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# RWW Soundings

## Posts

- [Fabulism, Time Loops, and Pet Photos: A Conversation with Cole Bucciaglia](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-4/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-5/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-6/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-8/)
- [Exploring Light and Loss: A Conversation with Rebecca McClanahan and Brenda Miller](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-3/)
- [A Question of Literary Activism](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-2/)
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-1/)
- [Summer 2026](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/) - Featuring Jennifer Elise Foerster, Rebecca McClanahan, Brenda Miller, and Cole Bucciaglia. EDITOR: Kerry Heckman CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Rachel Grenier ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kelli Lage MANAGING EDITOR: Hannah Comerford CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Garrett Brooks
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/2026/summer/page-7/)

## Pages

- [Soundings - Home](https://rwwsoundings.com/)
- [Soundings Staff](https://rwwsoundings.com/about/soundings-staff/)
- [Issues](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/) - View all online Soundings issues here.
- [Spring 2026](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/)
- [Program Information](https://rwwsoundings.com/program-overview/)
- [Constraint Is Freedom](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/young/) - Afterward as Forward I love a constraint. My students tend to hate them. They come into my classes believing that rules are for academic writing and that no rules equals freedom. Early on, I let that slide. But I started to worry that their work felt directionless without constraint. This might be projection. I don’t do well with unstructured time. I like predictability. You know what’s not predictable? Children. With a seven-year-old and a three-month-old at home (when I originally wrote this), tiny humans are a significant part of who I am. I was overwhelmed by the prospect of writing this talk because of those tiny humans. So, I gave myself 15 minutes a day. I stopped (often mid-thought) if I was interrupted by something/someone needing me and left the writing at the point of interruption. A heads-up: it’s now been truncated from its original form to fit within the confines of this new format. June 1: 3:30 p.m. Baby down after 45 minutes of back-arching, purple-faced wailing. Seven-year-old building an obstacle course out of yoga mats and stools. I’ve got maybe twenty minutes. Where to begin? Seven-year-old asks me to watch her do a cartwheel. Not off to a great start. June 2: I Am Not a Jailer I am not advocating creative jail. Constraints should arise organically. From necessity. From children. From time. Jenny Offill says she always wants a “semi-impossible constraint.” Her novel, Dept. of Speculation, was fragmented because fragments were all she could hold while raising a child and teaching. The constraint wasn’t clever. It was survival. June 3: Lies We Tell Ourselves I used to say I just needed time. A residency. Silence. I got it once—three weeks in the Adirondacks. I spent five days walking around a lake to avoid my manuscript. It was too quiet. Too free. June 4: Writing While Responsible You’re in the middle of a sentence—something good—and the baby monitor erupts. You think, just fifteen more seconds. But you don’t wait, of course. You go. You come back later. The sentence is gone. It took me a long time to realize that isn’t failure. June 5: Form Follows Function Follows Exhaustion My first book was fragmented because I was fragmented. Afterward, I thought that was how I wrote. For my second book, I gave myself a constraint: 500 words in one hour. That’s what I could manage while parenting and teaching. One hour. 500 words. It worked. Mostly. June 6: On Word Count and Survival Some people worship at the altar of 1,000 words a day or whatever other constraint and never reevaluate. I worshipped at the altar of 500 words in one hour. It got me through a draft. June 7: My So-Called Life Here’s my rule now: something is better than nothing. One paragraph. One line. One note in my Notes app. Sometimes writing looks like holding a baby while typing something half-coherent on your phone. June 8: Constraint Is Not the Enemy Constraint is rhythm. Infinite choice is paralyzing. Constraints aren’t forever. They run their course. My 500 words in one hour only got me so far. June 9: What I’m Trying to Say I used to think writing made me a Writer. Now I think it’s the returning. Drafting between diaper changes. Writing on the fridge while microwaving dinosaur chicken nuggets. The evolving constraint isn’t carving out time. It’s bending to the shape time has taken. June 10: Sign the Dotted Line Every piece of writing is a contract. First person promises intimacy. Chronology promises cause and effect. Good writing pushes against the contract but honors it. Go all in on the constraint. But be willing to leave it when it stops serving you. June 11: 500 Words Crash and Burn A year in, my 500-word rule sputtered. People call that a block. I don’t believe in blocks. Fog is better. I hadn’t exhausted the project. I’d exhausted the constraint. I was in an MFA program. I had to finish. So I knit the fragments into a more linear narrative. Shifted one constraint into another—made it a kind of game. June 11 Redux: A Cheat Moment That shift opened space in the writing. Someone asked me, “Is this still serving you?” That question changed everything. June 12: Constraints I’ve Given Myself This essay in discrete units. No dialogue. Only dialogue. Third-person limited. One hour every day. 500 words per day. No character names. 5 a.m. to 6 a.m. June 13: The List Continues Character names as concrete nouns. No military jargon. Second person only. Chronological. Segmented achronological. Note: The ones that work best arise from necessity. June 14: On Deadlines I do my best work with deadlines. A timeframe, a subject, a limit—that equals production. A due date is a gift. June 15: The Baby Wakes Up Again It’s dark. Bouncing on yoga ball. Had a thought. Forgot it. Memory. Impermanence. June 16: Constraint as Rebellion When you’ve been in the military, people expect a certain story: Trauma. Heroism. Failure. Redemption. Those constraints are boring. To mean anything, you have to disrupt expectation. Draw people in with form. With restraint. With voice. Constraints can subvert. This is what I mean by necessity. June 17: The Tyranny of Time “I don’t have time” isn’t a lie. We all have 24 hours, but we do not have the same 24 hours. Caregiving, work, health—labor looks different for different people. Sometimes time wins. Life breaks the constraint. June 18: Von Trier’s Dogme 95 Dogme 95 imposed strict filmmaking rules: no artificial lighting, no props not on location. Pretentious. Also kind of brilliant. Limits simplify decisions. If you can’t cut to a close-up, the wide shot has to matter. Constraint is control. June 19: Update The movement faded. Maybe the constraints ran their course. Maybe they were too strict. Even so, aspects lingered. June 20: From the Mouths of Babes My daughter used to draw whole stories. Each picture a narrative unit. Emotional logic over linear logic. She didn’t start with freedom. She started with a problem. June 21: Camus’s Day Job Student I had once really liked Camus. I didn’t know anything about him (Camus). Looked him up the other day because I randomly thought of the student. Camus worked a lot of day jobs. Wrote on the tram. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion,” he wrote. Camus and I might not have seen eye to eye re: constraint. June 22: Bruce The mechanical shark, named Bruce, in Jaws kept breaking on set. Spielberg’s solution was to keep the thing off-screen. Used sound and absence. Necessary constraint created dread. (Not to mention filmic revolution.) June 23: Matt the Relentless (Yes, this is a reference to the TV show What We Do in the Shadows) Constraint makes my work more honest. Word count. Deadline. Form. Fewer options means less avoidance means more focus, more return. June 24: George Saunders’s Problems Every story begins with a problem. Lots of writers probably said that, but Saunders gets the credit because he’s famous. Anyway, a problem is a constraint. What are the possibilities within it? Every constraint contains an infinite universe. That’s freedom. June 26: When the Constraint Becomes the Cage First, don’t worry about June 25. We’re going to act like it didn’t exist. Now, sometimes the form becomes a hiding place. Sometimes you miss a deadline. Sometimes you need to ask for an extension. You don’t know the constraint has ceased to serve you until you’re wandering in the fog. June 27: This for That I originally wrote my novel, End of Active Service, in third person. The characters felt distant. I switched to first person—something I’d resisted. The whole book came into focus. It took years of rewriting. Constraints aren’t easy fixes. June 28: The Saddest Man in Music Stephin Merritt sets strict songwriting constraints. Once he understands the concept, the songs “just [fly] out.” Limits create momentum. June 29: Good Intentions Sick. Fuck this. June 30: The Shape of the Thing Creative freedom feels invigorating. But that energy is kindling. It doesn’t sustain the fire. Real freedom happens when you accept the conditions under which the work must happen. July 1: The Shape of the Thing Again Kent Meyers, my thesis mentor, once advised a struggling writer (not me) to pick a project and draft it all the way through without stopping to fix it. Let the constraint of finishing override perfection. July 2: The Mars Volta I’ve been listening to the Mars Volta and thinking about how I grew up listening to concept albums. Concept albums commit to a world. July 3: The Mars Volta (continued) That commitment—to tone, arc, constraint—is the point. External constraints—editors, producers, feedback—are constraints too. The lead singer of the Mars Volta said that. July 4: The Mars Volta (continued) You work inside them (constraints), resist them, or both. Constraint isn’t always artistic. Sometimes it’s logistical. Sometimes it’s capitalism. Sometimes it’s grief. July 5: Constraint and Care Constraint can be care. A tight form can protect the reader, even the writer. Routines are care. I’m not writing in spite of my life. I’m writing because of it. July 6: Someone Get the Hook I used to think writing meant protecting time. Now I think it means writing anyway. That returning. I don’t want the kind of freedom that exists only in silence anymore. July 7: The One Necessity Annie Dillard in “Living Like Weasels,” writes that a weasel lives “yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.” The weasel isn’t free because it has options. It’s free because it has one necessity. Constraint chooses you. July 8: Reiteration A good constraint isn’t a cage. It’s a compass. It gives shape to the noise. It makes return possible. July 9: The End This is messy. Repetitive. But the constraint of the form got me to the page. Constraint isn’t the enemy. It’s the thing that gets you back to the work. Maybe you don’t need a retreat. Maybe you just need fifteen minutes. And a rule. And the willingness to return. Matt Young is the author of the memoir Eat the Apple and the novel End of Active Service. He teaches at Centralia College and in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. You can find more info about him at www.mattyoungauthor.com.
- [Coloring Outside the Lines: Reflections on the Outside Experience](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/outside/) - One of the unique features of RWW is the Outside Experience. During the second year of the program, students participate in individual projects for 100 hours to further their learning about the writing life and craft. The possibilities for the OE are endless: travel, residencies, classes, projects, independent learning—almost anything a writer’s imagination can conceive. Here, two thesis-year students reflect back on the OE and how it enhanced their lives as writers. *** Play as a Discipline: Flying Squirrel, AWP, and Language Learning by Keana Aguila Labra Modern life tends to be busy, and these days fraught, but we hold steady and continue on regardless. Despite the chaotic nature of life, the Outside Experience gave me permission to make time for play. I thought, “What are activities or practices that can provide fuel to my craft?” For those of us who have read and/or heard of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, one of the lessons imparted to the reader is to spend time with an art outside of your own. This gave me inspiration for my Outside Experience—to use this opportunity to not only inform my work, but to learn something new as well. Inevitably, chaos found its way into my Outside Experience, as I endeavored upon many activities. For those who know me (and my diagnosis), there really wasn't any other way to do it! I spent one week at Flying Squirrel Studio, reading and working on the manuscript for my creative thesis. In my personal life, I'm one of the caretakers for my Lola, so it was nice to have a break away from what feels like a harried, frenetic schedule, taking walks to the beach, or around the block, or not even taking walks at all. Maybe what was most calming, almost meditative, was the contradictory noise and silence of the cabin, the sound of the rain or the wind, and the sound of nothing besides my heart and my jiggling, anxious leg. Next, I supported both Kaya Press and Sampaguita Press at the 2025 AWP Conference. I spent a total of five days in Los Angeles. Before the conference, I helped set up and take an accounting of inventory. During the conference I tabled, which gave me the opportunity to work with staff from other presses and gave me insight into networking with other writing professionals, and I signed copies of my first full-length poetry collection, The Language of Unbreaking. Los Angeles is also the city my mother first immigrated to in her adolescence, so I sat with the city. I listened to it. I looked for my mother in the buildings, in the wind, in the sky. I wondered how the newness felt on her skin, for someone so young to have moved without her parents. Were her eyes wide with wonder, or was it fear? I looked at this city and found her breath, and I hoped to bring this discovery of my mother into my poetry as well. Next for my OE, Tagalog lessons brought me closer to understanding my family’s homeland (and better communicating with my family still in the Philippines!). Being able to communicate in another language gives a new perspective on the ways we write and how we can change up the execution in our poetic narratives and images. I began, and continue to seek, new forms to play with different grammatical structures, such as Noor Ibn Najam’s colonial fit poetic form. Most importantly, it was refreshing to learn new things. There is a pressure to do well and succeed with poetry, and that pressure still exists, but the ability to play and allow myself to be a beginner in a new art form invigorated my poetry and allowed me to look at my writing with fresh eyes. Overall, it was incredibly exciting to pursue creative adventures because of the Outside Experience. I’ve felt at home in places so far from my actual home, from taking Seattle’s water taxi for the first time and walking the streets of Los Angeles after the conference. It is that wonder and joy of the world that makes writing so vital; writing is an expression of our experiences and our humanity. Keana Aguila Labra (they/them/she/her) is a Cebuana Tagalog Filipinx poet, essayist, playwright, and writer in diaspora residing on stolen Ohlone Tamyen land. Their first full-length poetry collection, The Language of Unbreaking, was released with Sampaguita Press. Ultra Stickers Everywhere: Research Trip to Germany by Travis Timmons During my first year in RWW (with Justin St. Germain as my mentor), I drafted a novel partially set in Germany around soccer “ultras,” the passionate die-hards responsible for unforgettable match atmospheres in Germany. Prior to focusing on fiction, I’d spent about a decade as a sports writer covering the German Bundesliga (professional soccer league) and learning German. So for my OE, I traveled to Germany with four of my brothers at the end of February 2025 for eight days. During the trip, we visited Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Nürnberg, and the German Alps. I followed the advice of Rebecca Makkai and others, who recommend drafting material before you visit specific locations in order to frame your trip through the eyes of your work. This strategy worked brilliantly! Ahead of time, I made a list of key locations from my draft, such as the Hauptbanhof, the Königstrasse district, and the old town hall in Stuttgart, as well as doner shops, the Zeitgeist café, the Lenbachhaus museum, LLM University, and especially the Herz Jesu Kirche in Munich. I took extensive notes and photos, sometimes even reenacting walks my characters take. The trip’s highlight was attending a VfB Stuttgart-Bayern Munich match and watching the ultras do their glorious thing. Why take a research trip? Sure, Google Maps Street View and other online sources can provide tons of information; however, it’s only being on the ground you can absorb details like smells, sounds, and the ubiquitous stickers soccer ultras put up everywhere in German cities. I took dozens of photos of these stickers, which act like a sort of secret language declaring who’s been where around the European soccer scene. And Street View can’t provide experiences like the hilarious and intense stadium restroom queue with hundreds of jubilantly drunk German men who told jokes, shamed line-cutters, and straightened hoods on our coats, or the raucous tram ride from the stadium when the conductor slammed the brakes and I fell, nearly tearing my Achilles tendon (I still have scar tissue!) because passengers wouldn’t stop vaping. The trip was a precious gift for my writing. But international travel isn’t cheap, so here are some tips for research trips: Travel during the off-season. We saved a lot of money by traveling during the off-season (the trip cost me less than $3,000 for everything and, although I still had to teach an extra class to pay for it, the off-season savings meant we could do a lot more during the trip itself). Added bonus: there are fewer tourists! Plan in advance. A year in advance, we planned for the trip over a shared Google Doc, and we were able to time it during my spring break around a soccer match. Embrace the language. Take the language part of your experience seriously. Being immersed in German for eight days and practicing German every time I spoke to someone was my favorite part of the trip. My sister-in-law, a seasoned international traveler, encouraged me to be brave and make a lot of language mistakes. She was right. Funny language moments both created material for my novel and opened the door for fascinating conversation, such as being yelled at by German moms on a high-speed DB train who then profusely apologized when they realized we were English speakers, or speaking to Turkish shopkeepers who only spoke colloquial German for our tea and dessert orders, or talking with a bookshop seller who discussed his deep love for the USA despite our current political climate. Within such encounters, the self can, paradoxically, contract and expand, rubbing against and even flowing through linguistic borders. Born and raised in Santa Fe, Travis Timmons is a community college professor living in Pittsburgh, PA, who mostly writes fiction and also poems about Costco.
- [At the End of the Road, A Room of One's Own: Storyknife Offers Women Writers Time, Space, Care to Create](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/storyknife/) - “We truly want the women writers to feel supported. Everything is designed so that the women who come to Storyknife walk away believing that they and their work are important.” – Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Storyknife executive director At the end of Alaska’s scenic 142-mile Sterling Highway, where the mountains meet the sea and the birds, fish, and wildlife far outnumber the year-round residents, there is a place where women writers are invited to come, be cared for—and create. Storyknife Writers Retreat, located on a bluff several miles outside the picturesque town of Homer, hosts two- and four-week self-guided residencies for women from around the globe. Founded by author Dana Stabenow, Storyknife’s mission is to give women writers the time and space to explore their craft without distraction. Each year, from April through October, cohorts of six rotate through the retreat, staying in their own private cabins, which boast views of Cook Inlet and three active volcanoes on the horizon. The writers enjoy lunch delivered to their doors, flowers placed beside their beds, and a chef-prepared communal dinner awaiting each evening—all so they can focus on their craft. “Storyknife hosts women for whom the idea that they are worthy of having unstructured time to write, daydream, nap is absolutely a new and incredible experience,” says Storyknife executive director, poet, and 2009 RWW graduate Erin Coughlin Hollowell. Erin Coughlin Hollowell “Sometimes they feel uncomfortable at the start because they are the nurturer and doer in their family and community, and to be told that their writing is the most important thing that they can give feels absolutely foreign. But then those words start to come, and I witness the sheer exhilaration of creating unfettered by the endless responsibilities of their lives. It’s a wonder.” One of the many wonders Erin has witnessed over the years involved a fairly new writer who came to Storyknife to finish her memoir about her battle with breast cancer and her grandmother’s battle with dementia. “She was just about done, but had no idea what was next,” Erin says. “The published writers in her cohort took her under their wings and introduced her to the querying process, their agents, the whole shebang. Within a year she had a book contract and her work was published to much critical acclaim.” Another recent example took place when Erin opened a package received in the mail: a book recently published by a retreat alum with a note that read, “This book wouldn’t exist without Storyknife.” Current RWW student Kellie Richardson was among the 2025 writers in residence, spending four weeks at the retreat last September, where she focused on revising her current manuscript and researching in the Storyknife library. During her time there, Kellie found a rhythm alternating reading and writing days, interspersed with walks on the beach, trips into town, and time with other writers. “Storyknife is a unique balance of having individual time to dream and create, while also meeting and building friendships with other writers,” Kellie says, noting that the personal connections were among her favorite moments. “It was an incredibly diverse group of women—genre, identity, where we were from, levels of writing, and publishing experience.” The focus on diverse women writers has been a cornerstone of Storyknife from the beginning. In 2005, Stabenow decided to create a women’s writing residency based on Hedgebrook, a retreat on Whidbey Island that she credits with igniting her writing career. Storyknife was established as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) in 2014. Hollowell joined the organization in 2016, the same year Storyknife began offering individual residencies and undertook a $1.25 million fundraising effort—a goal reached in 2019. Groundbreaking on the campus, including six individual cabins and a main house, began in May 2019, and Storyknife was preparing to welcome its first full cohort in spring 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic put the launch on pause. After a one-year hiatus, the first residency of six women arrived in June 2021. Since then, Storyknife has hosted 48 to 54 writers each year. Kellie Richardson “I love that the board and the staff collaborated to build something good and strong and useful from the ground up,” Erin says. “I love creating a place and an atmosphere that tells women writers, especially those from communities that have been shut out of this kind of opportunity, that their work, their voice, is important.” This inclusion is something Kellie found special. “Storyknife is very unique in that it specifically centers the experience and development of woman-identified writers. They shift the typical residency selection process to ensure there are women writers there who typically don’t get accepted or don’t have access to these kinds of spaces,” she says. The Storyknife application is open to individuals who are woman-identified and 21 years of age or older. The process involves providing a work sample and responses to a series of questions, which are posted on the website. Writers are selected through a three-tier, anonymous adjudication process. Applications for 2027 will open July 1 and close August 1, 2026. “Send your very strongest writing and know that each year the panel of adjudicators is different, so it might take more than one try,” Erin advises interested applicants. “The first two rounds of adjudication are focused solely on the work, with no information—so your first pages need to be strong enough to ensnare the interest and admiration of the adjudicators, all Storyknife alumni.” “Storyknife was a once-in-a-lifetime experience in a beautiful place where I felt deeply cared for,” says Kellie. She encourages her fellow writers to “Apply!” Kellie Richardson, Storyknife Writers Retreat, September 2025 September 2025 Cohort 2 Storyknife view of Cook Inlet September 2025: Cohort 2 Storyknife campus - cabins and main house Visits from neighborhood moose were a highlight for Kellie Richardson during her September 2025 Storyknife retreat Erin Coughlin Hollowell is a poet who lives at the end of the road in Alaska. Her poetry collections Pause, Traveler (2013) and Every Atom (2018) were published by Boreal Books. Her collection Corvus and Crater was published by Salmon Poetry in 2023. She is most recently published in Shenandoah Literary Magazines, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. She is the executive director of Storyknife, a women writer’s residency center. Kellie Richardson is a queer Black writer and creative born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Her work primarily explores themes of love, loss, and longing, with particular attention to how those themes intersect with Black American humanity. As Tacoma’s Poet Laureate (2017-2019), Richardson leveraged her role to experiment with form, incorporating collage and interactive performance into her poetry. She has released two collections of poetry, What Us Is (2017) and The Art of Naming My Pain (2024), both published by Blue Cactus Press. Passionate about experimentation and art as a liberatory practice, her poetry often integrates visual elements such as collage and color. Richardson is currently working on her third collection and attending the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. You can learn more about her work on her website and Substack.
