I can finally share news I’ve been sitting on since January! I will be one of ten writers—five poets and five novelists—featured in “Resistance: An Anthology of Overcoming.”
The book will be published this summer by Awatum Press; the hard-cover pre-sale began this week.
This two-volume series examines the nature of resistance through different lenses—one literary, the other academic—to arrive at a more full understanding.
Poets and novelists explore resistance as a human tension that permeates many aspects of our lives. The companion volume features essays written by PhD’s at universities around the world that examine the philosophy of resistance.
In addition to my collaboration with Awatum Press, I am busy writing my next full length poetry collection.
I began writing Versus in January, 2025, a time when democracies continued to fall; autocracies ascended; loneliness replaced Covid as the new epidemic; AI began singing its siren song; the climate crisis continued unabated; we witnessed the dawn of war waged by dime-store drones.
These tensions—us versus (fill in the blank)—are the inescapable context for this collection, but not its story. Dwelling in darkness diminishes our uniquely human superpower:
HOPE.
Our need to feel hopeful is threaded through our DNA; it’s part of our marrow memory.
The Greek poet Hesiod (c. 700 BC) told us the myth of Pandora who, in her curiosity, allowed the spirits trapped within Zeus’ jar to escape, all but one: Elpis, the spirit of hope. We continue to reach inside that jar in search of hope.
The poetry in this collection explores the space between cynicism and hope. Its pivot point is resilience; our refusal to give up on what we know to be good about the world, about each other.
In my first collection, Seeking Ordinary Joy, I traced the journey we travel from restlessness to happiness. Versus may be the prequel—a reflection on the strength we find to overcome that which robs us of hope.
Seeking Ordinary Joy 