An Interview with Lauren Gordon
Up the Staircase Quarterly: Lauren, thanks so much for joining me for this interview! I am always curious to learn more about the writers I love reading. So, what are you up to when you are not writing? What excites you? What saddens you?
Right now I spend most of my time watching the same episode of Curious George over and over again. Most of my energy is directed into childcare and doing the domestic right now, so when I’m not writing or reading or researching, I’m changing diapers and washing dishes.
I am preparing for two workshops I’m teaching this fall with University of Wisconsin-Waukesha as part of their Continuing Education program. I have slowed down with my submissions, but I am still sending out work in between trips to Target and the park.
Right now what excites me is a clean stovetop or a meal I didn’t prepare. I’m excited when my daughter can take her shoes off without my help. I’m excited watching the sunflower in the backyard unfurl. I’m excited by poetry that stays in my head after I’ve read it.
What saddens me? The news. Thoughtlessness. Ignorance. Injustice. The creeping feeling of how time is fleeting. Twitter. Yes. I hate how you can’t just be a poet, you have to be a poet in a reading series with a hella witty social media presence. I suck at Twitter. I’m trying too hard and it shows and that makes me sad.
UTSQ: What was your first significant literary encounter? How did this experience inspire you, or shape you, into the writer you have become?
I grew up loving to read and I read anything I could get my hands on. When I was in fifth grade, I was pulled from class a few days a week as part of a G.A.T.E. program – I don’t know how that came about, I just know that it was free time in the middle of the school day to read. I’m a speed reader, so I would just devour books in a matter of hours– Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, the list goes on. I spent my Sundays at swap meets buying used books and I lived for those Scholastic forms. Do you remember those? I remember getting grounded once and my punishment was having my books taken away- I was not allowed to read for a week and that basically destroyed me. I’m not exaggerating when I say I read anything. In junior high I was reading VC Andrews, Woody Allen, serial killer novels, biographies by Carrie Fisher and Shirley Maclaine, Sylvia Plath, JD Salinger, Henry Miller – anything on my mom’s book shelves or that I could buy with pennies at a garage sale. (It just occurred to me that it might be slightly pathological that I married a man whose mother is a retired librarian).
I think this love of reading naturally led to writing. I was very influenced by Harriet the Spy and kept notebooks and sheaths of stories I wrote about neighbors or classmates. I wrote terrible, angsty poetry as a teenager and it wasn’t until I was trying to get my AA as a nontraditional, part-time student that I took a poetry class. The teacher told me I had talent and that I should pursue an education in poetry. It blew my world apart. I didn’t realize that was something I could do in my educational career. I always treated getting degreed as something I needed to do in order to secure an income. Well, no one is studying poetry to earn an income. I did my undergraduate work in English at University of Iowa, which allowed me the opportunity to be in the workshop environment and then I did my MFA in Poetry, purely for love. I won’t tell you what that love cost. I’ve always been a reader and a writer, but it wasn’t until I became a parent that writing became a really vital part of my identity. I lost myself during the nine months I was pregnant and the first six months of my daughter’s life. I was just riding the hormone haze. Poetry brought me back from the dead.
It’s much harder to write and read now with my schedule, but I still manage to do two to three books a week on my kindle. I read junk food books when I need a break. I have a historical Regency romance novel addiction. I’m reading everything I can on uncanny valley for a poetry project in the works. I just finished reading Whole Brain, Whole Child and am gearing up to read Bad Feminist this weekend.
UTSQ: I have come across your work in several journals and magazines (including your work in UTSQ #22, “Goodbye, Madison,”) and I always admire what I find. Your work is crafted so perfectly, however, it still maintains an earnest rawness, which is thrilling to read. Your voice is strong and grabs your reader immediately. In your evolution as a writer, how do you feel your writing has grown? How has it changed? What has been the hardest lesson to learn about writing poetry?
Wow, thank you, what a nice compliment. That’s so funny that you said that about my voice. When I was in my low-residency MFA program, I was sharing a taxi with my mentor (the magnanimous Carol Frost) and I was telling her how worried I was about not having an established “voice” in my poetry. She laughed and waved her hand and said, “Pfft. Don’t worry about voice. You already have one.” So now I play with personas and I feel like “voice” is an elusive, evolving thing. I think my poetry changes all of the time. I have a hard time now relating to what I wrote while I was in that program years ago. My goal last year was to write and publish as much as possible while I could (pre-toddler). My goal for the next five years is to just write better. I’m more interested in quality over quantity now.