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/greeting/) - Dearest RWW Community — This letter is difficult to write during a time of such great fear and suffering. Witnessing the atrocities across this country and worldwide has been paralyzing. And yet, I remind myself that writing is a form of resistance, and taking space from writing can be a form of self-care. Many RWW students, faculty, and alumni have connections to the state of Minnesota. I, myself, grew up there and still have many friends and family in the area. This past winter, observing the images and stories coming out of my home state was a confusing internal paradox of rage and pride. For me, attending public school in Minneapolis meant crafting puppets with In the Heart of the Beast Theater for peace parades, folding 1,000 paper cranes in memory of Sadako Sasaki, and learning protest ballads such as “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Imagine” in homeroom, so it’s no surprise to me that the city of Minneapolis and its residents have been formally nominated for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize. To quote Marcia Howard, vice president of the Minnesota Federation of Teachers, “They hate us because we don’t hate each other.” While Minneapolis has its own history of racism and xenophobia, at this moment, Minnesotans are giving us a roadmap to healing, progress, and community. Throughout this issue, there is reflection on what it means to be a member of the RWW community. First, we revisit Matt Young’s craft talk, "Constraint Is Freedom,” from summer residency. Then, alumna Erin Coughlin Hollowell shares her experience as executive director of the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Homer, Alaska, where one of our current students, Kellie Richardson, completed her Outside Experience. Keana Aguila Labra and Travis Timmons also reflect on their Outside Experiences. Finally, we celebrate the publications, announcements, and literary citizenship of our students, faculty, and alumni. At this dark moment in history, I am grateful to be in community with you. Kerry J Heckman Editor
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/literary-citizenship/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/announcements/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/opportunities/) - Summer 2022 6 Faculty Wendy Call will be attending events for Best Literary Translations 2026 and Red Seed at the New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 17, 2026. All events are free. See the full schedule here. Virtual launch event for Best Literary Translations 2026 (co-edited by Wendy Call, guest edited by Arthur Sze, Deep Vellum,
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2026/publications/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/literary-citizenship/) - Summer 2022 6 Students Kelli Lage (2028): Assistant Poetry Editor, Bracken Magazine; High School Editor & Student Liaison, Iowa Poetry Association. Mark Strohschein (2028): Board Member, Skagit Valley Poetry Foundation. Alumni Jessica Barksdale (2015): Organizer, Literature Week, Diablo Valley College. Nancy Canyon (2007): Guest Author, Village Books Writers Salon, Bellingham, WA; Panelist, Chuckanut Writers Conference;
- [Summer Residency Redux: A Photo Album](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/album/) - Every July, four cohorts of students gather in the shade of giant trees on campus at Pacific Lutheran University for summer residency. The graduating cohort takes comfort in the familiarity of their fourth residency, while at the same time preparing to say goodbye—the incoming cohort meets in person for the first time and quickly bonds over dorm life and a love of writing. Each residency is unique, but always rich in learning, fun, and connection. Please enjoy these photos of RWW Summer Residency 2025.
- [From Workshop to Bookshelf: Two RWW Alums Reflect on the Road to Publication](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/alumns/) - It’s fair to say that most RWW students dream of one day holding a book with their name on the cover. For two RWW alumni, that vision became reality in 2025. Kalehua Kim, a 2025 graduate, released her debut poetry collection, Mele, in July, while Jasminne Mendez (class of 2019) published her first YA novel—and seventh book overall—The Story of My Anger, in September. In this Q&A, both writers reflect on their paths to publication—from first drafts to holding their books for the first time—and offer advice and encouragement for the RWW community following in their footsteps. Rachel Grenier: When did you first know your manuscript was ready to become a book? Kalehua Kim: I had a body of work around marriage and family that I tried to order into a type of arc, but there was a core element missing. After my mother’s passing in 2018, I began to incorporate the poems I wrote around that grief. They helped to ground the collection. What happens when this speaker, who is navigating building her own family, integrates her mother’s experience? Would the mother share her advice? Her mistakes? Would that speaker’s younger self also be present? How does this relate to the female lineage and what does it mean in this particular culture? I don’t know if the manuscript felt like an actual book at that point, but I felt like I had a solid structure to build it on. Jasminne Mendez: I started writing this book in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. It began as journal entries in the voice of a sixteen-year-old girl. I wrote 60,000 words of it all in prose (sort of as a cathartic release of everything I was feeling during that time) and then put it aside. I worked on other projects for the next couple of years, and when my editor came to me in 2023 asking what I might want to work on next, I pulled the manuscript back out. But it needed a lot of work, and I was not happy with it as a work of prose, so I decided to rewrite the entire thing as a novel in verse instead. Once I honed in on the specific hybrid structure and form of the book, and reworked the plot, I felt that it was solid enough to move forward. RG: What was the very first step you took toward publication? Kale Kim KK: I’d been sending out my manuscript during open calls over the years. The order and shape of the book has changed quite a lot, and I kept revising and reordering, then putting it out there. My first-year RWW mentor, Jennifer Foerster, was kind enough to read it and offer feedback. She helped me understand how the new work I was generating at RWW fit in with what I already had and what to edit. When it felt complete, I sent it out again. There were three contests that looked interesting to me, and I submitted the manuscript to those three on a Friday. I feel very lucky that Trio House was so excited about my manuscript that they contacted me a few days later, and I had a conversation scheduled with their editor that week. JM: I “dusted it off” the shelf and shared the first few pages with my editor, Nancy Mercado at Dial, to see if she liked the concept, if the book had “legs” and would make a good story. RG: What were the most important milestones along the way, and how long did the process take from start to finish? KK: That first contact was definitely a milestone! I went from ecstatic to pragmatic pretty quickly, though, because I wanted to be thoughtful and make smart choices. As a first timer, I had no idea what to expect or which questions to ask. I reached out to my mentors, teachers, and a friend who had worked with the press, to get their advice. One of the questions I asked up front (on the advice of Jennifer Foerster) was about the exact publication date. She advised me that an earlier publication would be preferable to a later date, because a lot of change can happen in that time and it can be difficult to hold on to a work for that long. That was in February 2024. My press had a set publication schedule, so I knew up front we were aiming toward a July 2025 publication date, and it was a fairly streamlined year and a half. Other milestones were signing the contract, going through edits with my editor Denise Low, finalizing the digital proofs, reviewing the cover art, and of course, getting that first printed proof. When my first carton of books came in the mail I was still in a state of disbelief. It wasn’t until the AWP conference in March of this year that it started to sink in that I could be considered an author. Mele wasn’t officially “out,” but I had the opportunity to sign books at the Trio House Press booth. My book launch was an incredible high moment. Our local, independent bookstore has supported me so much, carrying literary journals and anthologies where my poems appeared. It was a joy to have the event there, where friends and family could celebrate with me. Jasminne Mendez JM: Some of the most important milestones were the first very rough, very bad draft, all in prose. Then the decision to rewrite it as a novel in verse. And then, when that wasn't really working, the decision to revise the dialogue-heavy scenes as “play scripts,” with character dialogue and stage directions. I also loved seeing sketches of the cover art, which really brought the main character to life. From first draft (2020) to publication (2025) the process took five years—but there were about two years where I didn't even look at the manuscript, as I was working on other projects and had other books published that took my time and attention. RG: What have been the highs and lows of this journey, and what surprised you most? KK: Getting to fulfill the dream of having my own book has lifted me higher than I ever could have imagined. But this journey is much sweeter because of the support of my RWW community. It doesn’t feel right to say there are low moments because even the difficult parts are helpful in learning to navigate each step. My cohort, teachers, and mentors were there whenever I had a question, needed to vent, or just felt overwhelmed. The biggest surprise to me is how deeply readers relate to the work. I’m enjoying every aspect of this process, but talking to readers who feel a profound connection to the experiences I describe is greatly rewarding. JM: I think there might have been more lows than highs! I only say that because writing this story was emotionally draining for me—it made me confront a lot of the racism and microaggressions I've faced in my life. I also struggled a lot with the revision, from prose to novel in verse, and landing on the final hybrid form. But I do love that the audiobook version has a full cast of characters/voices, and I got to read for Yulieta, the main character, which was a big high. Publishing the book and the book launch were wonderful and exciting, and I've received two starred reviews (Booklist and Kirkus). It was also selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Book, which is really cool. I’ve also really loved hearing from readers, both young and old, about how the story has made them cry and has resonated with them so deeply. RG: How did your time at RWW help you reach your publication goals? KK: RWW was integral to my growth as a writer as well as a listener. Not only did I develop my craft on the page, but as I began to observe how that work moved me forward as a “writer,” I tried to listen to the impact of that change. I gained more self-confidence in identifying and articulating my goals, then worked with my mentors on moving toward them. My work with them naturally aided the written work. But their care and advice prepared me for those aspects of publication that aren’t limited to what’s printed. JM: My time at RWW forced me to be on deadline! I had to build a sustainable writing practice that I could come back to and that would be useful after graduation. I've really been able to stick to that because my foundation—which began at RWW—was so strong. I also learned a great deal about my writing craft and how to be a good literary citizen, all of which have helped me build my networks and strengthen my writing career. I have lifelong mentors and friends from RWW, and having a positive and supportive writing community is, in my opinion, the most important thing to a thriving and successful writing life/career. This journey can be lonely, discouraging, and even really sad and frustrating sometimes, but with the right people around you—to cheer you on, uplift you, celebrate you, and share ideas with—it really helps! RG: Now that the book is on the shelf, what comes next? KK: I’m working on scheduling more readings. My creative thesis is also waiting for me to revisit it. I’m glad to have the bulk of another manuscript done, even if it was tough to generate new work while editing Mele. I thought I’d get a break after graduation, but there’s always something new to explore. Teaching feels like another logical step. JM: I'm currently “on tour” in Texas, visiting schools and indie bookstores. I also am working on a few other projects—two I can't really talk about yet—but another is a picture book titled We're Off to Carnaval, which celebrates Carnaval in the Dominican Republic. The book is being edited by Stacey Barney and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa, and will be out with Nancy Paulsen Books in 2027. I'm also hoping to get back into the classroom to teach creative writing, if anyone will have me! RG: What advice or encouragement would you share with fellow RWW writers who are working toward publication? KK: I’ve been thinking about what Matt Young said during residency on the panel called “Ritual and Process,” where he talked about the importance of continuing to return to writing. I love the idea that I can come back to writing at any time. Life has many interruptions. I recommend writing as much as you can, of course, but I also encourage engaging in the creative process. You can express your creativity in myriad ways—painting or drawing, working with clay, block printing, or even while picking an outfit, planning a garden, singing, organizing your living space, cooking and baking. Lately, I’ve been doing some collage work alongside RWW pal Kerry Heckman. There are endless possibilities if the words don’t automatically arrive. We need these alternate moments of joy in creativity because the submission process can be tough. You’re putting yourself out there, and it’s a lot of administrative work without the guarantee of acknowledgement. Find your levity and joy and amusement because that helps balance the rough spots. JM: I have three main pieces of advice that I give all writers, plus one that was given to me from an RWW faculty member: First, focus on the work. Write it. Finish it. Revise it. Revise it again. Write the story/poems only you can write and make it the best it can be. Find out who publishes the authors you love in the genres you write in, and start there. Do your research! Don't just send your manuscript out to whoever! Make sure your work aligns with their aesthetic/vision and vice versa. See if there are any specific editors you'd love to work with and take that into consideration when submitting. A good/bad editor can make or break a book! Don't be discouraged by rejection. Get used to it. It's part of the process. All it takes is one. Try to shrug off the noes and keep pushing forward. Realize that it's not a reflection of your worth and your work will find the right home. And lastly, allow the time that it takes! Don't rush the process. Don't force it. Make sure the work is the best it can be before submitting. RG: If you had to choose just one word to describe the publication process, what would it be? KK: Educational. JM: Rigorous. Kalehua Kim (RWW ’25) is a poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Her debut poetry collection, Mele, received the 2024 Trio House Press Editor’s Choice Prize. Learn more at kalehuakim.com. Jasminne Mendez (RWW ’19) is a poet, playwright, author, translator, and audiobook narrator of several books for children and adults. Her most recent work is The Story of My Anger, a YA novel in verse. Find her at jasminnemendez.com.
- [A Peek Behind the Editor's Curtain with RWW Faculty](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/faculty/) - Everyone has different motivations for sitting down with a notebook or keyboard and creating art. For some of us, it’s purely about the process, with little to do with the outcome. For some of us, it’s about building a bridge between our work and an audience who will appreciate it. In order to find readers, we eventually need to submit to journals, presses, and agents with the hope it will end up in print somewhere. For many writers, this is the most daunting part of the process—the part where a lot of people get stuck. In this issue’s craft essay, three RWW faculty put on their editor hats and offer thoughts on the publishing process. Hopefully, their words will encourage you to take the next step. Kelli Russell Agodon When I sat down to write this, I knew I didn’t want to lecture you. I wanted to share a few lessons I wish I’d known earlier. So let me take you back to a younger me: black beret and leather jacket stitched entirely from misguided ideas about publishing. I’ll start with the “mistakes.” And I put mistakes in quotes because they weren’t really mistakes—they led me here. But some were . . . cringey. In my twenties, I quit a corporate job to be a poet. I was both highly sensitive and overly confident—like being made of tissue paper and glitter. I thought editors were waiting for my brilliance. I even wrote a poem in English and broken French, convinced it would get me into The Paris Review. I mailed those poems with a cover letter that basically said: I left my job for my true calling—poetry—and look forward to working with you! As if we already had lunch plans. Of course, rejection followed. I assumed: I must be terrible. And honestly, I wasn’t great yet. But I joined a writing group, read books, stopped submitting for a while, and focused on craft. Slowly, my poems got better. Later, as co-editor of Crab Creek Review and co-founder of Two Sylvias Press, I saw the other side of publication. Here are five myths I once believed—and what I’ve learned since. Myth #1: Rejection means I’m not good. Reality: Sometimes work needs revision. But sometimes rejection has nothing to do with quality. A journal may have run out of space or published something similar in the previous issue, or maybe an editor missed your name on the back of a paper (true story from my desk). Rejection is not always about you. Myth #2: I should send work that matches a journal’s vibe. Reality: Kind of, but don’t become a chameleon. Once, without reading guidelines, I sent a funny poem to a journal that wanted “serious work” and they published it. Had I read that guideline, I wouldn’t have sent it. So now I’ll send four poems I think they’ll like and one I’m sure they’ll hate—it’s usually that one that gets accepted. Myth #3: Editors only publish friends. Reality: Some corners are exclusive, but I believe editors just want the best work. Once at Two Sylvias, we had to choose between two manuscripts we loved. One author had four books; the other was unpublished. We picked the debut—not for sales, but because launching a new voice into the world felt good to us. Myth #4: Cover letters don’t matter. Reality: Yes and no. They do—a thoughtful letter can reinforce connection, but I read the work before the cover letter so I am not biased. Also—luck, timing, and someone falling in love with your work play a big role. Myth #5: The perfect press exists. Reality: Even the best presses will both thrill and disappoint you. Some answer emails slowly but throw you a book party. Some let you choose your cover art but have no promo budget. No press—or person—is perfect. And one bonus myth: Publication will make me feel like a real writer. Not necessarily. Imposter syndrome exists. For me, the real work is staying in love with the process, poem after poem. So keep writing. Let your work out into the world. The reward isn’t publication—it’s the writing itself. Wendy Call Editing anthologies—I just finished my fourth one—is an act of love. So, here’s a love letter. Beloved anthology contributor, I know that we aren’t actually lovers yet and maybe this is just cosplay, but let’s roll with it. Otherwise, this might become a Dear John letter, and neither of us wants that. Here’s how to make this relationship work—at least for a little while. First, let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt. If you can assume that I didn’t mean to offend you when I copyedited your manuscript, I will assume that you aren’t a sloppy slacker, even though you misspelled several proper names in your bio, including the titles of literary journals that have published your work and one of your own books. Second, when we make a date, please do not stand me up. Deadlines are deadlines, sweetness. I know that life happens, but when it does, please let me know earlier, rather than later. You might not have realized it, but this little tryst is actually a threesome. I am merely a go-between: the lowly anthology editor who raises my own stipend (from donations) because the publisher has a tight budget, and I want you to be paid. Yes, I know that payment from the publisher is a pittance and it is not at all what your luminous words are worth. Third, whatever method you give me to contact you, please use it. If you only gave me an email address, please check your email. If I have to text you because you don’t ever read your email, please don’t throw a fit. Fourth, although I do want you to feel like the only one, the truth is: I’m dating thirty-five different writers right now (after turning down another 465 or so who also wanted to be on this particular hot date). When I suggest some small changes to your manuscript, before you resist or become enraged, please consider: You are only one flower in a big, beautiful garden—a garden that you have not yet seen. I might need to wield the pruning shears so that each of you thirty-five lovelies can bask in your little bit of sun. Fifth, let me apologize in advance for the inevitable moment when I ask you to do something on a tight timeline. Yes, I realize that you have other lovers, too. Even though I’m snuggled between you and the publisher in bed, they are ultimately the one who sets the terms of this relationship for both of us. And finally, when we take our relationship public on the anthology’s publication date, please be loud and proud about our time together. Don’t duck and hide like some loser CEO at a Coldplay concert. Oh, what a literary anthology editor would give for three seconds on a JumboTron! Let’s not blow it, my dear. Hugs and kisses, Wendy Aram Mrjoian During AWP last year, I experienced a frustrating trend. I’d estimate eight out of ten people who approached the Michigan Quarterly Review table opened their conversation with some version of the same three questions: Are you open for submissions? Can I send you something? Can I address my cover letter to you and mention that we met at AWP? Very few people asked about what kinds of work we published or what our editors were excited about, or even bothered to flip through the print issues organized across the table in front of them. I watched writers rush from booth to booth trying to check off their suck-up list without showing genuine enthusiasm for the places from which they hoped to see their writing enter the world. It seemed to me they imagined their art as a commodity that could be sold to anyone if only they knocked on enough doors. Most of the time, I fear we’ve jumped the shark on talking about publishing. Best practices, at this point, are readily available online, but everyone is still trying to find shortcuts and formulas. Students, acquaintances, and randos incessantly ask me about what makes writing “publishable” as if there’s a singular answer that I just refuse to tell them. Perhaps I am an idealist in that I believe the best work usually finds its way to the right editor at the right time. But my editorial sense is that many writers will struggle to make the progress they strive for because they’re more interested in sending out large quantities of passable work to amass CV lines than they are in taking risks that make their writing memorable. For this reason, to be deemed “publishable” is often nothing more than a label of mediocre proficiency. Publication on its own is not a sure marker of quality or longevity. Literary publications are subjective and as likely as any other enterprise to be littered with human error, nepotism, burnt-out employees, and capitalistic reasoning. What I want as an editor is not necessarily writing that is fully resistant to or operating outside of commercial structures, but writing that does demonstrate an understanding of how to selectively navigate the artificial barriers imposed by the creative writing machine. I want writing that is measured and polished far past the mundane designation of “publishability,” that pushes beyond the boundaries of simply being good enough. As an editor, I honestly don’t want you to give me a second thought while the work is in its early stages. I don’t want to be pandered to. I want you to write whatever aligns with your artistic vision and goals, then revise like hell, make it the best it can be—you’ll definitely need to go back and revise more, assume that when you think it’s good enough it’s probably still a mile away, and then, finally, when you’ve exhausted yourself, when you’ve decided you never want to look at the damn thing again, wait a month and come back to it one more time, then do your research, read curiously from venues where you imagine your work living, and be brutally honest with yourself if it is a good fit. If you’ve done your homework, it makes my decision easy.
