I'm super excited to be in this gorgeous anthology writing about one of my literary heroes, Kate Chopin, and about making art as a single parent when the world is falling apart

One of my favorite poems and poets: "Enough" by Suzanne Buffam | The Poetry Foundation share.google/kRNpFRjNO0FZ...

I'm teaching a five-week humor writing course beginning this week, and while there's an abundance of chaos and tragedy all around us, now, more than ever, we need to also employ humor to satirize, challenge, protest, ridicule, and illuminate what's happening in our country 💓

This weekend I helped a friend move some of their belongings out of their apartment in the Central West End. I won't share any of the photos I took, and I teared up driving to their apartment off Union. If you can, please help the St. Louis tornado relief efforts: www.stlmag.com/news/st-loui...

Success sometimes looks like eating red beans & rice on the porch of my brick bungalow while pale pink peonies bloom, Ani singing through the window, & I just finished meeting with my childhood library system, where I will be facilitating a workshop with a publisher whose work elevates the Midwest 🩷

Wound by Larry Levis I've loved you as a man loves an old wound picked up in a razor fight on a street nobody remembers. Look at him: even in the dark he touches it gently.

Human beings are not an “administrative error”

Hey Kansas City writers! I'm facilitating a Micro Essay Writing in-person workshop in collaboration with The New Territory Magazine & The Story Center of Kansas City, Missouri on May 31, 2025 from 10 AM-4 PM Central. To register for this free workshop, please visit: www.mymcpl.org/events/10615...

How to be roasted by my 8yo right before bed this evening: read a graphic novel about dinosaurs, and she dead-eyed looked at me and smiled as she asked me: "So, these dinosaurs were around in the '80s right?" Sis, 65 million years ago dinosaurs died out. Not the '80s, not when I was a child 😭😂😉

💖 While you are at #AWP25, please make sure to pick up a copy of SCREAM QUEEN by our own @cdeskilson.bsky.social from @acrebooks.bsky.social & THANKS FOR THIS RIOT by @janellebassett.bsky.social from @prairie-schooner.bsky.social 💖

I could not be at AWP this year because of work. I'm sad to miss all the good talk about reading & writing. Also, as someone with a new-ish book out, I guess I'm missing the opportunity to spread the word - so here goes: I hope you'll consider ordering SAD GROWNUPS: bookshop.org/p/books/sad-...

In a world full of cowards, I’m begging all of us to be fearless. To dig deep. To find someone or something to stand up for. To make things with our whole heart. To care about the most vulnerable. To write as if our lives depend on it. To do the right thing despite the cost. Now is the time.

Who are the five writers that made you? Toni Morrison Dorothy Allison Mary Gaitskill Jo Ann Beard Sei Shōnagon ❤️

Ever read a line in a book you want to commit to memory, it's so beautiful and true? I just began Raven Leilani's novel Luster, and swoon 💜

We're going to pay $150 for prose, poems, art, and beyond, for TBQ8, which will also be in print and released in the fall. We open 4/20. Official call and guidelines coming soon! Follow us, read all of our back issues online for free, and live más!

Peak girlhood is eating Girl Scout Cookies (s'mores is auh-mazing) while watching Alive Australia (also peak disassociation with everything going on) 😜

I keep thinking about our public school system & how gutting the DOE, which is on Trump's agenda, is going to hurt so many children in so many long-lasting, irreparable ways As the mother to a child with a 504 plan, I'm furious & ready to fight so hard for basic human decency in our government

More magical micros of up to 100 words have been added to this thread over the last week, including stories from @jaredpovanda.bsky.social, @uksherka.bsky.social, @francesgapper.bsky.social, K. S. Dyal, @chriscottom.bsky.social, @kellathornton.bsky.social and @kazbarwrites.bsky.social ✨

Pick a selfie. Turn it black and white. Still here, still present, still hopeful.

One of my favorite micros I've written thus far 😍 thank you for sharing, James While this piece is fiction, I wrote this micro while making toast for my little girl several years ago 🍞

Woke up to this wonderful news from my publisher @santafewriter.bsky.social!! My book made One of Ms. Magazine's Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2025 list @msmagazine.com!! Wooohooooo!! msmagazine.com/2025/01/21/a...

I really wish writers and artists had walk-up songs... Mine this month would be a classic, Wu-Tang's "Sound the Horns" 🎺😍🎺

There's something healing to this later-in-life Midwestern queer belting out Dar's "Iowa" in her Subaru with the windows down singing about people who "don't like to make our passions other people's concern / & we walk into the world of safe people / & at night, we walk into our houses and burn" ❤️

The poet Nikki Giovanni came to Mizzou in the late 1990s and blew my mind with her poetry, specifically about not bunting but aiming for the fences, even if it meant you struck out. Her legacy is a gift to American letters, and I'm heartbroken to learn of her passing yesterday at the age of 81

Question for writerly friends: I'll be teaching a humor writing course this summer via a St. Louis-based university, and if I offered it fully online vs. hybrid, do you think folx would be more likely to register / attend?

Super excited that the #LiteraryLandscapes book has a title! Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest, forthcoming 2025 from @illinoispress.bsky.social

This was, gasp, my last column from last week (honestly, last week feels like a year ago, not gonna lie). I have *loved* my time writing columns @reckonreview.bsky.social and now I'm going to work hard to make this late-blooming novel happen 💗

Hello, hello! I've deactivated my 15-year-old Twitter/X account tonight, and I hope to do a better job of being an active member of this community moving forward 💗

Still here! Now, to actually write here... 🫣

Giving fallow-fields energy at the moment, but thanks to new and familiar faces following me ❤️ I'll be back soon. Right now, I'm enjoying Loretta Lynn, homemade apple butter, playing tooth fairy replete with a hot pink glitter trail the 6yo knew was dubious, and throwing the windows wide open

For the first time since early July, I have a day to care for myself. It is exquisite to light a candle, drink hot coffee, fill out back-to-school forms for the 6yo without interruption. I am going to make the most of these next eight to nine hours 💗

Making chocolate chip banana pancakes whilst the Be Good Tanyas sing about something chasing you and talking to yourself, and this is unfiltered and sacred joy, especially as I see my 6yo enjoy that first, warm and happy bite

Yesterday afternoon at the pool, my best friend told me a truth about myself that made me laugh, think, and feel grateful for her love and wit: "You're the most fun, overwhelmed person I know."

I just read @somers.bsky.social gorgeous short story in this month's Joyland on the train from Munich to Prague, and oh my goodness, run to read the "Ten Year Affair"! https://joylandmagazine.com/fiction/ten-year-affair/?fbclid=PAAaaoKck5tw9w4AMH0Xpz9LChjce74ZZON6P2ywuylkdCwtQGsO7demUHTuc