The hardest lesson to learn about writing poetry…hmm. I labored under the misconception, for years, that poetry was 99% inspiration and 1% work. Now I write whether inspiration is there or not. Poetry is work for me – I treat it like my job. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it, but I definitely don’t treat poetry as romantically as I once did. Poems are meant to be cracked open and read and taken apart. A friend told me to stop treating poems as precious things, and that has always stayed with me.
UTSQ: You just released a book from Finishing Line Press called Meaningful Fingers, and you have an upcoming release with Horse Less Press this fall, Keen. How would you describe these books? How do they differ from one another? Was your writing process similar for each?
Right now I spend most of my time watching the same episode of Curious George over and over again. Most of my energy is directed into childcare and doing the domestic right now, so when I’m not writing or reading or researching, I’m changing diapers and washing dishes.
I am preparing for two workshops I’m teaching this fall with University of Wisconsin-Waukesha as part of their Continuing Education program. I have slowed down with my submissions, but I am still sending out work in between trips to Target and the park.
Right now what excites me is a clean stovetop or a meal I didn’t prepare. I’m excited when my daughter can take her shoes off without my help. I’m excited watching the sunflower in the backyard unfurl. I’m excited by poetry that stays in my head after I’ve read it.
What saddens me? The news. Thoughtlessness. Ignorance. Injustice. The creeping feeling of how time is fleeting. Twitter. Yes. I hate how you can’t just be a poet, you have to be a poet in a reading series with a hella witty social media presence. I suck at Twitter. I’m trying too hard and it shows and that makes me sad.
UTSQ: What was your first significant literary encounter? How did this experience inspire you, or shape you, into the writer you have become?
I grew up loving to read and I read anything I could get my hands on. When I was in fifth grade, I was pulled from class a few days a week as part of a G.A.T.E. program – I don’t know how that came about, I just know that it was free time in the middle of the school day to read. I’m a speed reader, so I would just devour books in a matter of hours– Little House on the Prairie, Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, the list goes on. I spent my Sundays at swap meets buying used books and I lived for those Scholastic forms. Do you remember those? I remember getting grounded once and my punishment was having my books taken away- I was not allowed to read for a week and that basically destroyed me. I’m not exaggerating when I say I read anything. In junior high I was reading VC Andrews, Woody Allen, serial killer novels, biographies by Carrie Fisher and Shirley Maclaine, Sylvia Plath, JD Salinger, Henry Miller – anything on my mom’s book shelves or that I could buy with pennies at a garage sale. (It just occurred to me that it might be slightly pathological that I married a man whose mother is a retired librarian).
I think this love of reading naturally led to writing. I was very influenced by Harriet the Spy and kept notebooks and sheaths of stories I wrote about neighbors or classmates. I wrote terrible, angsty poetry as a teenager and it wasn’t until I was trying to get my AA as a nontraditional, part-time student that I took a poetry class. The teacher told me I had talent and that I should pursue an education in poetry. It blew my world apart. I didn’t realize that was something I could do in my educational career. I always treated getting degreed as something I needed to do in order to secure an income. Well, no one is studying poetry to earn an income. I did my undergraduate work in English at University of Iowa, which allowed me the opportunity to be in the workshop environment and then I did my MFA in Poetry, purely for love. I won’t tell you what that love cost. I’ve always been a reader and a writer, but it wasn’t until I became a parent that writing became a really vital part of my identity. I lost myself during the nine months I was pregnant and the first six months of my daughter’s life. I was just riding the hormone haze. Poetry brought me back from the dead.
It’s much harder to write and read now with my schedule, but I still manage to do two to three books a week on my kindle. I read junk food books when I need a break. I have a historical Regency romance novel addiction. I’m reading everything I can on uncanny valley for a poetry project in the works. I just finished reading Whole Brain, Whole Child and am gearing up to read Bad Feminist this weekend.
UTSQ: I have come across your work in several journals and magazines (including your work in UTSQ #22, “Goodbye, Madison,”) and I always admire what I find. Your work is crafted so perfectly, however, it still maintains an earnest rawness, which is thrilling to read. Your voice is strong and grabs your reader immediately. In your evolution as a writer, how do you feel your writing has grown? How has it changed? What has been the hardest lesson to learn about writing poetry?