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/greeting/) - Dearest RWW Community— I don’t know what it is about fall that makes me think of time. Maybe it’s watching the days grow shorter or inching closer to the end of the year that increases my awareness of passing hours. This is also extra apparent because my cohort is in our final year of RWW. Time is also reflective of “the times,” and these times are unrelenting. I often picture all the members of the RWW family spread out across the United States (and the world) to remember there are people creating art within the chaos, which reminds me to breathe. Time is beautifully paradoxical. The presence of it encourages us to both make space in our days and fill them to the brim. For me, it’s the urge to slow down and hibernate in the big dark of the Pacific Northwest, yet squeeze in an extra hour or two of writing. As always, it’s an invitation to do both. In her recent flash class, “Modern Muses: Crafting Poetry from Social Media, Autocorrect, and the Everyday,” Kelli Russell Agodon asked participants to share a favorite word. It was a synchronistic moment, as I had been ruminating on the word “respite.” What does respite look like in these times? Where do safe spaces exist? What opportunities are available to pause? Maybe reading through the pages of this issue of Soundings will be a small respite for you. A short stopover to celebrate our RWW community before the next tragic headline. In this issue we take a closer look at the publishing side of writing, with words of wisdom from three faculty members: Wendy Call, Kelli Russell Agodon, and Aram Mrjoian. We also hear from two RWW graduates, Kalehua Kim and Jasmmine Mendez, who are navigating the publishing industry. We revisit the respite of the 2025 summer residency with a photo essay, and as always, share publications, announcements, and literary citizenship. Enjoy. Kerry Heckman Editor
- [In Remembrance of RWW Alumna Kay Mullen](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/mullen/) - Fall 2021 4 When RWW was brand new, everyone was excited to be part of our splendid new program. In our very first workshop I wanted to give people a chance to get to know one another, so I said, "Please tell us something about yourself that nobody in this room knows. For instance, for
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/opportunities/) - Summer 2022 6 Alumni Jill McCabe Johnson (2008): The Wandering Aengus Press and Trail to Table Press Book Awards Contest is open to full-length literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry manuscripts December 1, 2025 to January 31, 2026. $30 submission fee, up to four winners selected for publication. Back to Top
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/announcements/) - Summer 2022 6 Students Mark Strohschein's (2028) full-length poetry manuscript, Let Us Begin Again, earned honorable mention for the 2025 Sally Albiso Award and was a finalist for publication at Pine Row Press; his chapbook-length collection Sanctuary of Voices is due out at the end of 2025 through Ravenna Press's Triple Series. Alumni Jenny Apostol's
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/publications/) - Summer 2022 6 Students Gloria Bromberg (2026) Poetry: "Harmonic Convergence in Orange," Orangepeel Magazine, Issue 9: Notes on OrangeFall, 2025. "The Addiction Counselor Considers Her Job While Reading 'Leaves of Grass' on the Bus," previously published in Feral Poetry, published in the anthology, The Book of Jobs: Poems About Work, edited by Erin Murphy, One
- [Fall/Winter 2025](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2025/) - Spring 2022 Cover EDITOR: Kerry Heckman CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Rachel Grenier ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kelli Lage MANAGING EDITOR: Hannah Comerford CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Garrett Brooks
- [RWW Flash Classes: 2023–24](https://rwwsoundings.com/program-overview/rww-flash-classes/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/announcements/)
- [Writing the Pilgrimage: A Conversation with Marty Salgado and Dabu](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/dabu-salgado/) - One of the unique features of RWW is the Outside Experience. During the second year of the program, students participate in individual projects for 100 hours to further their learning about the writing life and craft. The Outside Experience offers RWW students the opportunity to reflect on what their writing lives have looked like as they arrived at the program and to envision how their journeys of reading, writing, and learning will extend well beyond the program. Students can participate in a variety of Outside Experiences: students have traveled across the world, participated in writing residencies and retreats, taught classes in their communities, and more. We caught up with two second-year students, Marty Salgado and Dabu, to provide some insight into their Outside Experiences. Kerry Heckman: To start, tell us what you did or are doing for your Outside Experience project. Dabu: In October [2024], I went to Peru and Bolivia for about four weeks. It was what I would refer to as a pilgrimage. My friend and three other folks traveled doing ceremonies. We went from basically the jungle outside Machu Picchu to Saksaywaman, which is in Cusco, Peru, down into Bolivia, a place called Tiwanaku. These are all places of ancient ruins. Then, we went down to Lake Titicaca and on the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon. We did ten ceremonies in about seventeen days. Planes, trains, boats, overnight bus—it was really an unbelievably incredible pilgrimage. I had just finished re-reading a book called The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen, and it just had for me echoes of that kind of journey. And then I also met with a professor and writer in Cusco who writes poetry in Quechua, which is the Incan language—the indigenous language of Peru. We spoke about doing some translation. It's a magical language. Marty Salgado: My Outside Experience project consists of all aspects of music. So I am listening to music, visiting music-related venues and locations, and attending concerts of artists that have impacted my life and artists that have naturally had threads in my life, which I will translate into a narrative. In the fall [of 2024]—similar to Dabu, I’m considering this a pilgrimage—I went to Nashville to the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. There was a Christine McVie exhibit, whose music has filled my soul for over twenty years. I was able to spend time in the exhibit and sit and write about my relationship with her and her music. I used that as research for an essay that I turned in to my mentor [Justin St. Germain] just last month. So, I’ve been experiencing music in that way, but I've also been going to shows. “I was able to spend time in the exhibit and sit and write about my relationship with Christine McVie and her music.” A big essay I'm working on right now involves Simon & Garfunkel, and last night I bought tickets to go see Paul Simon on possibly his very last tour of his lifetime, which ties into an essay that I just drafted, which I'm sure will end up in my manuscript. It’s going to be the last essay. KH: What made you choose this particular project? MS: As a writer, I have known that my sensibilities have always been with sound and music. It's shaped my community. It's shaped my life. It's shaped my personality. So, as a nonfiction writer, how can I not write about music? And how can I not use this Outside Experience as a way to get out into the world of music? It’s a reason to go to all these shows for a real purpose and then write about them—going to shows with the thought of fully living into it and experiencing every moment. D: What is referred to as “the medicines” have been a part of my life for 30 years. I've gone all over the world following these plants, for lack of a better way of saying, the spirit. I knew that I was writing about faith and poetics, and I wanted to be able to see about weaving in some personal aspect into my critical thesis. Then, I had a teacher, David Biespiel, who is a former faculty member at RWW, who said if you really want to learn your own language, do some translation, and so I'm intrigued by translation. I've been blessed by people who bothered to translate, so I just wanted to engage in the conversation. I’m not making any commitment to do translation, but I wanted to see what it would take. So that’s why. KH: What effect is your OE having on the creative and critical work you’re doing now at RWW? D: I've been working on a long-form poem and the first line is, “By the time I arrived inside the grounds of the ruins.” It's the metaphor of a place that we refer to as “ruins.” About places that appear ruined and how alive they are in their ruined-ness. How people speak about ruins when life falls apart. There are many references to not just this trip, but all the many trips I've taken to Peru. MS: As a creative nonfiction (CNF) writer, going to a concert and being able to stand there with my nonfiction lens on and really, truly taking in the music, not as a passerby, but experiencing it. Being aware of how it's making me feel physically and how it's making me feel in that specific moment of my life. It’s helping, of course, boost the creative writing, but it's also helping me think of this music experience as a critical element to my thesis and how it's all connected. KH: What have you learned the most from this experience? As a person, as a writer, or as a member of your community? MS: As a CNF writer especially, you have to live life. This is what I tell my students. Go out and live life and then write about it. You have to experience life in order to write, and I've done a lot of living in the past year—a lot of deep experiences. I believe that if I hadn't been in this program, I don't know if I would’ve been able to really see the preciousness of writing to make sense of everything that I'm going through. D: That's a hard question. What have I learned the most? I guess I would want to echo a little bit of what Marty says, which is part of the thing that I value about the Outside Experience is you have to go out into the world to have some texture. You have to go live. It’s good to get out of your chair, put down the pen and the paper, and go be with life. MS: Right, it’s a hundred hours for a reason. D: It could take years before these memories or experiences incubate and percolate. In those flashes of memory that occur through our interactions with the world. Then, how they get seeded, and all of a sudden they arise and you’re like, “I need to write about this right now.” KH: How do you think you and other RWW students benefit from completing an Outside Experience as part of the MFA? D: I think, obviously, the time comes when we're not in the program anymore and I think it can serve as an opportunity to practice paying attention in our everyday life. “Outside Experience”—outside of what, really? It’s a funny name for it. It’s just going out and paying attention to your living. Participating in a deliberate writing practice, and that’s an ongoing thing with or without school. To continue to frame your living as an opportunity to write. “. . . the time comes when we're not in the program anymore and I think it can serve as an opportunity to practice paying attention in our everyday life.” MS: What I appreciate about the OE in the low-residency model is that we're not in class all the time, so this helps me be a working writer. Similar to what Dabu said, it’s helping me consider what happens after the classroom and what happens after graduation. Then, it’s on me to continue experiencing and living and writing, but in as regimented a way as a writer can be. D: I like that, Marty: “as a working writer.” You’re going to work pretty much all the time when it comes to writing. KH: This is really inspiring. Technically we only have this one Outside Experience, but we could create our own opportunities to do these for the rest of our lives. So, what has been the most surprising to you about this experience? MS: The most surprising thing is it doesn't feel like work or a dread. I thought it was going to be like, “I have to do this whole other thing for a hundred hours and figure all this out.” But if you plan it out and think about how it's going to fit with your project or your thesis, it just slides right in, and it doesn't feel like work at all. D: For me, it was how little writing I did while I was on the Outside Experience. Like, I had no capacity. It wasn't because I was being lazy or didn't feel like it, it was like, “No, not this. Not now.” I did a little bit of writing, but it was more about soaking things up. That surprised me. KH: Lastly, what advice do you have for someone just starting to plan their OE who might not even know where to begin? D: It sounds cliché, but follow your heart. Follow your intuition. Follow your interests, not what feels responsible or correct. Maybe not a rational way to go. Do that one. MS: Do something that inspires you.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/literary-citizenship/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/publications/)
- [Any Resemblance to Real Life Is Entirely Inevitable](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/stgermain/) - For a while now, I’ve been watching classic documentaries, working my way through various best-of lists. They’ve taught me a lot that’s useful for writing, especially about portraying real people. The other night, I was watching Chronicle of a Summer, a 1961 film by French sociologist Edgar Morin and filmmaker Jean Rouch, which was supposedly the origin of cinéma vérité. In Chronicle, the filmmakers travel around Paris and St. Tropez interviewing their friends and acquaintances about what their lives are like and whether or not they’re happy. Near the end, they show an early cut of the movie to the people featured in it, and then they film their responses. One of the characters, a worker at a Renault factory, says something I’ve been thinking about ever since. “I found the film extremely painful,” he says. “When it’s not terribly boring, it’s at the cost of total indecency.” I’ve written a lot about real people. Both of my books are about another person. I’ve also published a lot of essays and short stories that had people I knew in them. Before I became a creative writer, I was a journalist for a while, so I interviewed and wrote about all kinds of people, from college kids to politicians to Olympic medalists. I’ve written about normal people, famous people, litigious people, people of various identities, dead and living people, the people closest to me, and people I’ve never met. I’ve also been teaching for twenty years and have watched a lot of other writers struggle with writing about people in their work. I’ve seen some of the most important relationships in my life affected by things I wrote. For one example, I’ve spent the last decade trying to repair my relationship with my dad because of how I portrayed him in my first book. I’ve also seen my fellow writers, friends, and former students have to deal with significant real-world consequences because of what they wrote about people in their lives. The longer I do this, the less I believe that there are any rules for writing about other people, or that my experiences would be instructive to anyone else. So instead of discussing them, I thought I’d talk a little bit about the questions we tend to ask when this topic comes up. “The only consistent thing I’ve noticed is that people rarely react the way I would have expected.” One category of questions I often hear are what I call “consequence questions.” Sometimes these are legal questions, the only response to which is “don’t ask writers for legal advice.” More often, people worry about interpersonal or relationship consequences. They want to know how the people in their lives will react. But of course, nobody else can answer that. We don’t know the people you’re writing about. And even if we did, people react in all sorts of unpredictable ways. Some of the people I wrote about have been angry. Some were hurt, some were proud, some didn’t care. Some agreed with their portrayals and some didn’t. Some were mad about being in the book at all. Others were mad about being left out. Some told me how they felt and some didn’t. Some read it and some didn’t, or at least claim they didn’t. The only consistent thing I’ve noticed is that people rarely react the way I would have expected. Here are some consequence questions I would suggest asking yourself instead (a few are legal): If you knew the person you’re writing about would sue you for defamation, would you still write it? Would you write it the same way? Would you publish it? Could you defend your portrayal, if it came to that? In terms of interpersonal consequences: Who are you willing to offend or even lose for the sake of the work? Who are you not? (It can be a useful exercise to make lists of both.) Could you leave them out and still write the piece successfully? Do you believe you need permission to portray other people? All of them, or only some, and which ones, and why? What will you do if they say no? If you’re going to write it anyway, why ask for their permission? If they say yes, will you let them read it before publication? Will you let them change it? Even if you think your portrayal is fair and accurate? Even if you feel like it compromises the work? Another common kind of question I hear is about ethics or morals—basically, whether it’s “OK” to do certain things when portraying other people. The problem with those questions is that they all lead immediately to another question: According to whom? When I was a journalist, I learned one community’s ethical guidelines for writing about other people. When I became a creative writer, I found out we have a completely different set, if we have any at all. Documentary filmmakers have their own. Even within those communities, there is no consensus about the ethics of portrayal. Practitioners, critics, and audiences often have wildly different beliefs about what’s acceptable. And the people you’re writing about may be operating within very different ethical frameworks from the ones we think about. So there is no clear way to say what’s OK. “The problem with those questions is that they all lead immediately to another question: According to whom?” It’s surprisingly hard even to narrow that question down to individual morality. You might have a well-developed moral position on the question of writing about other people. But the person you’re writing about might have a different one. So might your agent, editor, or the people who read or review your work. Do I think it’s morally OK to write something deeply unflattering about your older brother and publish it? Absolutely. But I’m only saying that because I’ve done it. Then there’s the most important kind of questions, and the hardest to answer: the questions you have to ask yourself to define your own beliefs about portraying other people. For example: Do you think people should have the right to determine how they’re portrayed in a permanent medium? Do you think they should have the right to not be written about? Do you think portrayals need to be accurate? Do you think they can be? Would you feel the same way if you were the one being portrayed? Do you think people know or see themselves accurately enough to judge another person’s portrayal of them? Do you think it’s possible to portray another person in a public way and not have it affect your relationship with them? (I don’t.) Do you think it’s OK for your writing to harm another person? What kind of repercussions are you willing to accept? What’s more important to you, if you have to choose: your art or your relationship to that person? Do you also think about your self-portrayal, and whether that portrayal is honest or generous or kind, or accurate to who you really are? Chronicle of a Summer ends with the two filmmakers walking down a hall after the screening, discussing the conversation. “It can all be summed up in two arguments,” one says. “Either our characters are blamed for not being true enough, or they’re being blamed for being too true.”
- [Spring 2025](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/) - Soundings Spring 2025: featuring Justin St. Germain, Kerry Heckman, Marty Salgado, and Dabu—including RWW announcements, publications, and literary citizenship!
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2025/greeting/) - Dearest RWW Community— As my cohort is making our way through our final year of the program, putting our finishing touches on our creative theses, I am excited to share this new issue of Soundings, which offers a lovely reprieve from the mess I’ve made on my living room floor trying to sequence my manuscript. Through the features in this issue, I read invitations to consider our place as writers in real worlds and in real communities. With this issue, our team at Soundings is excited to share Justin St. Germain’s craft essay, adapted from a morning talk panel from last summer’s residency entitled “Any Resemblance to Real Life Is Entirely Inevitable.” Justin’s essay invites us to reflect on our responsibilities as writers and members of our communities: How do we write the complexity of real people? Justin offers some thought-provoking questions to help us shape our approach to the page. Further, we have the privilege of sharing an interview with two second-year RWW students, Marty Salgado and Dabu, reflecting on their Outside Experiences. A cornerstone of RWW’s pedagogy, the Outside Experience asks students to engage with the writing life in a context outside of the classroom and away from the page. Dabu and Marty’s reflections evidence the Outside Experience’s potential to celebrate the spirit, the lived experience, and the curiosity that are core tools for writers. As always, we also celebrate the RWW community through our listings of Publications, Announcements, and Literary Citizenship. We hope you enjoy the Spring 2025 issue of Soundings! antmen pimentel mendoza Editor
- [From Blank Page to Publication: Celebrating New Faculty Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/faculty/)
- [Fall/Winter 2024](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/) - This issue features Renee Simms, Kerry Heckman (with Rick Barot, Scott Nadelson, torrin a. greathouse, Matt Young, Geffrey Davis, and Wendy Call), and antment pimentel mendoz (with Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and a residency photo album). Editor: antmen pimentel mendoza; Contributing Writer: Kerry Heckman; Managing Editor: Hannah Comerford; Creative Director: Garrett Brooks
- [In Memoriam](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/hebestreit/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/literary-citizenship/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/announcements/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/publications/)
- [Summer Residency Redux: A Photo Album](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/album/)
- [Lena Khalaf Tuffaha Wins the National Book Award](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/tuffaha/)
- [But, Is It True?](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/simms/)
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2024/greeting/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/publications/)
- [RWW @ AWP](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/4-awp/) - The AWP conference in Seattle last month drew many RWW students, alumni, and faculty. Here are a few images of the many hours spent tabling at the book fair, celebrating at readings, exploring Seattle, and catching up between literary events.Fall 2021 4 The AWP conference in Seattle last month drew many RWW students, alumni, and faculty. Here are a few images of the many hours spent tabling at the book fair, celebrating at readings, exploring Seattle, and catching up between literary events. Back to Top
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/greeting/) - Dearest RWW Community— I have to admit that I did not arrive at summer with my usual sigh of relief this year. At work, the school year has wound down and campus has mostly cleared out. From my apartment’s balcony, I have appreciated the late sunset. Over the sink in our shared kitchen, I have split tender-sweet stone fruit with my partner. And yet the buzz of fascism and the everyday ache of empire persist. I refuse the notion that writing can be panacea to all of this—there has been far too much blood spilled and I am not naïve enough. Still, I hold small hopes that writing alongside you all can offer some stay against the doom and gloom. Still, I look forward to returning to campus in Tacoma this month with my fingers crossed and eyes wide and hungry to see my friends again. In compiling this issue, I revisited poems by friends. I read Dallas Atlas’s “The Snack that Smiles Back,” the gentle turn at the end of the poem, the speaker’s grief and memory swirling: “with cupped hands I drink the sea.” I read Eric Lochridge’s “Participation Award,” its litany of pains in contemporary life resonating in a chuckle and a sigh: “So many unasked-for absurdities— / the Apple TV remote, Hulu’s interface, // those little stickers stuck to fruit.” And it’s some small kindling in the meantime until summer’s relief hits, witnessing the life of these poems, following my friends in the belief in their work, preaching it here to you now through this note. With what warmth and optimism I have mustered in writing this note, in reaching out to you, members of the RWW community, I do feel great excitement about this issue. To begin, we feature an inspiring craft essay by faculty member Geffrey Davis, as seen in The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop; interviews with both the program’s newest faculty member, Aram Mrjoian, and the program’s co-founder and former director, Stan Rubin; and, as always, a celebration of our community’s accomplishments in the Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship listings. So please enjoy our Summer 2024 issue, knowing the editorial team makes this humble offering with gratitude and excitement! —antmen pimentel mendoza
- [Summer 2024](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/) - Featuring Geffrey Davis, Elissa Favero (with Aram Mrjoian), Holly J. Hughes (with Stan Rubin), and the RWW community's publications, announcements, opportunities, and literary citizenship.
- [Playing Backward on the Train](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/davis/) - Geffrey Davis — I’ve been thinking: Maybe you-the-artist are just one of so many passengers with a backward-facing seat on the long line of life’s moving train, which we all ride for a while . . . And maybe, before not too many stops, or after countless stops because the view has been that damn beautiful or that dark with intent, you-the-artist happen to notice that the window at your seat is open—has to have been open since taking your place—something that your body probably learned first after a shift in the weather or a bend in the train’s long line of travel pulled at the sound of air moving by . . . Maybe you-the-artist begin struggling to resist a new urge to reach, to know differently the wind that can be heard and almost seen now against a world that continues falling away beyond the openness . . . But maybe it takes a few more stops to move your hands because the wind is a little scary, and so you-the-artist mostly wait for the kind of air that enters the train by an accident that your own watching wants to rename . . . Or maybe your hands move in the moment that follows your recognition because whatever wind you-the-artist can feel thrills a playful reach into the full onrush of where you’re heading . . . Then maybe something brushes up against a bright or misshaped memory that makes you-the-artist question how long to keep yourself connected to the wind like this . . . But then maybe a myth called family or home revises the first doubt of what the full wind would do—maybe a remembered joke about time makes you-the-artist more curious about the meaning of your hands—maybe you-the-artist think bird or plane and that’s enough to begin experimenting with turning your reach into a wing . . . Maybe during the very next beat or once your familiar ideas of flight have been exhausted or become a little boring, you-the-artist long for other images that could say everything or nothing at all about the lift in this wind . . . Maybe you-the-artist think about the hand shapes that kids from your neighborhood would sometimes use to show the desire and danger of their belonging, or those you’ve seen elders sometimes use to keep the ground’s growing swell beneath them, or . . . Maybe right away or maybe deep into drafting this litany of images, you-the-artist discover that the wind has begun to sound less like wind: the quiet thought that your hands have something to do with this change adds another note of possibility to your play . . . “Maybe right away or maybe deep into drafting this litany of images, you-the-artist discover that the wind has begun to sound less like wind . . .” Maybe you-the-artist get bold or foolish enough to admit quietly to yourself or with an audible gasp that what you’ve been making is nearly or definitely something you-the-artist want to call music, which maybe embarrasses but also emboldens you-the-artist to continue . . . Or maybe this is enough to tuck your humming hands back into your lap with a grin or an internal sigh . . . But maybe, after getting your breath back, or swept up in wanting to learn this almost music, or without ever taking your hands away from the wind game, you catch a clip of what anyone would have to call a vowel . . . Maybe it takes a gazillion more little finger strokes—some so odd, you can’t help but laugh; some so similar, you silently wonder about your ability to distinguish sounds—but eventually the winded vowel you are making grows into a pattern—no, a word . . . Maybe while leaning closer to decipher what you’ve been hearing all along, slowly or suddenly you find the right strokes to hold that word in the margins of clarity: the wind has a voice, and it’s saying your name . . . Maybe you scan the train for a witness and see that someone in a different seat has been watching what you’re doing, maybe for a long time, maybe at the very moment you turned the song of your own name. Maybe they have their hands at their window, too. What’s clear: the listening you just made is written with astonished pride across the new faith of their nodding face . . . Dear Reader: The world is your witness. And now you carry that blessing with you. We need to hear the music you swoop into our ongoing traditions. Wherever you go, whatever you risk, however long, keep reaching your hands into the wind of story and poetry—and keep returning to let us hear your names, again and again and again . . . Amen. Geffrey Davis is the author of three books of poems, most recently One Wild Word Away (BOA Editions 2024). His second collection, Night Angler, won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and his debut, Revising the Storm, received the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist. His writing has been published in places such as AGNI, The Atlantic, New England Review, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Oxford American, PBS NewsHour, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. A recipient of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the Porter Fund Literary Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Davis has also been awarded fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Whiting Foundation for his involvement with The Prison Story Project, which strives to empower incarcerated women and men to tell their own stories through writing. Davis currently lives in the Ozarks, where he teaches for the Program in Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas. Raised by the Pacific Northwest, he also serves as Poetry Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.
