Juan Felipe Herrera at a CantoMundo reading in Austin.
Proofs for our winter number are due tomorrow, so we must consider ourselves officially immersed in the new term, caught in the craw of the here and now. No more riding on summer’s shimmering coattails, no more lingering (and especially no malingering) in the liminal . . . Well, maybe just one more itty bitty glance back before the plunge into autumn, or into pre-autumn, or into whatever September presages.
How We Spent Our Summers
José Angel Araguz: Along with teaching this summer, I released my new chapbook, The Divorce Suite, published by Red Bird Chapbooks. I also attended this year’s CantoMundo conference, where I got to participate in readings and workshops led by US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera and Texas State Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla.
James Ellenberger: I hung out at my family’s house in western Pennsylvania, began reading for my exams (animal-based mysticism and LGBT canon), and wrote a fair number of poems, some in the voice of a war-forged bard from a Dungeon and Dragons campaign I participated in. I also saw a lot of neat bugs, including dragonfly nymphs and a few gorgeous polyphemus moths, and got more ticks than I wanted to.
James hanging with his moth friend.
Gwen E. Kirby: I spent the summer in Sewanee, working for the Young Writers’ and Writers’ conferences. I also visited my husband in Maryland, where he works while I study at UC.
Nicola Mason: I relocated to the coast of North Carolina for a couple of months, where I put together the winter issue of CR and began excitedly reading submissions for the Very Angry Baby anthology (soon to be published by our budding press, Acre Books). Included: a monster baby created by Marie Curie in her lab, a baby that hatches from an apple, a baby in the form of an elderly man, and a baby who’s the result of a rape. Amazing work!
Matt O’Keefe: I went to England, where I drank a pint in Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, a London pub patronized by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and (allegedly) Dr. Johnson, and also stood on the moors near the Brontë Parsonage and screamed my wife’s name—to get her and our children to stop walking in the wrong direction.