Wow, thank you, what a nice compliment. That’s so funny that you said that about my voice. When I was in my low-residency MFA program, I was sharing a taxi with my mentor (the magnanimous Carol Frost) and I was telling her how worried I was about not having an established “voice” in my poetry. She laughed and waved her hand and said, “Pfft. Don’t worry about voice. You already have one.” So now I play with personas and I feel like “voice” is an elusive, evolving thing. I think my poetry changes all of the time. I have a hard time now relating to what I wrote while I was in that program years ago. My goal last year was to write and publish as much as possible while I could (pre-toddler). My goal for the next five years is to just write better. I’m more interested in quality over quantity now.
The hardest lesson to learn about writing poetry…hmm. I labored under the misconception, for years, that poetry was 99% inspiration and 1% work. Now I write whether inspiration is there or not. Poetry is work for me – I treat it like my job. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it, but I definitely don’t treat poetry as romantically as I once did. Poems are meant to be cracked open and read and taken apart. A friend told me to stop treating poems as precious things, and that has always stayed with me.
UTSQ: You just released a book from Finishing Line Press called Meaningful Fingers, and you have an upcoming release with Horse Less Press this fall, Keen. How would you describe these books? How do they differ from one another? Was your writing process similar for each?
“Meaningful Fingers” is a chapbook of poems that were mostly written around the time my daughter was six months and I was just coming out of the haze. Jim Harms wrote a really nice blurb for it that says something about how the poems are about the terror and awe of motherhood. That’s pretty right on. There is a lot of grieving in those poems and some of them are deeply personal. I had just remarried the year before getting pregnant and those poems didn’t give a shit if they were breaking the poetry rules, ie: it is very hard to write about having a child in a way that is not sentimental or fawning. There is fawning. There were moments where I looked at this small person that is part me and part someone else and I was just completely overcome with emotion – not just love, but sacrifice. Not just awe, but fear. Anyway, these are mostly narrative lyric poems and in that regard, a good fit for Finishing Line Press.
“Keen” is a different animal. I had the idea to write persona poems about or for Nancy Drew and I wanted to address the fact that she grew up with an absent mother. I also wanted the poems to dig at the historical racism and sexism that those books were created in. So in the background of the poems, there is an excavation occurring. The second half of the book is written in the voice of Nancy Drew’s mother vis a vis her last will and testimony. I imagined her as a bluestocking feminist having an affair and maybe a little PPD in there, too. So the idea percolated in my head for about three or four years and then when I sat down to write it, the first section came pretty quickly. The second section took a little more time. The editing took about two months. I knew it would be too hard to publish individual pieces from it, so I just sent it out as a project piece and Horse Less said yes. They’re such a remarkable press and I think they’re the perfect home for these poems. I love when it comes together like that.
I feel like I should plug “Generalizations about Spines” which is another chapbook that is forthcoming with Yellow Flag Press. They had a call for submissions for “different” and after seeing how beautiful their chapbooks were, I sent this weird Ars Poetica off to them and here we are. These project pieces are challenging, and sometimes they come together quickly and sometimes they don’t. This Ars Poetica started as a long poem and evolved into a little manuscript.
UTSQ: You have been working on a collection of Little House on the Prairie inspired poems for quite some time now (which I am very ecstatic about.) Where does this collection stand now? What other projects and/or publications do you have in the pipeline?
Oh, man. Haha. This project is going to end up being my life’s work I think. So, this started as a long series poem under the tutelage of Ilya Kaminsky and then it evolved into a chapbook. Then I got really swept up in the persona voices and it ended up becoming a full length manuscript. This has been about four or five years in the making. I have been sending it out for years and it gets incredible feedback from publishers, but it is so niche and different that it’s really hard to publish individual pieces from it and publishers don’t know what to do with it. One publisher said they thought it could have wide YA appeal. Ugh. That made me think “did they even read it?” So in a total manic moment, I cut it back down to a chapbook. I’ve shelved it, I think. I have to take some time away from it. Have you ever created something where you’re not sure if it’s going to be incredible or it is total crap? I need an emotional break. Menacing Hedge published a few pieces from the manuscript and they are such an incredible journal. But I’m at a loss with it right now. Full length? Chapbook? Publish the chapbook then turn it into a full length? Workshop it? Trash it? Revise it for the 99th time? I don’t know.