- [Routine, Rhythm, & Patience](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/mrjoian/) - Elissa Favero — We officially welcome faculty member Aram Mrjoian to RWW at the residency this July. Aram joins the faculty at RWW as an experienced writer and editor with work appearing in publications such as The Guardian, Literary Hub, Catapult, and more. Aram and I conducted our conversation over email, and I’m so glad to share it with you below. *** Elissa Favero: In addition to teaching at the University of Michigan, you've taught undergraduate writing courses in both fiction and nonfiction at PLU as a visiting professor. And you've taught RWW Flash Classes on Zoom these last couple years as well. What's drawn you to this new role as MFA faculty at RWW, and what are you particularly eager to bring to the RWW community? Aram Mrjoian: There are many reasons I’m excited to join the RWW community, but having the opportunity to work closely with graduate students and the low-residency model are two big draws for me. I did my MFA at Northwestern part-time, taking classes and completing coursework on nights and weekends while working a full-time job in the university’s marketing department, and I think there’s something really special about how students learn to value their time in models alternative to full-time graduate school. When I quit my job and moved from Chicago to Florida to pursue my PhD, my sense of urgency and discipline slackened in some ways, not because I suddenly had more time, but because I was managing my time differently. I lost some of the demands that forced me into a routine and rhythm. My relationship to my work was more toxic because I felt like I had to publish well to get a job on the other side of the program, whereas when I was balancing school and my day job every moment of class was cherished and carved out, if that makes sense. I guess what I mean is I know how much the RWW community values the compressed time and space we have together, and how busy students are outside of the program. I’m really eager to be a part of that process and to build close relationships with students and faculty over multiple years. My hope is my wide-ranging publishing background and approach to artistic decision-making will bring something valuable to the RWW community. I really want to give everything I can to those around me. I can’t wait to be part of it. Aram Mrjoian EF: Your education, teaching, and work with literary journals have taken you all over the United States, from Michigan to Denver to the Chicago area to Florida to Tacoma. You're also the editor of the 2023 anthology We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora. How has place shaped your identity as a writer? Do you connect your relationships to place to your literary interest in spatialization? AM: This might sound strange, but I never really feel fully at home anywhere, and I try to get at that in my fiction and nonfiction. In that regard, for me, place is an important means of entering characters. Place also offers an entry point to considering larger social, cultural, and political questions. Where something is set can tell a reader a lot right away and can be a way to build tension, conflict, plot, etc. I tend to write with images in mind—I like to clearly see what’s happening—so traveling and living in different parts of the country has helped me think through what really matters to me on the page. I don’t really buy the idea that any one book or canon can define a city or region, but I do believe we can learn a lot from setting details and that it’s worth considering the specifics of where the action occurs. This is all to say I like helping students think through how their work moves concretely through space and time. EF: I'm really looking forward to the grad session you’ll co-teach with Scott Nadelson at the residency this summer on the editor-writer relationship. I notice that in your teaching statement you also speak to writers negotiating their intentions with readers, editors, and critics. I'm also thinking of your new role as the Editor-in-Chief of The Rumpus. (Big congratulations, by the way!) How do you negotiate wearing these different professional hats: writer, editor, critic? Is an awareness of a larger literary ecosystem something you think is important for students studying writing to be aware of as well? AM: I try not to offer too many definitive statements about how students find their way in the literary world, but what I will say is that awareness of and curiosity about the larger literary ecosystem are probably the main reason I’ve had any outward-facing success as a writer. In the earliest days of my MFA, I was truly hopeless, writing stuff that was all over the place and lacking decisiveness. I didn’t have a clue what anyone was talking about in workshop. I sincerely felt like I was wasting everyone’s time. Wearing different hats came out of necessity, because that was how I refined my craft and style. I learned to be a writer by reading submissions, interviewing authors, writing reviews, editing stories, and soaking up all the information I could. That might not be necessary for everyone, but it was very much necessary for me. My interest in these areas evolved in rewarding and unexpected ways. I realized not only how much I enjoyed being an editor, but also that I could make extra income doing it. Writing reviews and interviews resulted in me receiving more invitations to sit on panels, lead workshops, and connect with other writers. I kind of had to build myself up as a writer from scratch and that never would have happened without a willingness to balance different roles and learning experiences. It honestly takes a lot of time and organization, but I doubt I would have gotten this far without investing myself in a variety of projects and roles. “I kind of had to build myself up as a writer from scratch and that never would have happened without a willingness to balance different roles and learning experiences.” EF: Can you tell us a little bit about your forthcoming novel, Waterline, and the process that went into writing it and finding a home for it at Harper Via? AM: Of course! The tagline is “a close-knit Armenian American family grapples with the aftermath of losing one of their own,” but for me writing it was also a chance to consider contemporary themes around Armenian American identity and a chance to compose an extended work that was not centered on the Armenian Genocide. It’s different—I think anyway—from a lot of my other fiction in that the writing is moody and spare in ways most of my short stories are not. The novel I’m working on now goes in the complete opposite direction. Waterline is my dissertation novel, so I worked on a draft for most of my three years at Florida State University. After that, I revised again in the following year while I was visiting faculty at PLU. I had a tremendous amount of help from friends and mentors along the way. It took me a long time to find an agent, and once I did, we edited the manuscript together before we went out on submission. The whole thing, from the initial idea to the novel it is today, probably took about six years. It will be closer to seven years when it actually hits shelves. EF: And finally, I know from your 2022 essay for Runner's World, “There Is a Perfect Mile-Long Song and I’ve Been Chasing It for 15 Years,” that running has long been part of your life. Do you see running as being in conversation with your writerly life? Or something entirely separate? AM: To an extent, everything I do is in conversation with my writing life, but honestly I’m not sure that running is integrally connected, in the sense that I would likely continue pastimes like running, hiking, playing basketball, and other exercise routines regardless of if I was a writer or pursuing any other career path. I consider them two things I do independently because of who I am, even if they influence one another. I tend to solve a lot of narrative problems while I’m on long runs, which is pretty neat. I guess both activities allow me to clear my mind for a while. If there is a comparison I can make, it’s that I’m somewhat inconsistent in both my running and writing. They are passions for me, but I don’t have daily routines around them unless I am training for something. I’m a big fan of breaks and life balance. If I’m not training for a marathon, there are weeks where I might only run once or twice. I don’t consider myself a true runner the way some folks are. Similarly, sometimes I’ll spend two weeks revising a story for several hours a day and then not write at all for a month. At one point, I made a pledge to a writer friend that I would pay him $5 for every weekday I did not get at least 500 words written of Waterline. It was the only way I really pushed out a first draft. I am drawn to both of these activities because they require some effort and endurance from me, but I am not overly rigorous when approaching either one. I’ve found that patience is what has allowed me to keep going and avoid burnout. EF: Thank you, Aram, and welcome to RWW! Aram Mrjoian is the editor-in-chief of The Rumpus and a 2022 Creative Armenia-AGBU Fellow. His debut novel, Waterline, is forthcoming with Harper Via in 2025. Aram has previously worked as an editor at the Chicago Review of Books, the Southeast Review, and TriQuarterly. He is the editor of the anthology We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora published by the University of Texas Press (March 2023). His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Runner’s World, Literary Hub, Catapult, West Branch, Electric Literature, Gulf Coast, Boulevard, Joyland, Longreads, and many other publications.
- [Now, It's All Nostalgia & a Bit of a Miracle: <br> An Interview with Stan Rubin, Co-Founder & Former Director of RWW](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/rubin/) - I met Stan for lunch on a brisk, sunny late afternoon in late May. We sat out on the back deck outside Aldrich’s with bowls of soup and reminisced about the first years of the program, twenty years ago now, in 2004. I can still remember the sense of anticipation laced with trepidation I felt on arriving at the PLU campus on a sweltering day in early August and meeting Stan, Judith, the faculty, and the other members of the inaugural class for the first time. As the week unfolded, the trepidation faded, replaced by elation as we all got to know the faculty, weathered our first workshop, shared picnics on the patio, and began forming bonds that for my cohort—and I suspect all subsequent cohorts—continue to this day. This meeting gave me a chance to ask all the questions I’d never asked about the founding of the program, as well as catch up on the publishing successes of RWW alums. What follows is a condensed version of a meandering conversation that took place over several hours. *** Holly Hughes: Stan, I remember so well that first year—hard to believe it’s twenty years ago now!—arriving at the Scan Center for orientation and being given elaborate color-coded schedules for the residency: workshops, craft talks, and readings. I was so grateful for Judith’s “Schedule at a Glance” page! I’d love to hear about both your vision and all the work that preceded that first residency. How did the program come about? What were the seeds? And how did it end up here in the Northwest instead of New York, where you and Judith were teaching? Stan Rubin: Judith and I were married and had been a literary team for a number of years at State University of New York—Brockport. I’d been running the Brockport Writer’s Forum and Video Library and the Summer Writing Workshops. We were looking to move elsewhere. Judith was invited to be a guest writer at Centrum by Sam Hamill and I came with her. We’d wanted to do something out in this part of the world. While we were here, we looked for low-residency MFA programs, and there weren’t any then. Recognizing a need, we approached a few colleges and got a very positive response from PLU. That was 2003. A year later, in early August, we were greeting you all. We put together our own proposal for the program—we felt strongly about that. We were only interested in running an MFA program if we could design it. We both knew a lot of writers—we were well connected in the literary world—and knew we could find good faculty to teach in it, which we did. Stan Rubin HH: What was your vision for the program? How did it differ from other low-residency MFA programs? SR: Judith had attended Warren Wilson’s MFA program and I knew a lot about MFA programs. We wanted to design a program that would work for working adults, not just for younger students. We wanted grown-ups—people who’d failed a few times along the way, but had the character, talent, and drive to go further. We wanted people who wanted to be part of this program, who understood our vision and were ready to take on responsibility in their own lives. We knew we could build a credible program if we were allowed to do it our way, and PLU was open to that. PLU was unique then in that the decision for new programs was made by faculty. We presented our program to the Faculty Senate and it was enthusiastically received. Our timing was good. Not only were the dean and the English Department supportive, but President Loren Anderson gave us money out of the presidential fund that first year. I remember the call came late on a Friday afternoon that the faculty had voted unanimously to approve it—we were told we were the first new program that ever got 100% approval—and I walked over to my dean at SUNY and gave notice. HH: From my perspective as a student, then as the Outside Experience Coordinator, one of the great strengths of RWW has always been the quality of the faculty. They have all been not only stellar writers, but also gifted teachers and mentors who appreciate each other’s work. There wasn’t the sense of competition that you see at some MFA programs, but a sense of collaboration and respect among the faculty that appealed to me right away. How did you choose which faculty to invite? What were your criteria? SR: We picked people largely who we knew, but not necessarily our best friends. In some cases, we took a chance on writers we’d met just briefly or heard about, like Kent Meyers—Judy met him when she was judging a fiction contest. Ann Pancake and Dinah Lenney were both suggested to us by people we knew and respected. We took many counterintuitive risks to achieve our vision of responsibility and excellence. We wanted to give students the option to study more than one genre, so one of our goals was to hire writers who had strengths in writing and teaching in multiple genres. We looked for writers who’d be intellectually challenging to students, too. We believed in the mind. We recruited people who didn’t want to be on a “ladder”—not jockeying for position as you so often see in academia. “We believed in the mind. We recruited people who didn’t want to be on a ‘ladder’—not jockeying for position as you so often see in academia.” HH: What about recruiting the participants? Everyone I met that first year seemed so well suited for the program you and Judith created, myself included. I was attracted by the opportunity to study more than one genre—and not having to fly across the country twice a year (I’d considered attending Warren Wilson). SR: We were enormously lucky. Through extensive recruiting, we attracted the right people as participants. We admitted people who hadn’t necessarily published extensively, and in one or two cases, had never taken creative writing as a class, but who had a passion for writing. We were also looking for people who were self-directed and motivated. Our idea from the start was choice, individual growth, and ongoing progress measured not by jumping through academic hoops to a degree as reward, but real development in collaboration with a mentor who has a similar goal. We developed and reshaped elements based on that, including our system of two-way narrative evaluations and the mutually determined individualized reading lists at each stage. As I mentioned earlier, one of the other things we did that was unique is that we didn’t admit students to a specific genre. With an eye on their writerly growth, we gave them permission to change genres—or in some cases, to do a multi-genre thesis. For those without much publishing experience who might be feeling insecure, we designed the residency to help everyone gain confidence. As you remember, before the residency began, we invited a graduate to give the opening graduate reading—so the participants could see what was possible. I was responsible for finding the right students, and Judy figured out schedules and the day-to-day details of the residency; as you know, her mathematical genius played a significant role in this, too. Stan and Judith HH: Yes, and I remember that Judith had a gift for assigning roommates—I’m so grateful for my ongoing friendship with my roommate Katie Humes—and for assigning mentors. We learned quickly not to be disappointed if we didn’t receive the mentor we’d requested; Judith always knew best who we needed to work with next. What were you looking for in the thesis? SR: The thesis had to be serious, to show real engagement. We wanted participants to be able to demonstrate that they were writing on a more confident and daring level than before. Many students did end up with published books, but many also are making significant contributions to the literary community—alumni like Billie Swift, who owns Open Books. We were happy for those who did get teaching jobs or ran literary centers, too. Out of those early classes, three participants are now on faculty at RWW: Barrie Jean Borich, April Ayers Lawson, and Kelli Russell Agodon. HH: What about the Outside Experience? As you remember, for me, the OE was a significant project and eventually resulted in my first publication—and I believed in its value so strongly that I spent the next twelve years as OE Coordinator, thanks to you and Judith entrusting me with it. SR: We wanted each participant to design something with us—an internship, travel, residency, teaching—that would send them outside the program into the world that hopefully would bear fruit in their thesis. As you know, the idea had to be approved—you couldn’t do just anything—and in many cases, participants surprised us. The other thing that I’m proud of is that we set it up so everything we did fed everything else. When the second-year students present their Outside Experiences, the first-year students are inspired and often come away from it with ideas for what they might do. In the end, we were proud of that element of the program. We wanted something to help you live a better, more fulfilling life, not just focus on achievement. “We wanted something to help you live a better, more fulfilling life, not just focus on achievement.” HH: I think you succeeded at this, Stan. I can think of many Outside Experiences that led participants into satisfying literary work, like Erin Hollowell, who did her OE in Alaska at the Sitka Institute and is now executive director for Storyknife and directs the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. Many other alumni are making contributions in the local publishing scene. Jill McCabe Johnson is founder and editor-in-chief at Wandering Aengus Press and its imprint Trail to Table Books, where two other RWW alums are on the staff: Julie Riddle as Creative Nonfiction Editor and Tina Schumann as poetry editor. Michael Schmeltzer has been President of Floating Bridge Press for several years as well as the author of several poetry collections. Kelli Russell Agodon is co-publisher of Two Sylvias Press, and I’m co-publisher of Empty Bowl Press. All these accomplishments lead me to my next question: How do you feel about all the recognition that RWW alums have achieved and are achieving? SR: Well, the achievement that first year alone affirmed that our risk paid off: Kathleen Flenniken won a National Endowment for the Arts grant and her book of poems, Famous, was published. She went on to become our second Washington State Poet Laureate. Margie Lukas wrote a short story that was adapted into a movie that won a prize at Cannes. You published Beyond Forgetting: Poetry & Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease and later received an American Book Award. April Lawson won The Paris Review Plimpton Prize for her short story, “Virgin.” That pattern continued, too, and as the years went by, the list of achievements and accomplishments grew: Kate Carroll de Gutes's debut book of essays, Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won the 2016 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Lambda Literary Award in Memoir. Julie Riddle won an award from Creative Nonfiction for an essay, and Amy Andrews won a national essay contest sponsored by The Atlantic; we traveled to New York to celebrate it. In 2019, Tina Schuman published Praising the Paradox, a finalist in the National Poetry Series, the New Issues Poetry Prize, the Four Way Books Intro Prize, and others. More recently, Kristina Moriconi published another book, In the Cloakroom of Proper Musings, as did Alicia Hoffman with Animal—I follow them on Facebook. Stan Rubin HH: Too many to name them all! This is just a sampling and I know that trend has continued the last decade under Rick’s leadership. Editor’s note: For a more complete list of accomplishments by RWW grads, see our Publications and Announcements sections. You must be so proud, Stan, and I suspect Judith is proud, too, to see what everyone has achieved from your well-timed vision—and is continuing to achieve. Looking back on all this twenty years later, are there things you would have done differently? SR: There were things we wanted to do in the early years, but we weren’t able to; we were so busy year-round running the program. One of them was to invite alumni to return for residencies, which is now happening. We didn’t record guest or craft lectures—there were just too many forms to fill out—so I’m immensely grateful that Brenda put the collection of craft lectures together that came out this year, The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop. HH: It's now been ten years since you and Judith retired, working with Rick during the 2014 residency to ensure a smooth transition. As you reflect now, any closing thoughts? SR: In retrospect, it was rather like a symphony orchestra, individual parts working to an overall goal, only the score hadn’t been written in advance. That was the risk, the excitement. I learned that if you trust and pick the right people, miracles will happen. I have the huge joy that the participants in the program have greatly exceeded our dreams for them and continue to do so. Stan Sanvel Rubin, co-founding director of RWW with Judith Kitchen, has published over 300 poems in journals including AGNI, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review and others. Four full-length collections include There.Here. (Lost Horse Press) and Hidden Sequel (Barrow Street Poetry Book Prize). He served as essay-reviewer of Poetry for Water-Stone Review and as elected chair of the Low Residency Director’s caucus of AWP, helping formulate standards for such programs. Previously at SUNY, he was director of the Brockport Writers Forum and Video Library and founding director of the Brockport Summer Writing Workshops. Holly J. Hughes is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Hold Fast, coauthor of The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, and editor of several anthologies. Her fine art chapbook Passings received an American Book Award in 2017. She was a member of the Rainier Writing Workshop’s first graduating class, then served as the Outside Experience coordinator for 13 years, in addition to teaching writing full time at the college level for several decades. Currently, she’s co-publisher of Empty Bowl Press, directs Flying Squirrel Studio, which offers writing residencies for women, and consults as a writing coach.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/publications/) - Students Dallas Atlas (2024) Poetry: “The Snack That Smiles Back,” “sometimes it skips a generation,” The Acentos Review, April 2024. Gloria Bromberg (2026) Poetry: “My Father’s Florida Driver’s License,” “Sundays in Grandma’s Kitchen,” and “No One Writes Poems For Me,” Hobo Camp Review, Issue 46, April 2024; “Why, You Ask, Do I Prefer Sleeping Alone?” Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, April 16, 2024; “Living with a Hoarder,” and “McDonald’s: Fairbanks, Alaska,” Brawl Lit, June 3, 2024. Amy Cook (2025) Nonfiction: “The Phoenix Aces,” Barnstorm Journal, May 2025. Carolyn Holthoff under the pen name Lena Hari (2025) Fiction: “The Presence of Water,” The Hopper, Issue 9.1, Spring 2024. Winston Lin under the pen name Winnie CT (2024) Nonfiction: “Coming of Age,” Hellbender Magazine: Metamorphosis, May 2024. Eric Lochridge (2025) Poetry: “Memory of the Real Estate Collapse” and “Participation Award,” Midway Journal, Vol. 18, Issue 2, April 2024; “Swim Team Titans,” Moss Puppy, Issue 6, Spring 2024; “The Couple Under the Striped Umbrella,” Crab Apple Literary, May 2024. antmen pimentel mendoza (2025) Poetry: “A Hookup Explains His Planned Ouroboros Tattoo as I Contemplate Deleting All Photos of My Ex from My Phone,” ANMLY, April 2024. Myrna CG Mibus (2026) Nonfiction: “Grounded,” HeartWood Literary Magazine, Issue 17, Spring 2024. Dawn Terpstra (2025) Poetry: “Sonnets for a Week Between Seasons” and “Ritual Fires,” The Cities of the Plains: An Anthology of Iowa Artists and Poets, Grand View University, March 12, 2024. Alumni Lisa Morin Carcia (2018) Poetry: “Ceremony After the Ceremony,” ONE ART, June 5, 2024; “Commute,” Poetry in Public, April 4, 2024. Paul Goudarzi-Fry (2022) Poetry: “Musculature,” Ghost City Review, March 2024; “Flux (I)” and “Weight of the World,” & Change, Issue No. 6, May 2024. Erin Coughlin Hollowell (2009) Poetry: “Aisling,” Channel Magazine, Issue 10, May 2024; “The inexplicable that lives behind the artifice,” The Stinging Fly, Issue 50, Volume 2, May 2024; “If you could be any animal?” Thimble Literary Magazine, Issue 7.1, June 28, 2024; “These questions that bind,” One, Issue 30, June 10, 2024. Emily Holt (2016) Poetry: “The Happiness Quotient,” Ragaire, May 2024. Mike Hunter (2017) Fiction: “Hard Knocks, Part 5: Meet Me at Magoo’s,” Grit City Magazine, Hard Copy 22, May 2024. Jill McCabe Johnson (2008) Nonfiction: “Crafting Soundscapes,” The Poetry Department, April 2024; “Victim Protection,” Superstition Review, May 2024; “Where Grass Gives Way to Gravel,” trampset, May 2024. Bonnie Lini Markowski (2023) Poetry: “Hollow Bones,” Quartet Journal, Vol. 4, Issue 2, May 1, 2024; “Soft Pockets, On Farrell Street,” Moria Literary Review, May 6, 2024; “Waxing Moon” and “Salt Lick,” Poetry Breakfast, April and May 2024. John Milkereit (2016) Poetry: “Newspaper Photograph of Border Agents Discussing the Separation of a Family,” Synkroniciti, June 2024; “Upon Seeing the Glorious Crepuscular Rays,” “Today, Prayer Is a Vast Country,” and “When the Whole World Is Ruled by Love and the Marvelous,” The Ekphrastic Review, April and May 2024. Vandana Nair (2021) Review: “The Dog of Tithwal,” Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation, June 7, 2024. Joannie Stangeland (2019) Poetry: “Tinsel Teaser Toy,” “Stitch in My Side,” and “Sun to Sun,” The Midwest Quarterly, Spring 2024, Volume 65, No. 3; “For the Moment Rose,” Pangyrus, June 28, 2024. Cameron Walker (2008) Fiction: “St. Lucia Brings the Light,” Flash Fiction Magazine, April 2024; Nonfiction: Points of Light: Curious Essays on Science, Nature, and Other Wonders Along the Pacific Coast, Hidden River Arts Press, March 29, 2024. Faculty Wendy Call, Nonfiction: “Tens,” Memory's Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort Worden, Empty Bowl Press, June 2024. Geffrey Davis, Poetry: “Not to Be Confused with 'Poem,'” The Academy of American Poets, Spring 2024; One Wild Word Away, BOA Editions, April 2024; Nonfiction: “Going to the Body: Meditations on Poetry and Boxing,” The Adroit Journal, May 2024. Sejal Shah (former faculty member), Fiction: How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions, West Virginia University Press, May 2024. Matt Young, Fiction: End of Active Service, Bloomsbury Publishing, June 2024.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/announcements/) - Students: Amy Cook (2025) was listed as the second runner-up for her essay “The Phoenix Aces” in Barnstorm Journal's “Experi-May-ntal” Contest. Kalehua Kim (2025) received the 2024 Editor’s Choice Prize from Trio House Press. Her first collection of poems, Mele, will be published by Trio House in Summer 2025. Kalehua also participated as a returning Fellow at the Indigenous Nations Poets retreat in Minneapolis–St. Paul, June 2024. Alumni Nancy Canyon’s (2007) memoir, Struck: A Season on a Fire Lookout, is set to launch September 20, 6 p.m., at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. Maddaline Enns’s (2011) piece “Rainfall and Watermarks: A Dance Toward Acceptance” was longlisted for the Susan Crean 2023 Nonfiction Award. Maddaline’s poem “September at the Bird Sanctuary” was longlisted for the BC Writers Federation poetry contest. Maddaline also received the Gary Hyland Literary Scholarship award for the Sage Hill Summer 2024 Poetry Course with Michael Trussler. Emily Holt (2016) was accepted into the nonfiction workshop at Community of Writers and was awarded a self-directed residency at Centrum. Jill Kandel’s (2009) book, The Clean Daughter: A Cross-Continental Memoir, NDSU PRESS 2022, has been chosen by the Library of Congress and the Center for the Book as a “Great Reads” book. It will be for sale and featured in the Great Reads from Great Places space at the 2024 Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., in August 2024. Along with the selection, the Center for the Book will organize and promote a book tour for Kandel throughout her home state of North Dakota. Vandana Nair’s (2021) novella, The Wedding, will be published by Santa Fe Writers Project in 2026 Christine Robbins (2012) received the Poem of the Year award from The Missouri Review for her poem “A Partial Account of the Trees.“ Judith L. Shadford’s (2009) short story “Endless Yearning” is the winner of the 2024 Brave New Weird Award from Tenebrous Press and appears in their print anthology of the same name. Lynette Vialet’s (2022) essay “Chimeras” is a first runner-up for the Terry Tempest Williams Prize in Creative Nonfiction in the North American Review.
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/opportunities/) - Faculty: Jill McCabe Johnson (2008) is hosting the online workshop Lost and Found: A Generative Writing Workshop on Trusting Your Inner Compass through the Hedgebrook Online Writing Series, available through August.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2024/literary-citizenship/) - Students: Amy Cook (2025): Editorial Assistant, CRAFT. Eric Lochridge (2025): Associate Poetry Editor, Okay Donkey. Dawn Terpstra (2025), Founding Member, Poetry Palooza, Des Moines, IA; Poetry Editor, River Heron Review. Alumni Jessica Barksdale (2015): Organizer, Literature Week, Diablo Valley College. Nancy Canyon (2007): Guest Author, Village Books Writers Salon, Bellingham, WA; Panelist, Chuckanut Writers Conference; Organizer and Editor, Canyonwriter Press, Bellingham, WA; Publisher of “Women's Bodies, Women's Words,” Canyonwriter Press, Bellingham, WA. Chelsey Clammer (2016): Creative Writing Instructor, WOW! Women on Writing. Hannah Comerford (2019): Associate Poetry Editor, Fathom Magazine. Kate Carroll de Gutes (2010): Reviews Editor, Fourth Genre; Cofounder, Incite: Queer Writers Read; Advisory Council, Storyknife Writers Retreat. Sydney Elliott (2015): Editor, Community College Humanities Review; Managing Editor, Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon. Kathleen Flenniken (2007): Board Member, Jack Straw Cultural Center. Cate Gable (2016): Founding Team Member, Rancho Linda Vista Writers Workshop. Nancy Geyer (2013): Art Editor, Terrain.org. Mike Gosalia (2022): Founding Editor in Chief, The Tomahawk Creek Review. Bernard Grant (2016): Associate Fiction Editor, Tahoma Literary Review. Ned Hayes (2015): Founder, Oly Arts. Katrina Hays (2010): Regional Editor, Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon. David Hebestreit (2014): Advisory Council Member, National English Honor Society and Sigma Tau Delta. Erin Coughlin Hollowell (2009): Executive Director, Storyknife Writers Retreat; Director, Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. Tia M. Hudson (2013): Poet Laureate, Bremerton, Washington. Marianne Janack (2021): Editor in Chief, Book XI: A Journal of Literary Philosophy. Jill McCabe Johnson (2008): Editor in Chief at Wandering Aengus Press and Trail to Table Press. Lita Kurth (2009): Cofounder, Flash Fiction Forum. Hannah D. Markley (2023): Assistant Nonfiction Editor, Terrain.org. Jonathan Maule (2019): Contributing Poetry Reviewer, RHINO Reviews. Meghan McClure (2013): Editorial Board Member, Floating Bridge Press. Carol McMahon (2016): Community Outreach, Bloom: Rochester Poetry Project. Jasminne Mendez (2019): Cohost of the literary podcast Ink Well; Cocreator, Women Who Submit chapter in Houston, TX. Ann Quinn (2018): Poetry Editor, Yellow Arrow Journal; Faculty, The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Ian Ramsey (2015): Founder and Director, The Kauffmann Program in Environmental Writing and Wilderness Exploration. Julie Riddle (2009): Editor, Whitworth Today; Nonfiction Editor at Wandering Aengus Press and Trail to Table Press. Michael Schmeltzer (2007): Editor in Chief, Floating Bridge Press. Tina Schumann (2009): Assistant Director, Artsmith; Poetry Editor at Wandering Aengus Press and Trail to Table Press. Bucket Siler (2016): Founder and Organizer, Santa Fe Zine Fest. Jen Soriano (2018): Contributing Editor, Slag Glass City. Molly Spencer (2017): Senior Poetry Editor, The Rumpus. Billie Swift (2016): Owner, Open Books: A Poem Emporium. Aldric Ulep (2022): Contracts and Logistics Manager, The Speakeasy Project. Nathaniel Youmans (2020): Editor, Washington Falconer's Association; Assistant Editor, Scablands Books. Faculty Kelli Russell Agodon (2007): Cofounder and Editor, Two Sylvias Press; Codirector, Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women. Barrie Jean Borich: Editor, Slag Glass City. Kevin Clark (former faculty): Poet Laureate, San Luis Obispo County, California. Geffrey Davis: Poetry Editor, Iron Horse Literary Review. Jennifer Foerster: Senior Editor, Poetry Northwest; Editor, PNW’s Native Poets Torchlight Series. Peggy Shumaker (former faculty): Series Editor, Alaska Literary Series, University of Alaska Press; Editor, Boreal Books, Red Hen Press; Board Member, Alaska Arts & Culture Foundation; Advisory Council, Storyknife Writers Retreat; Contributing Editor, Alaska Quarterly Review; National Advisory Board Member, The Prairie Schooner Book Prize.
- [The Blind Love of Language: <br>Discovering Poetry in the Everyday](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/agodon/) - Kelli Russell Agodon — Recently, on a day I had set aside for writing, I found myself changing plans and deciding instead to accompany a friend to an ice cream store in Port Townsend. While he quickly chose Swiss Orange Chocolate Chip, I paused, unsure. I was feeling a little guilty for not staying home to work on my poetry manuscript, and eating ice cream was feeling a little frivolous in comparison to the “real work” I should have been doing. Unclear what I wanted, I started reading the list of all their different ice cream names—praline, chocolate, mint chocolate chip, vanilla bean, blind love . . . wait, what? Blind Love? Was that an actual flavor or had someone mistaken the sign for a jukebox playlist? I leaned toward the woman with the cherry earrings working behind the counter and asked, “What is Blind Love? May I sample it?” Occasionally after saying something, I feel as if am living inside a line from a poem. This was one of those moments—Yes, I’d like a scoop of blind love. As someone who can devote hours, even an entire week of a writing residency, to writing and revising, sometimes I have to remind myself to ease up, get outside, and explore. I forget how there is a world of poems waiting for me in every moment of my day if I just pay attention. As Naomi Shihab Nye wrote in her poem “A Valentine for Ernest Mann,” poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, / they are sleeping . . . What we have to do / is live in a way that lets us find them. As a writer and editor, it can be easy for me to stay indoors trying to nail moonlight to my desk, or as others call it: writing a poem. As Carl Phillips wisely observed in his book of essays, My Trade Is Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing, “sometimes the problem is that we’re trying too hard” and “distractions can be useful.” A Decrease font size. A Reset font size. A Increase font size. Cover Greeting The Blind Love of Language Community, Discipline, & Perspective RWW @ AWP 2024 Publications Announcements Opportunities Literary Citizenship ____ As a younger poet, I believed the best poems stemmed from significant events—a trip to Italy, a major news story, a birth, a death—and yes, many do. But after enjoying a cone of Blind Love, I'm appreciating the everyday nature of poems and how if we stay present and observe the world and words around us, we can often stumble upon them (or their beginnings) in the most ordinary of spaces. For example, in February 1962, on a ferry ride to Staten Island for a poetry reading with Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara read a newspaper with a headline detailing Lana Turner's hospitalization for exhaustion following her collapse at her forty-second birthday celebration. O'Hara, inspired by the headline, wrote the now-famous poem, “Lana Turner has collapsed!” while traveling to the event. He even read the newly penned poem at the reading (to Lowell’s displeasure). Lexi Pelle wrote “The Bats Are Having Non-Penetrative Sex in a Church” after reading an unexpected science article on CBS News. She wrote: “When I read the story . . . I knew it needed to be in a poem. It made me laugh, but also made me think about the lengths (pun intended) scientists will go to understand the world’s mysteries, which feels related to the process of writing poetry.” Even a good typo or mishearing (a.k.a., mondegreen) can inspire new work. Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Man-Moth” was inspired by a typographical error in a newspaper. What was originally meant to be “mammoth” turned into one of her most read poems. In her 1962 essay “On ‘The Man-Moth,’” Bishop wrote, “. . . the misprint seemed meant for me. An oracle spoke from the page of The New York Times, kindly explaining New York City to me, at least for a moment.” Another well-known example is Thomas Lux’s poem “I Love You Sweatheart,” inspired by misspelled graffiti Lux saw on a girder above the highway he was driving on. “How Killer Blue Irises Spread,” a poem I wrote as a graduate student at RWW, emerged from mishearing an NPR news report about “how killer flu viruses spread” as a nervous young mom. Recently, Susan Rich’s poem “Temporary Madness” came to be after she wrote an email and a Facebook post about a recent break-up where a caring friend misread “break-up” for “break-in.” Rich begins her poem with: “I hope the break-in wasn’t too bad, Marianne offers / misreading in for up . . .” Surprisingly, even the distraction of the internet can be a source of new work; there are several poems inspired by tweets. Maggie Smith’s well-loved poem, “Poem Beginning with a Retweet,” began with just that, a retweet that read: If you drive past horses and don’t say horses, you’re a psychopath. Two of my poems were inspired by tweets: one from Shaun Cassidy (yes, that Shaun Cassidy), “There is too much beauty in the world,” which opened up a conversation on the environment and wildfires in the Northwest, while another from a stranger’s tweet, “If you had a mermaid phase as a kid, you’re probably bisexual now,” offered a door into an earlier self on a subject I had never written about. “Surprisingly, even the distraction of the internet can be a source of new work; there are several poems inspired by tweets.” Courtney LeBlanc used a question on Twitter, “Would you ever get your spouse’s name tattooed?” as her title and responded to the complexity of the question to explore a situation where an ex calls to say he got the speaker’s name as a tattoo as “a testament” to their time spent together. Katie Manning, inspired by Todd Dillard’s tweet “I think everyone in the poetry community deserves their own moon,” wrote the poem “Choosing a Moon.” Todd Dillard, inspired by a tweet by Matt Coyne, shared on Halloween about his kid: “I have felt uncomfortable before. But we were just passed by a slow moving hearse and funeral cars . . . My son is dressed as the grim reaper. He f**ng waved,” which prompted Dillard to write and share the poem “Dead Drive” to explore what it would be like to meet death. Hannah Stephenson wrote the poem “Fraction” off of a Jimmy Kimmel tweet, “One day, my heart will stop beating. (not everything is a joke).” When the poem was published, she shared it, and Jimmy Kimmel retweeted it, bringing it all full circle. Inspiration came from Facebook posts for Heidi Seaborn’s ecopoem “Catalogue of Hungers and Hopes,” which was sparked by reading a post—“the worst thing for the environment is to have a child.” Her poem even incorporates a note from a friend: “If the universe had an ICU, the earth would be in it,” reminding that lines for poems can arrive via text message. My good friend, Martha Silano, sent me a text from O’Hare Airport, which autocorrected to “Stuck in O hate airport!” to which I texted back, “You need to write that poem!” Martha did write that poem and “Ode to Autocorrect” was quickly picked up by Poetry Magazine. As someone who is more than happy to give you her own personal TEDx Talk on the importance as a writer of avoiding social media and turning off our devices, sometimes having a more open perspective on the gifts and benefits of material in all aspects of our lives can be important—including when we’re on the internet or playing around on our phones. It is cliché to say, “Inspiration is everywhere,” but daily I am reminded that it is. But these examples do more than just notice, which is the initial step of the creative spark: they also accomplish two even more crucial tasks—remembering the moment and writing the poem. I think back to that moment in the Port Townsend ice cream store and the curious discovery of “Blind Love” (which is triple chocolate, by the way). I found not just an amusing distraction, but a poetic metaphor. Finding material can resemble blind love: an inexplicable and unquestionable attraction to words where we fall in love with new ways of discovering the poems around us. Encountering these moments of inspiration in our everyday lives—be it through typos, headlines, or even ice cream flavor names—I’m reminded of the surprise and serendipity in the ordinary where even the briefest of moments can provide us with potential material. Being observant turns our everyday experiences into an opportunity for new work, and our world opens through our writing lives—like uncovering magic in the simplest things, such as an ice cream flavor that unexpectedly ignites a poem, or perhaps, even an entire essay. Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet and editor whose newest book, Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press) was named a Finalist in the Washington State Book Awards and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize in Poetry. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press, where she works as an editor and book cover designer. She recently published Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems, which she co-edited with Susan Rich. Kelli lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State, where she is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop, and is currently part of a project between local land trusts and artists to help raise awareness for the preservation of land, ecosystems, and biodiversity called Writing the Land. She also cohosts the poetry series "Poems You Need" with Melissa Studdard. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed
- [RWW @ AWP 2024](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/album/) - antmen pimentel mendoza — This February, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference took place in Kansas City. Members of our RWW community traveled from across the country to speak at and attend panels, share their work at readings, and connect with other writers while tabling at the book fair. These photos are a small sampling of the conference excitement, including two panels that featured our RWW faculty: “The Fine Art of Craft Talking,” featuring Barrie Jean Borich, Wendy Call, Geffrey Davis, and Jenny Johnson, with Rick Barot moderating, and “Embodied Prosody, Embodied Sentences: Coping Mechanisms,” featuring Oliver de la Paz, torrin a. greathouse, Jenny Johnson, and Brian Teare. Here's a collection of photos collected from RWW community members of their time at AWP 2024. We hope you enjoy looking through these mini reunions!
- [Community, Discipline, & Perspective](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/alumni/)
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/greeting/) - antmen pimentel mendoza — Dearest RWW Community— I hope that the arrival of spring is sweet for you, wherever you are. I hope the writing and reading are treating you sweetly, too. I recently revisited Tommy Pico’s epic poem cum text message IRL, in which he writes, Language is living history class, like you n me, conquest hardwired into lingua franca—multi- racial, neighborhoods, parts of speech, laborious pidgin and, I must admit, language has been a flurry, has been asking me to labor. So, I write this to you, knowing intimately conquest is hardwired into whatever unwieldy words in this unwieldy tongue I choose, knowing I cannot fully name what I believe language can do right now, but, humbly, I know it is “living history class,” just like you, me, and all of us. In this issue, I read the ways our community, too, knows that language is living history. RWW’s Kelli Russell Agodon shares her craft essay “The Blind Love of Language: Discovering Poetry in the Everyday” and invites us to follow curiosity, allow language to dazzle or distract even as it arrives in unlikely places. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the program, Contributing Writer Elissa Favero asked eight alumni from across the program’s history, “How has RWW shaped your writing life?” Language was certainly living and bustling, even, at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference hosted this February in Kansas City, and we have collected photos from our RWW community who presented on panels, shared their work at readings, and met future students at the bookfair booth. And, of course, we celebrate the ways our community continues to steward language through our Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship listings. Lastly, we want to celebrate the release of The Next Draft: Inspiring Craft Talks from the Rainier Writing Workshop, edited by Brenda Miller with help from Soundings Managing Editor Hannah Comerford. The book collects a selection of morning talks from RWW’s esteemed faculty through the years. You can purchase a copy from University of Michigan Press here! Use discount code UMS24 for 30% off. We hope that you enjoy this Spring issue, and I am very grateful to be working through language alongside you all. —antmen pimentel mendoza
- [Spring 2024](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/) - Soundings Spring 2024! Featuring articles by Kelli Russell Agodon, Elissa Favero (with RWW alumni), and antmen pimentel mendoza (about AWP), with publications, announcements, opportunities, and literary citizenship.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/announcements/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/opportunities/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2024/literary-citizenship/)
- [Fall 2023](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/) - Featuring Scott Nadelson, Jen Soriano, Elissa Favero, and antmen pimentel mendoza, and including RWW Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship. EDITOR: antmen pimentel mendoza CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Elissa Favero ASSISTANT EDITOR: Sharina Black MANAGING EDITOR: Hannah Comerford CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Garrett Brooks
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/greeting/) - Dear RWW Community— In their poem “August Moments,” Wo Chan writes, “of course like language, I love you— / like language, I barely know you.” I turn to this simultaneous love and bewilderment reflecting on the time since our summer residency on PLU’s campus, those sunny and sweaty days filled with words and all that they can do, reflecting on a similar affection for language and craft that brings this community together. That particular pair—I love you and, at once, I barely know you, language—are a current running through this issue of Soundings. In this issue, Scott Nadelson shares his craft essay “The Vulnerability of Outrage,” which he presented as a moving and timely morning talk at residency, inviting us to open ourselves to the lessons outrage might afford us while writing in discordant times. Elissa Favero, our new Contributing Writer, interviews alum Jen Soriano about her newly released book, Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing. Jen also shares wise reflections on their experience at RWW.” We look back at residency with a photo album crowdsourced from the very members of our community who were there to witness it all. And, finally, as with every issue, we celebrate our community with our listings of Publications, Announcements, and Literary Citizenship. This is also the premiere issue of Soundings brought to you by our new team! Join me in welcoming Sharina Black as Assistant Editor. I will serve as Editor this year, and I am grateful to Elissa Favero and Garrett Brooks for their continued collaboration and guidance. We also extend the deepest gratitude to Sydney Elliott for her decade of work to support RWW and especially Soundings, while welcoming Hannah Comerford as Managing Editor! We would also like to acknowledge and celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Rainier Writing Workshop this year. RWW has offered a home for a brilliant community of writers, and we are thrilled to continue growing and writing onward. We hope you enjoy this Fall issue and we are so humbled to be writing alongside you this year and for all the years well beyond it. —antmen pimentel mendoza
- [The Vulnerability of Outrage](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/nadelson/) - In 1975, the artist Carolee Schneemann walked onto the stage of the Telluride Film Festival, stripped, and painted her body with mud. Then she reached between her legs and began reading from a scroll she slowly unrolled from inside her vagina. On it was the script of a conversation in which a “structuralist filmmaker” tells the artist he won’t watch her films because of “the personal clutter / the persistence of feelings / the hand-touch sensibility / the diaristic indulgence / the painterly mess / the dense gestalt / the primitive techniques.” What he objects to, in other words, are the films’ supposedly feminine qualities. Summer 2022 3 In 1975, the artist Carolee Schneemann walked onto the stage of the Telluride Film Festival, stripped, and painted her body with mud. Then she reached between her legs and began reading from a scroll she slowly unrolled from inside her vagina. On it was the script of a conversation in which a
- [Staying True to Your Writer Dreams: <br> A Conversation with Jen Soriano](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/soriano/) - RWW alum Jen Soriano and I met at a coffee shop in Seattle at the end of August. Her new book, Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing, had been released just that week, and she was celebrating after a kickoff event at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company the previous evening. *** Elissa Favero: Jen, you graduated from RWW in 2018. How is your new book connected to your time at RWW—were these essays you were crafting and revising during the MFA program? Did you already have this book-length project in mind then? Summer 2022 3 RWW alum Jen Soriano and I met at a coffee shop in Seattle at the end of August. Her new book, Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing, had been released just that week, and she was celebrating after a kickoff event at Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company the previous evening. *** Elissa
- [Residency Redux](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/redux/) - A few short months have passed since residency ended, and that time feels both like a tiny flash and many lifetimes all at once. I admit that trading in the chaos of Harstad and the Cave for the chaos of day-job tedium and house chores has been a bit of a tougher transition than I expected. Luckily, we made a call to our community to share photos from residency, and the overwhelming response tossed me back to that beautiful time and place. These snapshots offer a sweet glimpse into the magic we made over those ten days.Summer 2022 3 A few short months have passed since residency ended, and that time feels both like a tiny flash and many lifetimes all at once. I admit that trading in the chaos of Harstad and the Cave for the chaos of day-job tedium and house chores has been a bit of a tougher
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/publications/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/announcements/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/opportunities/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2023/literary-citizenship/)
