*Line 🙂
I’m happy to report a poetry acceptance from Rune, literary journal of nearby Robert Morris University.