So, other projects! I finished my first full length manuscript and it is 80% published right now. I just started researching presses and sending it out. I have another chapbook MS that I am sending out and this one is insane. I sat down to write a poem about marriage and addiction and I ended up writing twenty poems in two days. It came out of nowhere. So I spent some time cleaning it up and am now sending out individual pieces from it. I’d like to have it published next year.
I have a few ideas floating around in my head for new projects, but I’m just in the research phase. I mentioned the uncanny valley readings I’m doing, but I also wrote a long poem with a funky form that was inspired by an invitation we received from my husband’s family for a reunion. I think I might develop it into something. It’s emotional though, and I had to take some space from it. I’ll come back to it.
UTSQ: Speaking of publications, it is always fun to hear where other writers are reading inspiring work. Which publications, journals, and magazines have you recently discovered that are doing promising things, and which more established places do you find yourself returning to over and again for great reads?
A few journals I read from cover to cover: Menacing Hedge, Poetry, APR, Poets & Writers, Caketrain, Sugar House Review, Iowa Review, burntdistrict. I’ve been really impressed by JMWW, Banango Lit, Devil’s Lake Review, and mojo. I really am starting to love Tinderbox. I like Heavy Feather Review, The Collagist, The Awl’s poetry section. Escape Into Life does amazing poetry posts paired with artwork, they’re beautiful. I loved the last Bone Bouquet. I liked the last Atlas Review. You know, I have no income so I do the best with what I have. I’m grateful for online reading, like the Kenyon Review’s new online section. Oh my gosh, The Volta is another one I devour. I just discovered FRiGG and Neon from recommendations from friends. Lots of love for Sixth Finch and Ilk, Yes Yes’s Vinyl, Stirring, geez too many to name and I’d hate to forget one. I just had two poems in the new MiPOesias and that whole issue is just fabulous. Poetry Crush is awesome, have you seen it? Ping Pong! Radius Lit, of course, does amazing things.
UTSQ: Tell me a little about Radius Lit. How did you become involved in the publication? I really enjoyed your article published there a few months ago, “[Insert Pun About Labor Here]: On Being a Poet and a Stay-At-Home Mom.” The societal debate of the motherhood-and-poetry combination has always been fascinating to me, especially the stereotypes you mentioned in the article of how a mother should be and how a poet should be. What pushed you to add your thoughts on this subject and tell your own personal account? How can these stereotypes be broken?
Thanks so much. Isn’t Radius Lit just great? It’s such a good mix of poetry and essay and now fiction, too. I met Victor Infante through his lovely wife Lea Deschenes and they asked if I’d like to do a series on parenthood and poetry. I had done a few pieces for Rattle and Pen so I felt comfortable exploring that territory. I have to say, I got some interesting feedback about that article, particularly from women who didn’t agree that being a “stay at home mom” was categorically work. That seems unfortunate to me. It’s hard to be in a position of privilege and have any feeling of resentment or frustration. I struggled with the idea of a changing identity when I became a mother; suddenly I was invisible and culpable in a brand new way. I think I have a better understanding of it now as a role and not an identity, but becoming a mother also brought my deeply internalized sexism into the foreground. I think as a country, our misogyny and sexism and racism is so ingrained that it takes a constant consciousness to just be present. I don’t know how to break those stereotypes of culture, so I just do what I can for the sake of my daughter. I educate myself. I’m careful about the language I use. I think critically about everything. I am learning to be assertive and set better boundaries. I’m becoming a better advocate for women and children. It has become less about what I can get as opposed to what I can give. I don’t know if that comes with age or what, but my main goal is to raise a kind person. I don’t know if people think about that for their children. We think in terms of happiness or success, rarely kindness. Hey, maybe that’s the key to breaking apart the patriarchy. Raise kind little people.
UTSQ: Finally, Lauren, if you could have a meal with anyone, dead or alive, real or imaginary, who would it be, and what on earth would the two of you eat?
This is a lot of pressure! I have this fantasy that I take Laura Ingalls Wilder through a modern day grocery store and blow her mind wide open. “Look, packaged meat! Bacon you didn’t have to cure! Offal is a delicacy now!” I wouldn’t want to eat with Nancy Drew. I love her, but she’s a little tight, you know? See, this question is so stressful. Ok. I think I would love a dinner where 1) I didn’t have to prepare it and 2) the conversation is hilarious and smart. So, my grandmother’s eggplant parmesan, good bread and butter, a simply dressed salad, wine. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Sarah Vowell, Michael Ian Black, David Wain, Amy Pohler, Tina Fey – I just want a round table of brilliant, smart, hilarious people. I don’t even have to say anything. I could just eat and listen. I know, I totally cheated.
Lauren Gordon is the Pushcart Prize nominated author of three forthcoming chapbooks: “Meaningful Fingers” (Finishing Line Press), “Keen” (Horse Less Press), and “Generalizations about Spines” (Yellow Flag Press). Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming with Sugar House Review, Inter|rupture, The Collagist, The Volta blog, MiPOesias, and Poetry Crush. She is also a Contributing Editor to Radius Lit and lives outside of Milwaukee.
“Keen” is a different animal. I had the idea to write persona poems about or for Nancy Drew and I wanted to address the fact that she grew up with an absent mother. I also wanted the poems to dig at the historical racism and sexism that those books were created in. So in the background of the poems, there is an excavation occurring. The second half of the book is written in the voice of Nancy Drew’s mother vis a vis her last will and testimony. I imagined her as a bluestocking feminist having an affair and maybe a little PPD in there, too. So the idea percolated in my head for about three or four years and then when I sat down to write it, the first section came pretty quickly. The second section took a little more time. The editing took about two months. I knew it would be too hard to publish individual pieces from it, so I just sent it out as a project piece and Horse Less said yes. They’re such a remarkable press and I think they’re the perfect home for these poems. I love when it comes together like that.
I feel like I should plug “Generalizations about Spines” which is another chapbook that is forthcoming with Yellow Flag Press. They had a call for submissions for “different” and after seeing how beautiful their chapbooks were, I sent this weird Ars Poetica off to them and here we are. These project pieces are challenging, and sometimes they come together quickly and sometimes they don’t. This Ars Poetica started as a long poem and evolved into a little manuscript.
UTSQ: You have been working on a collection of Little House on the Prairie inspired poems for quite some time now (which I am very ecstatic about.) Where does this collection stand now? What other projects and/or publications do you have in the pipeline?
Oh, man. Haha. This project is going to end up being my life’s work I think. So, this started as a long series poem under the tutelage of Ilya Kaminsky and then it evolved into a chapbook. Then I got really swept up in the persona voices and it ended up becoming a full length manuscript. This has been about four or five years in the making. I have been sending it out for years and it gets incredible feedback from publishers, but it is so niche and different that it’s really hard to publish individual pieces from it and publishers don’t know what to do with it. One publisher said they thought it could have wide YA appeal. Ugh. That made me think “did they even read it?” So in a total manic moment, I cut it back down to a chapbook. I’ve shelved it, I think. I have to take some time away from it. Have you ever created something where you’re not sure if it’s going to be incredible or it is total crap? I need an emotional break. Menacing Hedge published a few pieces from the manuscript and they are such an incredible journal. But I’m at a loss with it right now. Full length? Chapbook? Publish the chapbook then turn it into a full length? Workshop it? Trash it? Revise it for the 99th time? I don’t know.
So, other projects! I finished my first full length manuscript and it is 80% published right now. I just started researching presses and sending it out. I have another chapbook MS that I am sending out and this one is insane. I sat down to write a poem about marriage and addiction and I ended up writing twenty poems in two days. It came out of nowhere. So I spent some time cleaning it up and am now sending out individual pieces from it. I’d like to have it published next year.
I have a few ideas floating around in my head for new projects, but I’m just in the research phase. I mentioned the uncanny valley readings I’m doing, but I also wrote a long poem with a funky form that was inspired by an invitation we received from my husband’s family for a reunion. I think I might develop it into something. It’s emotional though, and I had to take some space from it. I’ll come back to it.
UTSQ: Speaking of publications, it is always fun to hear where other writers are reading inspiring work. Which publications, journals, and magazines have you recently discovered that are doing promising things, and which more established places do you find yourself returning to over and again for great reads?
A few journals I read from cover to cover: Menacing Hedge, Poetry, APR, Poets & Writers, Caketrain, Sugar House Review, Iowa Review, burntdistrict. I’ve been really impressed by JMWW, Banango Lit, Devil’s Lake Review, and mojo. I really am starting to love Tinderbox. I like Heavy Feather Review, The Collagist, The Awl’s poetry section. Escape Into Life does amazing poetry posts paired with artwork, they’re beautiful. I loved the last Bone Bouquet. I liked the last Atlas Review. You know, I have no income so I do the best with what I have. I’m grateful for online reading, like the Kenyon Review’s new online section. Oh my gosh, The Volta is another one I devour. I just discovered FRiGG and Neon from recommendations from friends. Lots of love for Sixth Finch and Ilk, Yes Yes’s Vinyl, Stirring, geez too many to name and I’d hate to forget one. I just had two poems in the new MiPOesias and that whole issue is just fabulous. Poetry Crush is awesome, have you seen it? Ping Pong! Radius Lit, of course, does amazing things.
UTSQ: Tell me a little about Radius Lit. How did you become involved in the publication? I really enjoyed your article published there a few months ago, “[Insert Pun About Labor Here]: On Being a Poet and a Stay-At-Home Mom.” The societal debate of the motherhood-and-poetry combination has always been fascinating to me, especially the stereotypes you mentioned in the article of how a mother should be and how a poet should be. What pushed you to add your thoughts on this subject and tell your own personal account? How can these stereotypes be broken?
Thanks so much. Isn’t Radius Lit just great? It’s such a good mix of poetry and essay and now fiction, too. I met Victor Infante through his lovely wife Lea Deschenes and they asked if I’d like to do a series on parenthood and poetry. I had done a few pieces for Rattle and Pen so I felt comfortable exploring that territory. I have to say, I got some interesting feedback about that article, particularly from women who didn’t agree that being a “stay at home mom” was categorically work. That seems unfortunate to me. It’s hard to be in a position of privilege and have any feeling of resentment or frustration. I struggled with the idea of a changing identity when I became a mother; suddenly I was invisible and culpable in a brand new way. I think I have a better understanding of it now as a role and not an identity, but becoming a mother also brought my deeply internalized sexism into the foreground. I think as a country, our misogyny and sexism and racism is so ingrained that it takes a constant consciousness to just be present. I don’t know how to break those stereotypes of culture, so I just do what I can for the sake of my daughter. I educate myself. I’m careful about the language I use. I think critically about everything. I am learning to be assertive and set better boundaries. I’m becoming a better advocate for women and children. It has become less about what I can get as opposed to what I can give. I don’t know if that comes with age or what, but my main goal is to raise a kind person. I don’t know if people think about that for their children. We think in terms of happiness or success, rarely kindness. Hey, maybe that’s the key to breaking apart the patriarchy. Raise kind little people.
UTSQ: Finally, Lauren, if you could have a meal with anyone, dead or alive, real or imaginary, who would it be, and what on earth would the two of you eat?
This is a lot of pressure! I have this fantasy that I take Laura Ingalls Wilder through a modern day grocery store and blow her mind wide open. “Look, packaged meat! Bacon you didn’t have to cure! Offal is a delicacy now!” I wouldn’t want to eat with Nancy Drew. I love her, but she’s a little tight, you know? See, this question is so stressful. Ok. I think I would love a dinner where 1) I didn’t have to prepare it and 2) the conversation is hilarious and smart. So, my grandmother’s eggplant parmesan, good bread and butter, a simply dressed salad, wine. David Sedaris, Tig Notaro, Sarah Vowell, Michael Ian Black, David Wain, Amy Pohler, Tina Fey – I just want a round table of brilliant, smart, hilarious people. I don’t even have to say anything. I could just eat and listen. I know, I totally cheated.
Lauren Gordon is the Pushcart Prize nominated author of three forthcoming chapbooks: “Meaningful Fingers” (Finishing Line Press), “Keen” (Horse Less Press), and “Generalizations about Spines” (Yellow Flag Press). Her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming with Sugar House Review, Inter|rupture, The Collagist, The Volta blog, MiPOesias, and Poetry Crush. She is also a Contributing Editor to Radius Lit and lives outside of Milwaukee.