- [Soundings Staff #2](https://rwwsoundings.com/about/soundings-staff-3/) - TEST Summer 2023 Soundings Staff Elissa Favero Editor (Class of 2024) Elissa Favero teaches classes about visual arts histories at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and writes about art, architecture, and landscape. The recipient of an Art Writing Workshop Award from the International Art Critics Association/USA Section (AICA/USA) and the Creative Capital | Warhol TEST
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/5-publications/)
- [Place, Writing, & a Dog: <br>A Chat with Will Trembley & Andrea Pierceall about The O’Reilly Residency](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/3-trembley-pierceall/) - Hannah D. Markley | Every year, we interview a current student about their Outside Experience. This year, Andrea Pierceall (2024) made her Idaho property available to RWW students for writing retreats. The editorial staff at Soundings wanted to chat with her about starting The O’Reilly Residency and also with Will Trembley (2024), who completed his Outside Experience there. Will, Andrea, and I met virtually one morning to discuss how writing outside of normal routines can both refresh and unsettle us. *** Hannah D. Markley: Welcome, Andrea and Will! If we were all in the same place I’d invite you to my house for coffee and cookies, but alas, this isn’t so. Instead, I brought my coffee to a park in Tulsa. Where are you all this morning? Andrea Pierceall: I’m sitting at my desk in Idaho looking at snow-capped mountains. It’s going to be a real spring day, at last! Will Trembley: Buenos días—at my house [in Wyoming]! AP: Will and I talked on Sunday about the residency. HDM: What prompted that conversation? AP: He wanted to know if he could bring his dog to the residency. Yes. Dogs assuage the loneliness of being away from our familiar place. HDM: They sure do! That’s a rarity, I think, for a residency—allowing pets. Will Trembley WT: If you don’t know, Hannah, I’m going back to Andrea’s place in two weeks. I had to split up my time there. My wife is a teacher, so I was unable to be away from home for two weeks consecutively during the school year. We have a three-year-old I take care of during the day. HDM: I'm so glad you are able to make it work! Tell me about your experiences of hosting and attending the residency. AP: I am so pleased I decided to do it. Time is a gift for anyone who's working, raising a family, being a partner, and going to school. I'm older than most RWW students, and I have the ability to offer my studio and the luxury of quiet and time. I've been on the other end; I understand. I'm at a different stage of life now and can offer that refuge to another. WT: Well, travel was part of my experience. From the east side of Wyoming to Hailey, Idaho, is about an eleven-hour drive. That’s how the residency started for me. I enjoy driving, and as you can imagine the scenery between here and there is pretty nice! It was quite dark the last hour of my journey, so I couldn’t really tell where I was. (I almost hit an elk on the way in!) What a shock when I woke up the next morning surrounded by snow-capped mountains. That was a nice treat. The residency was really a great experience. The space and the community are perfect. Coffee and places to eat nearby, and a ten-minute drive to Ketchum, which is an awesome little town―very friendly to visitors. HDM: Andrea, last summer you told me, partly through your experience at another residency, that you realized how your life in Idaho was better than any residency you could attend. What shaped your decision to open your property to other writers? AP: I should say, Hannah, that offering the residency to others is also a gift to me. I live in a small town, and I live alone. So it’s special to have writers join me at my home and talk about their work. [The residency I attended] didn't work for me. I wanted to offer the solitude, but also some humanity. I make sure residents know what's available for them, and my house is steps away—please come for dinner! And I didn't want [the studio] to look like it was a room of basement finds. It's comfy and cozy, special. WT: I can attest to everything Andrea said. HDM: What's the studio like that people stay in? Andrea Pierceall AP: It's one room with a kitchenette and full bath. I have a nice backyard for a few months a year, and there’s plenty of space to write and rest outside, separate from the house. Plus the setting: mountains, river, hiking, biking, fishing. Residents can come and go as they please. No obligation to chat or be noticed. You can be totally self-sufficient. HDM: Will, what was essential for you during this residency, which is your Outside Experience? In what ways did you hope to challenge yourself? WT: Originally, I had other plans of trying to start a writing workshop in my new community in Wyoming, but it was such a strenuous year for me that it never came to fruition. It ended up being December, and with our OE proposals due, I needed something simple and flexible, and I needed it fast. I remembered Hannah [Comerford] mentioned Andrea had opened up her studio as a residency, so I reached out to Andrea to see what my options would be. What I really needed in my OE was some peace and solitude to focus on myself and my writing. I knew that ahead of time, but it really sank in over the first couple days. I have two young boys at home, one of whom is home with me 24/7, and that’s not a conducive environment for a productive writing practice. Some people might be able to do it, but I really struggle to focus in a world of constant chaos. HDM: Had you considered opening your property to others before your own residency experience, Andrea? AP: No. I built it for my friends and family because my home is too small to house others. Then my neighbors discovered it, and their families use it too when they visit—grandparents, friends with kids, etc. It's fun to have folks back there. My husband died in 2015, and he was always encouraging me to write. He never understood how the bigness of his own life and being a part of that precluded grad school for me. Despite his absence, I wanted him to be part of it. Hence, his name on the residency. I can see it from my office, and it's nice to have that reminder. “My husband died in 2015. . . Despite his absence, I wanted him to be part of it. Hence, his name on the residency. I can see it from my office, and it's nice to have that reminder.” HDM: It sounds like you've hosted friends and strangers for a long time, Andrea, and the residency is only the newest iteration of that practice. What was it like being alone and in quiet for you, Will? WT: It's kind of a double-edged sword. I love solitude and isolation, not to mention I really need it to focus. But ever since I had kids, their presence in my life has started to overpower that desire for solitude. When I'm away from them for a few days I start to get really homesick. AP: Loneliness dulls my creativity. Nothing happens in that state. I learned that in my first residency, and I recently went to New Mexico for a month. Same thing happened. Live and learn. I need familiarity and humanity to be creative. I've only lived here four years. It's a hundred-year-old cottage that I gave a facelift. The studio was an add-on. News traveled fast. WT: I guess I can relate to what Andrea says about loneliness dulling my creativity. But yes, I am hoping that having my dog with me will help me feel a little less homesick! This visit is a bit longer, so it will be nice to have the added company. I'll also use him as an excuse to get my blood moving a little bit. Part of the appeal of splitting up my time was the ability to experience the residency in two different seasons—more sunlight and more greenery this time around. HDM: Yes, pets are good medicine in that way. Anything else you want to mention before we end? WT: Andrea is an amazing host, and her place was a joy to stay at. I am really grateful to have such a good friend in her. AP: I want students to know this residency is here and available. It doesn't have to be for Outside Experience credit either. I hope students or faculty will use it to be creative, complete manuscripts, or just relax. It's a little gem. Thank you, Will, and same to you. It's what I hoped for this residency experience—meeting new people, sharing and making friends. Will and I had a few great evenings sharing our work and eating and drinking together. I think we will be in touch for many years to come. HDM: I hope I can come sometime! It sounds marvelous. Thank you so much for your thoughts and time! Andrea Pierceall is a native Californian who now lives in the mountains of Idaho. After decades as a court reporter, taking down every word of others, and then teaching children how to read and write, Andrea decided to put down her own words for others to read. She is beginning her final year at RWW in poetry. Her time is devoted to reading, writing, and partaking of the beautiful outdoors she is surrounded by. Her dog, Spot, is a constant companion. She believes place, writing, and a dog heal everything. To set up a time at The O’Reilly Residency in Hailey, Idaho, contact Andrea at piercealla@gmail.com. Will Trembley resides in the American West with his wife and their two young boys. He is pursuing his MFA through the Rainier Writing Workshop at PLU, where he writes poetry about nature, boxing, and the beauty and challenge of being a father and a son. Besides writing, Will enjoys film, photography, golf, and family adventures. He was proudly born and raised in Minnesota and, therefore, endures the lifelong misfortune of supporting underachieving—and often heart-breaking—sports teams.
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/1-greeting/) - Elissa Favero | Dear RWW students, alums, and faculty, As a student and teacher, June and July have long represented for me a mentality of “school’s out!” But as many of us prepare for RWW’s residency in Tacoma this month, I’m holding in mind the idea that “school’s in!” At least we’re transitioning into a new phase of the schoolyear―preparing for the intensive exchange of morning talks, workshops, and classes; readying for work with new mentors; and planning all the writing and revising that’s to be done in the year ahead. (And hopefully finding time, too, for gardening, farmers’ markets, and the delicious cool of movie theatre screenings―or whatever it is that brings you joy this time of year.) In this issue, we hear from faculty member Brenda Miller about the wisdom of finding a writing practice that can still let the world in. Contributing Writer Hannah D. Markley (2023) interviews rising thesis-year students Andrea Pierceall (2024) and Will Trembley (2024) about the wonderful new writing retreat Andrea is offering RWW folks on her property in central Idaho. Hannah also speaks with RWW alum Matt Young, who’s returning to the program this summer as a faculty member, about his teaching philosophy, writing routines and passions, and the exciting possibilities of collaboration. Finally, as we do in every issue of Soundings, we celebrate the recent and ongoing literary work of the RWW community with Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship. This is my last issue as Editor. I’m so pleased to welcome antmen pimentel mendoza into the role for the next academic year. My thanks to him and to Hannah D. Markley, Sydney Elliott, Garrett Brooks, and Rick Barot for their myriad contributions. As they say, many hands make light work. It’s been a joy collaborating with each of them and trumpeting the work of the larger RWW community. —Elissa Favero (2024), Soundings Editor
- [Summer 2023](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/) - Featuring Brenda Miller, Will Trembley, Andrea Pierceall, Matt Young, and Hannah D. Markley, and including RWW Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship. EDITOR: Elissa Favero; CONTRIBUTING WRITER: Hannah D. Markley; ASSISTANT EDITOR: antmen pimentel mendoza; MANAGING EDITOR: Sydney Elliott; CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Garrett Brooks
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/6-announcements/)
- [RWW 2023 Readings](https://rwwsoundings.com/program-overview/readings/)
- [On Thermostats](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/2-miller/) - Brenda Miller | Where I’m staying right now, at a retreat center in Virginia, I control the heat in two separate blocks of rooms: in my residence and at the writing studios. The only thermostat for both locations lives on my wall, and it’s up to me to ensure that the heat is set at the “desired comfort level” for all ten people involved. It’s seems an odd and inefficient system—you can’t ever turn down the heat, for instance, even at night, because you never know who is where and when, and so the heat must always whir into what are probably empty rooms. You wouldn’t think it would be such a big deal, this tiny responsibility, but I think about it all the time: I’m constantly pinging up from my chair to check the temperature, imagining the other writers at their desks, wreathed in scarves, rubbing their frostbitten hands, sniffling, catching their death. Or I imagine them sweltering, flinging open their windows and fanning themselves with sheaves of paper recovered from recycling bins. I hover over the small rectangular box, and I nudge the little lever to see if the heat is working, wait for the hum of ignition; I watch my own thermometer creep up and down. Assuming responsibility for someone else’s comfort or well-being: it’s what I do all the time at home, and it’s what I ostensibly came here to escape. Though I live alone, I have a cat to tend to, and friends whose moods vacillate, and colleagues who send a thousand officious emails adorned with exclamations points and icons of calendars, and students who are so tender I can sometimes barely breathe in their presence. Whenever I go on writing retreat, this sense of myself as someone responsible for others—someone whose gaze turns relentlessly outward—shucks away nearly the minute I step foot in my studio. I ease back to myself the way you might return to a beloved landscape, recognizing this landmark and that, eager to stroll down to those hidden places where you’ve always felt most at home. When I get together with my fellow colonists, I hear most often sentences that begin with the phrase: “It occurred to me this morning…” or “It crossed my mind that….” These prefatory clauses, while slight in an everyday context, reveal how the mind, given the right conditions, will become a soft receiving ground, so full of inviting crannies that thoughts, images, ideas can drift there and settle like pollen. And, like pollen, stick and fertilize. But there’s always something. A bubble of calm immediately attracts that which would make it burst; it must be a scientific principle or something, credited to a guy with a name like Weisenheimer. Yes, the Weisenheimer theory: that a steady hum of subliminal distraction will maintain an optimum level of mild irritation. Calm, quiet, contemplative silence: it simply can’t exist in a pristine state for long, even (perhaps especially so) at the places designed for such things. Emily Dickinson—that poet who went to great lengths not to be disturbed—once said, in a letter to Thomas Higginson: “The World is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.” I remember at the Millay Colony, in New York, the gardener made sure we came back to earth at 6:20 every morning by riding his lawn mower right under our windows, nosing the big red machine into the flower beds. Construction trucks rumbled past our studios, leaving a cloud of gravel and dust. At the Vermont Studio Center, the maintenance man decided to paint the trim on the outside of my windows during my two weeks in that studio, so I most often spent my time staring at his belt buckle as he moved up and down the front porch. At the Kalani Center, yoga classes blasted New Age Funk Rock music right outside my door, and the yoginis gyrated away, whooping and hollering their hard-won inner peace. In all these cases I took personal affront, fussily precise about the conditions necessary to make writing possible. I took any opportunity to give up writing for the day once that illusion of insularity had been breached. Oh well, I would grumble, that’s it, who can write in all this racket? I slammed my notebook shut (well, as much as you can slam two pieces of cardboard together; it makes a muted whoosh rather than an exclamative bark), or punched my computer off (though it, too, is decidedly unsatisfying when it comes to such things: just a delicate push of a button, rather than the thump and death rattle of an electric typewriter). I might stalk off to slouch in my chair (well, as much as you can stalk in a room the dimensions of a large walk-in closet, it was more of a skulk), to eat chocolate and read an Anne Tyler novel; if I’d had a TV available, and no shame about plunking down in front of it, I would probably have watched Judge Judy instead, marveling at her no-nonsense authority in the face of the world’s foolishness. She would never consent to such a system. She would keep the thermostat wherever she damned well pleased, and if you’re cold, well, sue me. “She would never consent to such a system. She would keep the thermostat wherever she damned well pleased, and if you’re cold, well, sue me.” Here, for a week or more, I was blissfully unaware of my role as Heat Queen, and my work seemed engaging even when uneven, and I allowed myself those kind of drifty afternoons where I read poetry, wrote a few lines, dreamed a few more but didn’t write them down, just keeping the brain open to possibilities. I became both alert and languid at the same time. But this morning, Cora, the friendly housekeeper, and Bruce, the maintenance man, both bustled up to my room and said there was a problem with the heat—“people have been complaining,” they said—and after a few minutes of fiddling with knobs and vents, they left, the heat blasting at a stifling 75 degrees. I know there’s no one else in the residence at this time of day, but I don’t dare touch that thermostat. Cora said she might come back with the key and lock it up so that no one can fiddle with it. So, I sit here, gazing forlornly out my window, the heat blasting from the ceiling vent. I’m this close to stopping writing for the day, though it’s only 10:30 a.m. But the landscape—with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance—seems not to have noticed the intrusion; the horizon rolls away from me in the same contemplative way it has done all week, foggy and cool. The cup of tea steams at my right-hand side. My keyboard feels warm under the heels of my hands. And my mind? I’m ready to feel that roiling disturbance, to feel put out, but maybe because I have a cold, or maybe because I figure it’s not worth it, I just get back to work. I plug in my headphones, return to the soundtrack of birds and piano made by one of the composers in residence here. She has captured and amplified the rhythms in which these Virginia birds live: the swoop of starlings, the red shiver of a cardinal in the morning, the wrens that hop every which way limb to limb. *** Annie Dillard has likened the creative act to keeping a desk in midair by furiously pumping with our feet, maintaining the illusion that we’re getting somewhere; any chink in the illusion and we’ll come crashing to the ground. So those of us who have the privilege of a few unbroken hours might hang our little “please do not disturb” signs on the doors, or we scrawl in big letters, KEEP OUT; we set our faces carefully to give the right cues that we’re thinking; or we plug our ears with noise-reducing headphones; or we sit in a quiet room with book in hand, fashioning a crystalline spell of language around our heads. But these, in the end, are all surface tricks, without the real bite necessary to keep our lives under control. Something will always be nudging at the door. My friend Suzanne once told me about trying to write in her home office when her son was young; he would creep up to the door and whisper: “Mama, show you something!” and she kept turning him away, with kind and gentle exhortations to wait just a little while. She finally heard a slight swishing noise: he was sweeping a gull’s feather under the doorjamb to grab her attention, and it worked; it was like being tapped on the shoulder by an angel. Another friend, a student, told me of the elaborate machinations necessary to get just one hour to herself, with the door shut to her study; she, too, heard a slight noise and turned to find, slipped under the door, a picture crayoned by her daughter: an image of a huge closed door, with a stick-figure girl in front of it, big tears falling from her cheeks. For myself, I have no children, but often I’ll turn from my computer to a little scratching sound, and there I’ll see the disembodied paw of my cat, upturned, sweeping back and forth, trying to snag me. For all of us, we could see these disturbances as both irritant and blessing: to be so missed that the world flattens itself out just to slip under the door to reach you. “For all of us, we could see these disturbances as both irritant and blessing: to be so missed that the world flattens itself out just to slip under the door to reach you.” And maybe, in the end, we just have to learn that there are no perfect conditions for writing. No perfect conditions for anything, in fact; maybe the best we can do is learn how to take each bit of the world as it comes, to have no real preferences, only what the Zen masters call a “radical acceptance” for things as they are. There are so many thermostats, after all, we try to keep calibrated in this world, and every single one of them eventually fails. We have that little thermostat in the brain attempting to keep the amount of information we can process at an even and steady level. And we have that thermostat in the heart that tells us exactly how much love we can readily receive, how much we can afford to expend. Our spirits try to stay on an even keel, no matter how many school shootings we read about in the morning’s newspaper. We’re careful to keep it all steady, no wild fluctuations if we can help it, but eventually it all flies apart, the thermostat busted. Or, at the very least, it feels as though someone in another room, a person oblivious to our plight, controls the temperature. We can never be truly comfortable; that’s what I’m learning as I steer my way into middle age: it’s probably best, in fact, if everything is just on the edge of veering out of control. It’s the brink, after all, where our best work can be done. Cora’s footsteps fade, the room becomes quiet, the only sound the heat blowing merrily through the downturned vents. I crack open the sliding door, and the cool autumn air slips in, my own little act of rebellion, of stasis. I breathe deeply. Then I sit down on the edge of my chair, and I begin again. Brenda Miller’s most recent book is A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing on Form, from which this essay is taken. She is the author of five more essay collections, including An Earlier Life, which received the Washington State Book Award for Memoir, and she is the recipient of six Pushcart Prizes. Her book of collaborative essays with Julie Marie Wade, Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, received the Cleveland Poetry Center Award for Creative Nonfiction and was published by Cleveland State University Press in 2021. She co-authored, with Suzanne Paola, the textbook Tell it Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, now in its third edition from McGraw-Hill Higher Education. She also received the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award for her poetry collection, The Daughters of Elderly Women.
- [It’s Like a Potluck: <br>A Conversation with Matt Young](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/4-young/) - Hannah D. Markley | Each RWW residency offers the chance to connect with new and old friends. Matt Young, an RWW alum, joins the faculty this year as a fiction and nonfiction mentor. In that way, he is both an old and new friend to the program. He and I conversed over email in May just as residency materials were going out to students and I was making plans with my cohort for graduating. His responses―alongside the residency conversations―gave me the same anticipation I feel when staring at a wait-till-everyone-comes-before-you-fill-your-plate holiday spread. *** Hannah D. Markley: Matt, like several other faculty members, you are also a graduate of RWW. As you enter this new role, how do you hope to contribute to and/or learn from this community? Matt Young: Like a lot of instructors at RWW, I’m interested in the different forms a workshop can take. I’m looking forward to bringing some of the experimentation I’ve been doing in my undergrad courses at Centralia College to RWW: non-verbal workshops, visual craft maps. I’m really excited about Justin’s morning talk this summer—"Against Feedback.” Helping writers discover their aesthetic values and what they’re trying to do—instead of favoring responders telling writers what needs to happen—is one of the infinite hills on which I intend to die :).[i] Also, weird genre blurring! (Gets pitchfork and torch in order to pursue and destroy genre lines.) Bring me your prose poem, your short story, your lyric flash memoir, your fragmented nonfiction poems. I love experimentation and getting jazzed with other writers about the weird things they want to do on the page. Introducing people to authors they haven’t read before or authors who are their opposite is a joy not because I think we need to change to our individual impulses but because I think it helps solidify what our artistic desires are. Finally, conversations about creative processes are something I’m looking forward to as well. I find it so helpful to keep my process fluid and my morale up because, as an elder millennial, I have a tendency toward nihilism. I’m a creature of routine and habit, so I think stability is something to lean on, but in a longer project I’ve found myself getting bogged down by that routine or feeling beholden to it instead of comforted and bolstered by it. Because of that, I’m always trying to steal ideas from other people about how to augment my process. That kind of osmosis is both something I’m hoping to contribute to and benefit from this community. Matt Young HDM: In your teaching philosophy statement, you write that you want to provide “students with tools and critical frameworks they need to both understand and create work that is personally meaningful and artistically significant.” What tools and critical frameworks have been helpful to your writing? How did you encounter these? MY: With my most recent project, a novel (which was my thesis at RWW, and which I completed and sold in December to Bloomsbury!), learning about and experimenting with narrative time was a focus. I noticed in my critical essays that I was often exploring time structures and decided with my mentor, Kent Meyers, to focus on structures of time and specifically its relation to trauma. Understanding how time works in a story really helped me feel closer to my own writing. I understood what I was trying to do and why more clearly. It provided rules for the world but also ways the rules for the world could be broken. Narrative design plays a role here as well—Madison Smartt Bell’s book Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form = super rad. Check it out.[ii] Trauma theory, too, has been a useful framework to view characters, their actions, and their reactions. I took a course on trauma theory during my first graduate degree, and it helped me better understand what I was doing in my first book. I still reference a lot of the reading assigned in that course—The Empire of Trauma by Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, On Violence by Hannah Arendt, and Unclaimed Experience by Cathy Caruth. As far as tools: sledgehammers. I’m a big fan of the sledgehammer. When all else fails, knock the shit out of something. “As far as tools: sledgehammers. I’m a big fan of the sledgehammer. When all else fails, knock the shit out of something.” HDM: Speaking of Kent Meyers, how about writing mentors—who have they been for you and how have they shaped your approach as a mentor? MY: I kind of conflate mentorship and inspiration in my head. Here are some authors I feel consistently mentored/inspired by: Denis Johnson, Jennifer Egan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Eudora Welty, Claire Vaye Watkins, Mohsin Hamid, Leslie Marmon Silko, Will Mackin, Jenny Offill.[iii] I keep my writing circle small—I don’t have a ton of writer friends, and I only trade writing with a couple writers. But those two writers have been super helpful during this most recent project. I think a writing group is important, especially if it’s small. I learn a ton from reading their work and talking about it. My students also act as mentors/inspiration for me. They get super jazzed about what they’re working on and that makes me super jazzed. Creative burnout is so real—especially on a longer project—it can be great to just surround yourself with people who aren’t feeling that. First- and second-year students are often in a state of creative purging that’s almost ecstatic and that makes my cup overflow. I learn from their processes and points of inspiration, too, which is the cool thing about writing, I think. It’s like a potluck. People bring all kinds of stuff, and you get to pick and choose and go back and try new arrangements. At RWW I worked with Scott Nadelson and Kent Meyers. Scott helped me find form. Kent helped me find structure and voice. I’m incredibly grateful to both of them. I’d started my novel, but it was a mess. My memoir was this genre-bending, form monster. I was trying to force myself into doing a similar thing and didn’t realize I was trying to cram this thing into clothes that didn’t fit. Scott and Kent helped me see that, and they were patient with me while I figured it out. They kept asking questions, and because they asked, I had to answer. Those questions were usually neutral—without value judgement—and because of that I was forced to explore my intent in ways I probably wouldn’t have. It seems fairly obvious to write that process out here, but it’s been revelatory in how I assess and provide feedback to students. As a mentor and professor, my biggest learning point over the years has been to make observations and ask pointed questions and stay away from prescriptions as much as possible. HDM: What’s a project or hobby that you enjoy doing outside of writing? MY: Distance running—half-marathons and marathons. When I was in the Marine Corps and had to run, I was not a fan, but I got into running during my undergrad and really leaned into it during my first round of graduate school. I think mostly because I was writing traumatic shit during that time—essays that would eventually be part of my memoir—and running helped me process those things for one, but also, after a fourteen- or fifteen-mile run, I had zero ability to compartmentalize anything and ended up super emotionally raw. Running made writing those emotions much easier. During the summer I spend a lot of time fly fishing, and last year I started teaching my daughter on a tenkara rod, which is kind of like the fly-fishing equivalent of a cane pole. There’s something hypnotic or meditative about rivers—especially a nice glassy trout stream. When I lived in Oregon for my undergrad, I got into pie-baking and I’ve been trying to spend more time in the kitchen doing that, too. Now that I’m writing all those things out, I’m seeing kind of the tactile nature of all of them—also lots of repetitive motions involved in each of those hobbies. Not sure what that says about me, but seems significant. “It’s like a potluck. People bring all kinds of stuff, and you get to pick and choose and go back and try new arrangements.” HDM: Your book, Eat the Apple, unsettles readers’ assumptions about memoir as well as war and masculinity. What are you reading or what ideas are currently unsettling the assumptions in your creative work? MY: I just finished This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which is this little weird literary sci-fi novel that reminded me a lot of Jeff VanderMeer’s writing. Anyway, I got so jealous of their collaboration. In the version I read there was a reading guide discussion in the back that kind of documented their process and I was all, “Damn! I want that!” Like, I love collaboration in writing, and I think I’m too quick to be like, “Oh, but eventually writing has to be lonely or happen on an individual level.” But El-Mohtar’s and Gladstone’s collaboration flies in the face of that. Like, they wrote it together at their kitchen tables and stuff. Because of the book, I’ve started collaborating with a writing friend on a screenplay, which was a total experiment—I’ve never written one before—and I’ve only collaborated actively with one other writer to craft a short creative nonfiction essay. Damn! It’s been revelatory. The new constraints and affordances and possibilities have me thinking about character and action and narration in these totally new ways, which is pretty exciting. Brenda Miller talks about her back-and-forths with her writing friends and co-authors, and it’s something I’m actively seeking out now. Is there like a writing partner Tinder or Grindr or something? Typr. Copyright. It’s mine. You can’t have it. But seriously, that kind of collaboration is what makes a good creative writing classroom, I think. It’s what I see my students benefitting most from, and I’ve noticed that disappear in my practice the more established I get or maybe the more bogged down with work and other obligations I get. Mostly because you have to actively seek that out, and when I’m wintering, which I maybe have been doing for the last three years or something, I kind of curl up like a little pill bug and don’t reach out. Get at me on Typr. (Patent pending.) At the moment, I’m in recovery mode after handing in my novel revision. So, there are probably other things unsettling my assumptions about creative work, but I’m letting my brain mellow for a bit. I’m excited to do some research for and organizing of my morning talk about morally ambiguous narrators/speakers/characters, and I’m of course looking forward to having my assumptions unsettled by students during this summer’s residency. HDM: Thanks so much for your time, Matt. We’re looking forward to having you back at RWW! Matt Young is the author of the memoir, Eat the Apple (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the novel, End of Active Service (Bloomsbury, 2024). His stories and essays have appeared in TIME, Granta, Tin House, Catapult, and The Cincinnati Review among other publications. He is the recipient of fellowships from Words After War and The Carey Institute for Global Good and teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at Centralia College in Washington. [i] Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop and Liz Lerman’s Critique is Creative have been useful as a professor and as a writer in thinking about what workshops can do. [ii] Also, We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour was a useful book of literary theory here as well. [iii] In no particular order and without context, here are some other favorite artists and things I return to: Barbara Licha, Mogwai, The Leftovers, The Thing, Joy Division, Fleabag, Henri Rousseau, Bright Eyes, Mandy, Dae-Won Yang, Lou Reed, The Replacements, The Invitation, Kara Walker, Ólafur Arnalds, I May Destroy You, etc. ad infinitum.
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/7-opportunities/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2023/8-literary-citizenship/)
- [Spring 2023](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/) - Spring 2023—featuring torrin a. greathouse, Hannah D. Markley (with Billie Swift), Elissa Favero (with an AWP photo collection), and AWP publications, announcements, opportunities, and literary citizenship. Editor: Elissa Favero; Contributing Writer: Hannah D. Markley; Assistant Editor: antmen pimentel mendoza; Managing Editor: Sydney Elliott; Creative Director: Garrett Brooks
- [Holding Space: <br> A Conversation with Billie Swift](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/3-swift/) - For the last several years, Open Books: A Poem Emporium has supplied the RWW summer residency with faculty and guest books. Billie Swift (2016) owns Open Books, and in spring 2022, she moved the bookstore from its longtime location in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood to Pioneer Square. Billie’s chapbook Everything Here was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2019. Billie and I spoke over the phone the day after the bookstore hosted an event with poet and essayist Ross Gay at Town Hall with Seattle Arts and Lectures. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Summer 2022 3 For the last several years, Open Books: A Poem Emporium has supplied the RWW summer residency with faculty and guest books. Billie Swift (2016) owns Open Books, and in spring 2022, she moved the bookstore from its longtime location in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood to Pioneer Square. Billie's chapbook Everything Here was published
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/6-announcements/)
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/1-greeting/) - Dear RWW students, alums, and faculty, It was great fun a few weeks ago at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs to reconnect with so many RWW folks and to meet members of the RWW community I had not met before. By my count, there were 34 different on- and off-site events at the AWP Seattle conference featuring RWW faculty, alumni, and students—a number that speaks to the vitality and reach of our community. Working the RWW booth at the book fair allowed me to speak with prospective students who may yet join our community and to ply them with free tote bags and notebooks. I left the conference feeling buoyed by the network we’re all a part of, a mighty force indeed. And I look forward to extending that feeling with the RWW Alumni Reading happening on Zoom tonight— Monday, April 3 at 6:30 pm PST, with readings from alums Jessica Barksdale Inclán, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, Robin Farrar Maass, and John Milkereit. In this issue, we feature a fierce essay by faculty member torrin a. greathouse about trans poetics, the resistance of empathy, and notions of failure and weaponization as well as lyricism. We also have an interview by contributing writer Hannah D. Markley with RWW alum Billie Swift, owner of Open Book in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Among other topics, they discuss Billie’s hopes for the bookstore in an uncertain world. We also provide a visual sampling of RWW at the AWP conference. And as we do in every issue, we close by celebrating the literary work of the RWW community with Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and notes on Literary Citizenship. We hope you enjoy reading this spring issue and learning more about the varied ways our community is pursuing literary work in the larger world. —Elissa Favero, Soundings editor
- [Fly-Trap Poetics: <br>Alienation & the Refusal of Empathy](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/2-greathouse/) - Before I begin to discuss craft, permit me two digressions. One: I was homeless for the first time at seven years old; from 2001–2002 my family spent nine months living in a second-hand 1990 Winnebago Warrior 28, my parents sleeping in its fold-out bed, my older brother and I in a leaky pup tent. The Winnebago was sturdy but unlivable under better conditions—the eroded seal on the door produced a constant draft and the carpet was beginning to rot through. In the humid summer months, we were forced to buy several pitcher plants and a Venus fly trap to control the clouds of flies incubating in the carpet. When the discount model home that my parents had scraped and scratched to afford was finally built, we abandoned the Winnebago and the plants along with it. I didn’t return until two summers later. What I found in that decaying heap was the fly trap. It was the only thing still living—as if out of spite. Summer 2022 3 Before I begin to discuss craft, permit me two digressions. One: I was homeless for the first time at seven years old; from 2001-2002 my family spent nine months living in a second-hand 1990 Winnebago Warrior 28, my parents sleeping in its fold-out bed, my older brother and I in a leaky
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/5-publications/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/7-opportunities/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2023/8-literary-citizenship/)
- [Breaking the Silence: <br>New Pedagogies for Workshop](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/2-silence/) - Oliver de la Paz, Barrie Jean Borich, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Geffrey Davis, and Jane Wong —— Introducing the “Breaking the Silence” Panel: Our group of writers came together because we all employ new and novel approaches to the workshop. Additionally, our pedagogical methods are in conversation with a larger discussion in the creative writing field at this moment. The recent publications of Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World, Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom, and Liz Lerman’s foundational Critical Response Process are all texts that are part of a new scrutiny of the approach to creative teaching. Much of this new scrutiny comes about because of a renewed critique of past approaches in light of a diversifying student body. This movement, though, first begins as a response to tradition. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is one of the first higher-education institutions to provide creative writers a degree for their writing. The Workshop, which was founded in 1936, gained its broadest popularity after World War II under the helm of Paul Engle. Part of what made the institution popular is that it, like the program at Stanford, catered to veterans who used their GI Bills to pay for their education. The spirit of these programs was to create a style that was distinctly and morally American in the face of a culture war against the “red menace” of communism. As part of the program, the writers were subjected to a stylized pedagogical approach which eventually became known as the “Iowa Method.” The “Iowa Method” became a type of creative writing pedagogical style that was pervasively normalized throughout many higher education creative writing programs. The method is very simple: A writer distributes their work to the rest of the group ahead of the meeting. Each member reads the work on their own, away from other group members. Members of the workshop write a critical response to the work that’s usually a single-spaced page in length. Readers will mark up the manuscript as well. When the group meets, the author sits quietly for twenty to thirty minutes or more as members of the workshop critique the work. The writer is forbidden to speak during this time. The part that many writers have taken issue with is the embargo on the writer’s ability to contextualize/speak about their work while other participants of the workshop, many of whom have their own agendas, discuss the work. For our panel, we explore alternatives to the “Iowa Method,” by first critiquing the method’s power dynamics, which are not suitable for a broad swath of today’s workshop population. We also critique the way that the “Iowa Method” centers the product of the work versus the process of creating the work. And finally, we examine how the “Iowa Method” fosters a sense of competition versus collaboration—writers are pitted against their peers as they sit in silence and listen to feedback. Our panelists first discuss Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, which is a foundational text for new approaches in the workshop. We then talk about the work of Matthew Salesses and his book, Craft in the Real World. We look into writing communities like Cave Canem, Canto Mundo, and Kundiman, which grant writers of difference permission to continue their craft, and then we examine new and novel approaches to the workshop through collaboration and other forms of creation.
- [Fall 2022](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/) - In this issue: articles by RWW faculty (and special guest Jane Wong), Hannah D. Markley (with Brian Teare), and Elissa Favero (on 2022 residency). Editor: Elissa Favero; Contributing Writer: Hannah D. Markley; Assistant Editor: antmen pimentel mendoza; Managing Editor: Sydney Elliott; Creative Director: Garrett Brooks
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/1-greetings/) - Elissa Favero —— Dear RWW students, alums, and faculty, Think back. Some of you will recall an exercise from visiting poet Jane Wong’s morning presentation at the summer residency. As per Jane’s prompt, we each locked eyes with a person sitting near us. One of us then wrote a question, while the other wrote a statement. We worked independently and then brought our sentences together to make a two-line poem. Several of you shared your question-and-statement poems with the folks here at Soundings. They offer wisdom, left-turns, and serendipity. Which food, however you define food, nourishes and fulfills you? “Language is an act with consequences.” (a Toni Morrison quotation) Where did you get those cool pants? It seems like good weather for mangos. Where do the birds go to sleep? We are going there. What is it you want to say? The heat continues to rise. Jane offered this exercise during a wonderful panel, which we revisit in this issue. Oliver de la Paz, Barrie Jean Borich, Sequoia Nagamatsu, Geffrey Davis, and Jane Wong offer perspectives on the literary workshop and larger ideas about pedagogy. Together, they show us how the workshop is adapting to be more generous and equitable. Our new Contributing Writer, Hannah D. Markley, interviews new faculty member Brian Teare in a conversation that highlights the importance of both place and care. We also look back to the summer residency through a collection of photos. And as we do in each issue, we celebrate our community’s literary work with Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship. Fall is a time of transition at Soundings, and many of us are settling into new roles. We welcome antmen pimentel mendoza as the new Assistant Editor. I’ll be Editor for this next year, and I am very thankful to Hannah D. Markley, Sydney Elliott, and Garrett Brooks for their guidance and grace. Thanks, also, to each of you for your readership and support of Soundings and of the larger RWW community. Please enjoy this autumn issue―both the questions it asks and the answers it offers. —Elissa Favero
- [How to Define <i>Care</i>?</br>—An Interview with Brian Teare](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/3-teare/) - Hannah D. Markley — This summer, we welcomed two new faculty to the PLU campus. One of those faculty is 2020 Guggenheim Fellow Brian Teare. He is the author of eight chapbooks and six critically acclaimed books, including Companion Grasses, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, and Doomstead Days, winner of the Four Quartets Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle, Kingsley Tufts, and Lambda Literary Awards. His most recent publication is the 2022 Nightboat reissue of The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven; his seventh book, Poem Bitten by a Man, is forthcoming in the fall of 2023. Brian and I held our conversation over email, and I’m glad to share it with you here. ~ Hannah D. Markley: You grew up queer in Alabama, and after time in cities on the West and East Coast, you’re now at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Which places sustain you at this moment? Which places from your past do you return to in your writing? How do these places teach and/or influence your work? Brian Teare: This is a generous, layered question. In terms of my education as a poet, the queer and literary communities of the San Francisco Bay Area remain essential to my expanded sense of and continued faith in poetry’s possibilities. During the thirteen years I lived there, I was introduced to the boundless potential of experimental poetic forms, learned to letterpress print and hand-bind books, participated in the gift economy of small press poetry publishing, and came to love the crackling energy of dialogue with queer and feminist peers and elders outside of academic institutions. Speaking to my life as a creature on this Earth, I carry everywhere with me in different ways, in part because in each place I’ve lived I’ve learned to do a different kind of work. From my rural childhood, I learned to be intimate with habitat in a daily way; from Northern California, I learned traditions of ecological writing, bioregional poetics, Buddhist thought, and environmental politics; from Philadelphia, I learned to practice intimacy, ecology, bioregionalism, Buddhism, and environmental politics in an urban environment; and in Virginia, I am learning to read in the landscape the intertwined histories of settler occupation and enslavement that shaped and continue to shape place and public policy in this country. Everywhere, I aspire to write from a holistic sense of being here together, human and more-than-human, interdependent and vulnerable. All of these places, communities, and conversations inform and sustain the way I write and teach now, which remain mindful practices, always evolving. HDM: I love this notion of “carry[ing] everywhere with you” and how those places and their lesson grow with you. It’s definitely evident in your work. Who have been your human mentors, and how have they shaped your approach to mentorship? BT: For a long time as a young writer, I felt I wasn’t being and hadn’t been mentored the way I wanted to be. Later I learned this is a feeling common to young writers, and I came to understand that a fantasy of “ideal” mentoring often kept me from experiencing and fully appreciating the ways I’d been so generously mentored throughout my writing life. Now I count myself lucky. There were crucial one-on-one mentorships during my BA and MFA in which faculty mentors read my shitty drafts, gave encouraging advice about revision, helped me to see what to save and what to throw away, and sent me to the library with lists of books I should read. After my formal education, as I struggled to make a life as a writer, a few elders in the poetry community took me to lunch and sent me home with leftovers—these same people sometimes invited me to give a reading or offered me adjunct teaching gigs, generous gestures that put me in community and kept me afloat. But my most treasured mentor was the poet Jean Valentine. Her mentorship was less about my poetry and more about being seen as a poet and person struggling to find a place in the world. The hours we spent drinking tea at her kitchen table remain precious to me for the deep quality of her listening and the reciprocity of our care for each other. The first time she asked me to read her poems in process, I was honored and humbled by her trust; she was the only mentor who invited me to be a peer in precisely that way, whose mentorship became true friendship. I miss her immensely. Now, I hope that my own mentoring employs aspects of all these relationships—when appropriate, at the right times—writing and revision guidance, reading advice, practical support, and deep listening. HDM: What a gift to be trusted with her writing! Apart from mentoring, how do you hope to contribute to and learn with this community? BT: I join the RWW community with respect and enthusiasm for the ways it centers care as the core of its pedagogical spaces. The challenge remains: care is defined entirely in relation, and what constitutes care for one person does not feel like care for another. Not only do our individual needs differ, but we might not always know what kind of care we actually want or need, what kinds of care to which we best respond. So, I hope to continue to learn better how to listen deeper into each relation, how to define care in each relationship at RWW, and how to negotiate and pivot between multiple modes of caring as mentor, poet, and literary citizen. HDM: I would guess care, its necessity and questions, drew many of us here. Speaking of intention, what hobby or routine do you keep outside of writing? BT: As I think most everyone in the community knows, I run Albion Books, a micropress dedicated to poetry and hybrid writing. When I’m not researching and writing my own poems and essays, I edit manuscripts by other poets and inter-genre writers and digitally typeset them, then I set type by hand, print covers on a Kelsey table-top or Vandercook press, desktop print and fold and collate text blocks, and then bind the chapbooks with a needle and thread. I do all this while privileging upcycled and recycled materials, which adds another layer of creative constraint to the process. I love the meditative labor of binding, and I also love the feeling of all the parts of the chap—all the steps of planning and publishing an edition behind me at last—coming together on the binding table. Micropress publishing is a really satisfying form of service to the literary community and a small way to participate in the long tradition of poet-printers and poet-publishers whose labors created literature and literary community as we know it. HDM: What writing projects are you working on currently? BT: Over the summer I worked on the reissue of my 2015 book, The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, which will be out this month from Nightboat. And I’m currently finalizing the text of my seventh book, Poem Bitten by a Man, which is a companion to The Empty Form. It will be out in fall of 2023, also from Nightboat. Albion is running on all cylinders, with chapbooks by Christina Davis and Miranda Mellis in various phases of production. Davis’s Neighborn should be out this fall, and Mellis’s The Revolutionary should be out in the spring—unless the opposite turns out to be true! HDM: Many congratulations! Before we wrap up, is there anything that I haven’t asked that you want to share? BT: For those that care, I’m a double Scorpio, with my moon in Sagittarius. People like to say, That explains a lot. And I like to choose to take that as a compliment! HDM: As you should—thank you so much for your time and work with RWW, Brian.
- [Summer Residency Redux](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/4-redux/) - Elissa Favero | What a joy it was to gather in person on the beautiful campus of Pacific Lutheran University for the Summer 2022 residency. Being together―bodies near other bodies, joined in shared writerly pursuits―afforded experiences that are so difficult to replicate via digital technologies: impromptu meet-ups, shared laughter, and collective reverie. These photos capture moments from across the ten days in Tacoma and RWW explorations beyond campus as well.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/5-publications/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/6-announcements/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/7-opportunities/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2022/8-literary-citizenship/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/7-announcements/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/8-opportunities/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/6-publications/)
- [So Little Is a Stone: Student Reflections from Bread Loaf 2021](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/4-students/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/1-greetings/) - by Hannah D. Markley: I have a minor confession to make: I was sixteen before I walked into an art museum for the first time. I grew up in a small town in southern Illinois, and art museums weren’t my family’s preferred way to spend a day. So, it wasn’t until I was in Washington, D.C., with a free afternoon on a trip with my church youth group that a few friends and I wandered into the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Why did we choose the art museum that day of all the museums on the Mall? Maybe I was thinking about Van Gogh or Picasso, the few artists I would have known from school at the time. Beyond that, I believe I was searching for an experience that I wouldn’t be able to get in our small town in the Midwest. Art seemed like the furthest from what I knew, a sophisticated way to spend a few hours in the city. The large entrance echoed with the click of heels and squeaky tennis shoes. I had nothing I particularly wanted to see, but I took a map, unfolded it, and pretended I might know along with everyone else. Galleries full of paintings opened to the front, the right, and the left, and, even with the map in my hand, the first thing that came out of my mouth was: “Are all these real?” I’m not sure where I thought “real” paintings were kept, or what, if the paintings weren’t genuine, they actually displayed in museums. One friend smiled and responded to my unknowing question by leading me into a wide hallway lit brightly by a glass ceiling, and for an hour or two we moved through the galleries and stared at paintings. I don’t recall any specific artists or works from that day, but what I do remember is how I came away from that afternoon giddy. The galleries immersed me in a world that I did not yet have a language for, but even without words, what I saw transcended what I had known of art—a poster of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” or a page on “Guernica” in a history book—into an embodiment of wonder, a kind of holiness. The rest of the trip, I was a convert, keen to tell everyone who asked about the spell of the place. In this issue, Nabokov and Carmen Maria Machado work their magic on Adrianne Harun and guide her back to a love for reading in her craft essay, “Enchanted Fragments.” Keats Chaves, Soundings’s Contributing Writer, interviews Katie Duane about her Outside Experience, a project combining text and her visual art. Lastly, we have reflections from the 2021 Bread Loaf Conference attendees—Liz Culpepper, Shawna Ervin, Lynette Vialet, and Preeti Parikh—in “So Little Is a Stone.” We are also eager to share with you the work and many accomplishments from writers in our community in Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship. Wishing you all well as spring begins, and thank you for your support of and contributions to Soundings!
