Happy August, everyone. Here are some fun new things:

  • My nonfiction chapbook, Shine a light, the light won’t pass, can be ordered alone or as part of a nonfiction bundle from MIEL Books. They also have an artists’ book bundle available, which looks amazing.
  • I heard this week that the novella + photography book, Gomorrah, Baby, is a finalist for publication with Anchor & Plume Press; their final choices will be out in September. I wrote this book last winter, and it sounds weird to say, but I love it with all my heart. I was sad when I finished it, because I’d been living it for months.
  • An exhibit opening today at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum (which is seriously cool – check it out!) in Winona will include a poem I wrote as part of the Open to Interpretation: Water’s Edge book.

I was really happy and grateful to spend a week in July writing at the Collegeville Institute with 11 other writers and coach Michael McGregor. Michael helped loosen the edges on a project that had been frustrating me for a while, and it was lovely (and really, really welcome) to spend time away from the city with wonderful people who value writing and art and scholarship. Being in that community made me think more too about all the unnecessary and small cruelties I surround myself with (mostly online) and how I want more devotion in my life: to writing, to my faith, to the way I communicate about human disease.

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What else about August? I got to see lots of family, made a killer potato and corn chowder, and read wonderful books (Ali Smith’s How to Be Both, Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer, Leigh Kotsilidis’ Hypotheticals). I’ve also started writing for CIDRAP, which publishes infectious disease news (and where I worked on a separate project for eight years).

Here’s to happy dog days; it’s 92F and humid here, so maybe the dog days have arrived.