Again, I’m late to post this, but I’m so happy to say I was able to attend this year’s Tin House Summer Workshop in person after two years of virtual conferences! Thanks to the incredible generosity of the Neilma Sidney Literary Travel Fund, I spent one week at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, studying with the inimitable Paisley Rekdal, former Poet Laureate of Utah and all-round impressive human bean. I was also immensely grateful to meet friends old and new in an invigoratingly progressive space while learning new skills.

I was also lucky enough to begin my studies at the low-residency MFA creative writing program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina! It’s long been a dream of mine to study at Warren Wilson, whose alumni include Victoria Chang, Reginald Dwayne Betts, and A. Van Jordan, and I was terrifically excited to finally begin in July—and at a residency to remember, no less (bears, fires, fireflies, and covid, oh my!). I’m currently moving into the second half of the semester and I’m really thrilled with my progress so far.

Speaking of long-held dreams, I recently published a poem in wildness, a UK online literary journal offshoot of Platypus Press. I’ve been reading wildness and its stunning poems about desire since I began writing poetry seriously, so it was a real delight to be published there.

I also joined Four Way Review as an associate poetry editor under the ever accomplished Sara Elkamel recently, and it’s so far been a blast! The first issue I worked on was the Summer 2022 issue, and I’m really proud of all the poets who were featured in it.

That’s all for now! More news soon!

A bit of a belated update on a few things I’ve been up to recently!

Earlier this year I was extremely grateful to be able to attend several US conferences via the online format. The first conference I was lucky enough to attend was Tin House Summer Workshop, where along with seven other fabulous poets I was mentored by the amazing Eduardo C. Corral. While I was not able to sample Portland’s legendary food scene, I was able to attend some fantastic talks by Donika Kelly and Patricia Smith.

I was also very lucky to receive a Rona Jaffe Foundation scholarship to attend Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, which ran throughout August. There, I had the privilege of participating in the inimitable Brenda Shaughnessy and Victoria Chang’s classes, as well as hanging out with my awesome cohorts in the virtual Barn. My attendance at both Bread Loaf and Tin House were supported by a Create NSW grant.

In September I was published in the Spring 2021 edition of Meanjin which was a real treat for me — many thanks to Bronwyn Lea for ushering it through! If you have a subscription, you can read the poem here, and if not, you can read it here.

Next up after a bit of a break is attending the 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival as a Kundiman scholar under the guidance of Matthew Olzmann in January, followed by studying with Leila Chatti at the Tin House Winter Workshop in February. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to work with all these incredible poets and am looking forward to the coming year!