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/1-greetings/) - by Hahhah D. Markley | RWW students, alums, and faculty— A few years ago, I combined a cross-country move from Washington state to Kentucky with an even longer cross-country road trip. When I drove into Louisville, Kentucky, I had the radio on. I heard on the national news that there’d been a shooting at a grocery store in town. Two people had died. I didn’t know it at the time, but the shooting happened a few miles from where I would live after that road trip ended, in the Kroger that I would visit whenever I wanted something beyond the everyday—lady fingers for tiramisu or a gouda and salamis for a charcuterie. Every time I would walk into that store, I’d remembered what happened there. I didn’t want to be afraid, but I would wonder how we could all carry on as if nothing had ever happened. The day after the shooting, I left Louisville for Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh, yellow leaves papered the sidewalks, and low October clouds made the rust-colored bridges appear darker than usual, almost charred. I only stayed one night before moving on to the next place. But I heard, the day after I left, a man had opened fire during the weekly Shabbat service at the Tree of Life Synagogue. I am thinking about this because, in the last two weeks, there have been mass shootings in Orange County, California; Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am heartsick and weary, and I’d wager that many of you are as well. Violence and loss seem to be around every turn. And these are only our public losses. Each of you likely carries private ones as well. What can words do at a time like this? The contributors and conversations in this issue, in their own ways, address the deep aches of our times. Jennifer Elise Foerster in her craft essay “A Poetics of Listening” asks if and how writers can use language to speak to the urgent crises of the moment. Contributing Writer Keats Chaves and Jasminne Mendez’s (2019) conversation, “What the Story Wants,” highlights Jasminne’s newest work, a play, City Without Altar, and how listening to stories leads to genre-fluid work. Our Managing Editor, Sydney Elliott, and new RWW poetry faculty member torrin a. greathouse, discuss the joys and risks of writing in “Less Lonely Together.” Finally, Hannah Comerford (2019), RWW’s Program Assistant, looks back at a year of Flash Classes, reminding us, too, of the community that awaits us as we prepare to gather on PLU’s campus for the first time since 2019. On another note, this will be my last issue as Editor, and what a joy and privilege it has been to serve in this role. A hearty thank-you to Keats Chaves and Elissa Favero for their work as Contributing Writer and Assistant Editor, respectively. Your diligence and kindness made my job easy. Sydney, thanks as always for your patience and guidance, and Garrett, for your technological savvy. Thank you, Rick, for your ideas, encouragement, and expert copy editing. Please welcome Elissa as the new Editor and antmen pimentel mendoza as Assistant Editor! Next year, I will take on the role of Contributing Writer. As always, thanks to you, readers, for your support of Soundings! Strength and joy to all of you, Hannah D. Markley
- [Growing Community: A Look Back at the 2021–22 Flash Classes](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/5-comerford/) - by Hannah Comerford — I recently visited our local nursery with a couple of friends, searching for vegetable starts that might survive a late-spring planting. Rounding a corner of gardening tools, I ran into a familiar face. While we had an awkward “We know each other, right?” moment, made more understandable by our face masks, it didn’t take long to remember—we were both RWW alums, our paths crossing during a few residencies. We talked about where our lives had taken us and the kids we’d grown since graduation. In a time when relationships can feel harder to maintain than ever before, this moment reminded me of the shared bond I still have with this writing community. Our flash classes continue to be “Aha—I know you!” moments as alumni, participants, and prospective students pop into our virtual space. We go a little deeper in our craft together, share insights and ideas, and remember once again that we are part of something greater than just one person typing in our home. We are grateful to Garrett Brooks, Rebecca McClanahan, Kelli Russell Agodon, Scott Nadelson, Kevin Clark, Rhiannon Hillman, Matt Young, Aram Mrjoian, Molly Spencer, Wendy Call, Jason Skipper, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Jennifer Foerster for creating these opportunities to learn and grow together. And of course, special thanks goes to Rick Barot for orchestrating these events. I look forward to many more of these community moments with you all in the future—both during the summer residency and throughout the year. Hannah Comerford graduated from the Rainier Writing Workshop in 2019 and is now the RWW Program Assistant. Her work has appeared in The Unmooring, Ekstasis, and Fathom. She also serves as the Associate Poetry Editor for Fathom Magazine. Hannah lives with her husband, son, and dog in Tacoma, WA.
- [Summer 2022](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/) - This issue features Jennifer Foerster, Keats Chaves with Jasminne Mendez, Sydney Elliott with torrin a. greathouse, and Hannah Comerford.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/9-literary-citizenship/)
- [Less Lonely Together: A Conversation with torrin a. greathouse](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/4-greathouse/) - by Sydney Elliott — I would hope that these poems can make a reader feel less lonely. –torrin a. greathouse, interview, NPR | I always welcome the opportunity to profile new faculty. This year, finally returning to the PLU campus after two summers, it feels even more delicious to dig into the life of poet torrin a. greathouse (she/her/they/them), a transgender cripple-punk and new member of the RWW family. greathouse is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program. Her debut collection, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed 2020), is an exploration of beauty and the intersection of her identities and won the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. greathouse has been published in other notable publications, such as the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. torrin graciously agreed to answer a few questions about joining the RWW faculty. Sydney Elliott: What was your reaction when you found out you were joining the RWW family? torrin a. greathouse torrin a. greathouse: I was, honestly, a little stunned. In the current academic job market, it's a pretty rare opportunity to begin teaching straight out of grad school, but I'm confident in my abilities and so excited to begin working with the students and faculty. Rick Barot has put together a really incredible list of professors at RWW, and I feel deeply honored to be joining them. SE: In your RWW faculty statement, you write, "I encourage writers to court failure in their writing process, treating each draft as a space for experimentation, for excess, and for bold choices they might otherwise never make." I find this very useful and exciting. Can you elaborate further? tg: It's my stance that good writing rarely comes from avoiding risk. There's a famous Brian Eno quote, "CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit—all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart." I think that writing, too, finds beauty when pushed to its limits, when a metaphor or textual strategy or formal gesture begins to scrape the edges of failure. Until we begin to explore the outer limits of our own poetics, I don't believe we're fully aware of our own creative capabilities. SE: What can participants look forward to in having you join the faculty? tg: I'm bringing to this faculty a deep interest in formalism, but also in breaking and queering received forms. I'm also excited to open and expand conversations around trans poetics, disability poetics, and visual poetic forms. In addition, I've spent the last three years researching and workshopping alternate models for the creative writing workshop, in the hopes of creating more inclusive and equitable spaces. I'm looking forward to continuing that work in concert with other members of the RWW faculty committed to the same work. SE: What do you look forward to the most this summer at our first in-person residency in two years? tg: First and foremost, getting to spend time with the students and faculty, getting to break bread together. To get to engage in all the parts of community building that are so difficult to foster in a digital space. We look forward to breaking bread with you, torrin! A warm welcome to RWW!
- [A Poetics of Listening](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/2-foerster/) - Jennifer Elise Foerster | I’ve spent a lot of time this spring doing everything but writing poems. This morning I was scrolling through news media in the usual anguish and tunnel-like anxiety and wondering why I do this. Every day I wonder why I do this, and yet I still do it, at almost regular intervals throughout the day. Twitter, for me, is the worst. I don’t follow friends or socials but, these days, climate and public health scientists. I respect the high-frequency of these scientists; they are doing one of the only things left to do when no one is listening—they are trying a different language. A chemist in a lab coat chains her neck to a bicycle stand in front of Chase bank and sends 280 all-caps characters shooting through the ether with the effect of a fast-dimming comet. I am not, as I often criticize myself, really “doom-scrolling”—even if doom can be magnetic. No, I think I am frantically looking for a door out of my own tangle of worried thoughts. I am looking for a resting point, a place to stop, a story like a rock I can sit upon beneath an array of constellations and feel a fleeting understanding of the order of things at this moment in the universe. Yet I know such a state of recognition is an impossible outcome of this scrolling activity, which creates the opposite of the momentary stillness of comprehension I am seeking. Why do I do it, then? And why am I not writing? I lived in Colorado Springs for several years as a child, and that is where I have my first memory of writing poems. I didn’t think of them, then, as poems, just scribblings of what I saw, trying to describe something I didn’t have the words for: how the mountain in my window would change daily through shifting swaths of light and clouds, shades of green, graystone, and snow. I felt, in watching the beauty of the changing seasons in the shadow of that mountain, a profound connection. The same system of wind that caused the branches to brush against my window drove the snow squall on the far mountain peak. The mountain breathed as I did. In Mvskoke, we call creator Hesaketvmese—the Breath-maker. We are all part of creation. As a young person learning to write I realized that words could never translate the awe and power of that feeling of inter-connectivity the mountain-scene first embodied for me. Yet for some reason, I chose words as the means for generating awe, for sharing this awe with others. The impulse for my writing comes from a singular source: a desire to communicate the profound beauty of the earth and its systems. I think about the chemist. Was her message comprehended as it flamed across the cosmos of our technological web? Did it make enough of a difference before it flickered out? I relate to the climate scientists who are now trying any way possible to communicate the profound beauty—and power—of the earth and its systems. But people aren’t listening, not enough so that awareness or concern translates into actions. Like scientists, journalists, teachers, many of us writers are asking how we can better communicate the state of our environment and the impacts of our actions so that it reaches people, so that it touches home. Not only must we ask how to language our changing environment, but how can we use language responsibly in our efforts to rebalance our humanity with the environment of the earth? As someone who has dedicated her life to language, these questions propel me, and also halt and confound me. Is this why I’m not writing—because that first and guiding impulse—to communicate all this beauty—has an urgency now that is almost unbearable? Should I give it up, try some other way? When the timer went off, I didn’t have any language to bring back to my desk. But that was ok. All language-making must begin with listening—listening for the sounds beneath what we think we know. Language is generated by our intelligence, but our intelligence can also override our intuition, just as it too often overrides our questioning. If I think I know what needs to be said, I’m not listening to what is occurring, and I’m not listening to the questions. Questions can help us to re-orient, to re-balance, to find our way back to what we already know, to our original knowing, our original interconnectedness. Poetry is not actually a language of speaking or writing, but a language of deep listening, listening for the questions and for the original knowledge towards which these questions guide us. On one of my recent better days, I sat down to read the first chapter in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. I found myself re-reading the same few pages where Bryson tells the story of two scientists who unknowingly found the outer edge of the visible universe in a “steady, streaming hiss” coming through a large communications antenna. It had been postulated by an astrophysicist, George Gamow, in the 1940s that “cosmic background radiation left over from the Big Bang” could exist, which would reach the earth in the form of microwaves, given the time and distance it would have to cross. As Bryson writes, these scientists “were ‘seeing’ the first photons—the most ancient light in the universe.” And they saw the edge of visible universe through sound. When we are telling the story of our environment, sound is part of this story. Sound is what happens when our ear reacts to a certain range of vibrations. Sound is one of a poet’s—a communicator’s—responsibilities. We shape sounds and choreograph patterns for our disclosures. We make what Edgar Allan Poe calls, “The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.” What pattern can we make to disclose the beautiful and unbeautiful truths? What pattern can we make to undo the patterns that have made their designs upon us—the patterns of injustice, violence, and fear? As a poet, I’m no stranger to being estranged from public discourse and communication, perhaps much like many climate scientists. Many will say poetry is too obscure, indirect, possibly deceptive. The problem with poetry, it is too often said, is one of comprehension. Such a perspective feels devastating to me, when the reason I write poetry is to expand the possibility of comprehension. So I keep working at it, all the while asking myself if what I do, as a poet, can make a difference, can generate change, can indeed help us all to comprehend the future we are each day co-creating. On good days, I settle on the hope that change comes from a place of awe, and poetry can generate awe. Awe elevates awareness. Awe enacts the deep knowing that earth’s systems are the very systems of breath and body that determine our lives as humans. Awe inspires that felt-knowledge of the interconnectivity that so many of us have forgotten. On the more challenging days, I have to enact this hope, I have to re-activate my own deep-knowing, I have to return myself to the awe I remember as a child watching the mountain’s colors change. And scrolling the headlines can’t do this for me. The other morning, after noting how easily half-an-hour had passed by as I scrolled, feeling increasingly useless about what to do in this world, I came up with a new rule. For every minute I scroll through news, I give myself that much time to sit outside in the yard and do absolutely nothing but listen. That afternoon, I set a timer and put my phone far away under a tree. I moved the chair into the sun and imagined turning a tuning knob on my hearing. I heard a layer of something—a particular kind of grass in a wind gust. Then I listened for a layer beneath it—the rumble of an underground train—then a layer above it—bird shrills, the high-pitched ringing of the electrical wires. Whenever I started down a spiral of thinking, I turned the knob, attuned myself back to what I could hear. But what can cadence and rhythm really do? Can these concerns of sound change policy to reduce carbon emissions? Can they remind people of humility or compassion? We know cadence can enrage. It can rally. It can cause physical pain or soothe us into sleep. It can lift our spirits or break our hearts. So yes, it can change policy. It can change behavior. It can change the way we perceive the world and our place in it. A poem is not sound, alone, of course. A poem can reorganize perception in many ways. The selection of imagery to hold meaningful experience, without foreclosing meaning, is one of these ways. When I tried to describe the sounds I heard during the first afternoon of my new “listening practice,” I relied on images. The motion of that breathing mountain was also a shifting image in a window frame that, try as I might, my words could not exactly describe. Images are powerful because they are never singular. The image requires our imagination to exist. The image is always complex, always kaleidoscoping. In a poem, images are transformed through other images and refuse becoming static. Like life, everything below the surface of the poem is interacting with the surface. Just as every image on the news outlets and media streams has the potential to be controlled by the curation of surrounding images, imagery, like our imagination, is by nature dynamic. Seeing the world as poetry is seeing the complex environments of lives and this planet’s life forms. This, to me, is the way poetry is an agent of change—it can help us see the interconnectivity of our world. When we understand how to see the world in this way, we can no longer see it as exploitable for our human interests alone. With poetry, we must see how connected we are, to everything, and how every act of exploitation is a harm against ourselves, as well. All our actions impact us, rippling through our human ecology. Poetry is water through which we can see and feel these ripples in motion. Poetry is challenging. It challenges dominant narratives because it is dynamic. It challenges legibility because it makes meaning in unordinary ways. I am not arguing for illegibility in general, or incomprehensibility as a way of being. Ironically, we live in a time when life seems increasingly incomprehensible. Yet we seem to have no problem comprehending, or at least reacting to and making decisions based on, ideas that are not logically, factually, scientifically, or even emotionally “sensical.” How is it sensible to be destroying ourselves? Shouldn’t our sensible course of action involve the senses? Poetry is a method by which one can activate the senses, the felt experience, the deep knowledge of what is otherwise impossible to put into words. Poetry can transform comprehension; it does this not just by making meaning in unordinary ways, but connecting to our deep pasts, our shadowed interiors, our perceptions as living beings who are complex and intertwined. It can also, therefore, connect us to our futures. Poetry may indeed, then, make a difference. As can all of our work and its methods make a difference in this kaleidoscope of life and time. Perhaps what I am suggesting, or offering, here, is simply an invitation to listen. What if our work as communicators is not to communicate a message or information, but to open a space, or create the conditions, for listening. This is how I think about poetry: poetry is my attempt to create the conditions for listening. Listening is not just aural, but a sensation, a physical experience. Listening is intuition, insight, it is a perception wider and deeper than our intellectual scope. Whether you are writing poems or stories or research, as we work to language our changing climate, our uncertain futures, we must not forget to listen. The universe, after all, began with sound, with heat and vibration. Our life begins and ends with a breath. Hesaketvmese—Creation, Breath-maker. The anxiety of urgency has stymied me lately. But if I commit to this listening practice every day, then maybe I will find my way to that rock where the universe, for a moment, makes sense, and a few words, sounds, images might constellate around that sense, so that it can be shared. Then there will be a poem. Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. Broadway Books, 2003. pp 11–12. Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Maybe Bird (The Song Cave, 2022). She is the recipient of a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford. She lives in San Francisco, holds a PhD in Literary Arts from the University of Denver, and teaches Poetry at the Rainier Writing Workshop.
- [What the Story Wants: An Interview with Jasminne Mendez](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2022/3-mendez/) - Just a couple weeks ago, in May 2022, RWW alum Jasminne Mendez’s (2019) first ever play, City Without Altar, debuted in Portland, Oregon, at the Milagro Theatre. Jasminne is a Dominican-American poet, educator, translator, playwright, and award-winning author of several books for children and adults. In addition to having poetry and essays published in numerous journals and anthologies, Jasminne is the author of two multi-genre collections: Island of Dreams (Floricanto Press), and Night-Blooming Jasmin(n)e: Personal Essays and Poetry (Arte Publico Press), and her debut poetry collection City Without Altar was a finalist for the Noemi Press poetry prize and will be released in August 2022 by Noemi Press. Currently, Jasminne is the Program Director for the literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and teaches creative writing for Goddard College. While I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to see City Without Altar, luckily for me, I have since had the opportunity to ask Jasminne a few questions. I am happy to be sharing that conversation with you now. Keats Chaves: You write in multiple literary genres (poetry, prose, and now—officially!—drama). Is there a genre that you prefer over the others, or find more fun/interesting to write? Is there one that’s more challenging for you? Jasminne Mendez: Overall, I just consider myself a storyteller and don’t necessarily think too hard about genre at first. Rather, I think about what story I need to write/tell (sometimes that’s a narrative story, sometimes it’s an emotional or meditative one), and while I may begin telling that story in one genre, I may realize the story is actually seeking to be told in a different genre. Which is why I end up writing hybrid works such as a play or novel in verse, or a creative nonfiction/hybrid memoir with poems, essays, and even images. I can’t say that I “prefer” one genre over the other—it really just depends on the story I’m trying to tell and what the story wants. Lately I’ve really been enjoying novels in verse and writing stories through persona poems and narrative pieces. I think the most challenging one for me right now is playwriting because it’s still such a new genre for me and I’m learning a lot as I go. KC: City Without Altar is your first full-length play—can you tell us a little about your process for writing it? JM: City Without Altar is actually an adapted version of my Rainier Writing Workshop creative thesis manuscript, which began as a collection of persona poems amplifying the voices of the 1937 Haitian Massacre (also known as The Parsley Massacre) along the northwestern border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. I spent years researching the massacre, reading transcripts and interviews, reading books, talking to family members, and visiting the Dominican Republic. I began this work as an exercise in docu-poetics, and, eventually, I really began to enjoy crafting persona poems in the voices of the victims and survivors of the massacre. Once, at a poetry reading, I read one of the persona poems and a friend (who knew I had studied theatre in the past) suggested it might make an interesting play. I remembered one of my favorite plays of all time was written as a choreopoem (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf), and decided to give it a shot. After MULTIPLE revisions, three staged readings, and now one full production, I think I’m FINALLY finished with it, but who knows! Even though I spent my whole life in the theatre, this was my first time in the playwright’s seat, and it was scary, hard, thrilling, and humbling. Writing has always been such a solitary act for me in the drafting and revising phases, so for it to be more of a collaborative exercise was very challenging for me. But the reward of seeing and hearing the final production live on stage is something I don’t think can be replicated in any other genre. KC: Do you have any advice for someone wanting to branch out into drama/playwriting from poetry or prose? JM: I think the best advice I can give is the advice Barrie Jean Borich gave me when I was struggling my first semester to write creative nonfiction, and that is: “You don’t have to give up being a poet to be an essayist.” And you can change that to anything: you don’t have to give up being a poet to be a playwright/novelist, etc. What she and I mean by that is the craft tools you use to write poems can and should still be used to write in these other genres. Plays in verse exist! Novels in verse exist! Use your poetry background and knowledge and write that story or play in verse if that feels good and right to you! With that said, the best, best, best thing you can do is READ, READ, READ, in the genre you’re trying to write in. Play around, make mistakes, write really, really awful things, and eventually you’ll find a story and a voice that feels good and that will turn into something great. My last bit of advice is, if you want to write plays, you need to go watch some live theatre and pay attention to all of it: lights, sound, blocking, costumes, all of that is part of the story, too, and is important to how the story is told. KC: What’s next for you? JM: Next up for me is all about book launches, promotions, and book tours. I have two books coming out this fall: City Without Altar (Noemi Press) releases August 15th and Islands Apart: Becoming Dominican American (Arte Publico Press), a YA memoir about growing up Black and Latina in the South, releases September 15th. I also was lucky enough to translate Amanda Gorman’s debut picture book Change Sings into Spanish, and that book, La canción del cambio, releases September 22nd. “Lastly, my debut middle grade novel in verse Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial) comes out spring 2023, so I am busy finalizing edits for that book as we speak!”
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/8-literary-citizenship/) - The RWW community's literary citizenship.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/9-literary-citizenship/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/8-literary-citizenship/) - Natalie Marino (2024): Associate Poetry Editor, miniskirt magazine. Aldric Ulep (2022): Contracts and Logistics Manager, The Speakeasy Project. Jessica Barksdale (2015): Organizer, Literature Week, Diablo Valley College. Chelsey Clammer (2016): Monthly Columnist, WOW! Women on Writing; Reader, Creative Nonfiction; Editor, Ms.Fit Mag. Christina Collins (2010): Home Editor, Lockjaw Magazine. Kate Carroll de Gutes (2010): Review Editor, Fourth Genre; Cofounder, Incite: Queer Writers Read; Advisory Council, Storyknife Writers Retreat. Sydney Elliott (2015): Editor, Community College Humanities Review; Editor, Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon. Shawna Ervin (2021): Guest Artist and Mentor, Art from Ashes. Kathleen Flenniken (2007): President, Jack Straw Cultural Center. Cate Gable (2016): Northwest Poetry Correspondent, Poetry Flash; Founding Team Member, Rancho Linda Vista Writers Workshop. Nancy Geyer (2013): Art Editor, Terrain.org. Bernard Grant (2016): Associate Fiction Editor, Tahoma Literary Review. Ned Hayes (2015): Editor in Chief and Publisher, Oly Arts; Board Governance and Planning Committee Member, Clarion West Writers Workshop. Katrina Hays (2010): Regional Editor, Fireweed: Poetry of Oregon. Erin Coughlin Hollowell (2009): Executive Director, Storyknife Writers Retreat; Director, Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. Tia M. Hudson (2013): