The Forest Revealed: An Illustrated Year, the book of gorgeous nature paintings by Maine artist Jada Fitch, which I wrote the text for, is finally getting closer to being released into the world, and it’s possible to preorder here. This was a massive undertaking combining scientific research and poetry on my part, and at least five years of creating the paintings on Jada’s part.
CONTEST WINS
I haven’t posted on here in a while, so it’s a good time to share a few exciting news items!
This past year, I won a poetry contest at Common Ground Review with a poem I wrote quite a while back after listening to the podcast “Salem, Revisited.” Very grateful to Common Ground and judge Rebecca Hart Olander for choosing my poem “Salem.”
An essay of mine won Honorable Mention (3rd place) in the Barry Lopez Creative Nonfiction prize at Cutthroat, selected by Pam Houston, one of my favorite and most influential writers. “The Seeds that Germinate in Darkness” will appear in Cutthroat later this year.
And I’m headed to Tucson in March after winning the Literary Awards poetry contest, to take part in workshops and read on a “Winners’ Panel” at the Tucson Festival of Books (March 16, if anyone will be in the Tucson area!) Photos opposite from my trip in 2023, when I attended as a finalist.
Since my book American Eclipse does indeed use eclipses, both literal and metaphorical, as a motif, I offered to read some poetry at various festivals leading up to the total eclipse on April 8, and a few people took me up on the offer! Check out the Events page for details. And here’s an example of an eclipse poem that appeared in Lightwood, albeit about the moon and not the sun.
Left/above: sun through September morning fog in my backyard in Sheffield, MA.
Right/below: full moon at dawn, Champlain Valley, somewhere between VT and NY, perhaps in the path of the total eclipse.
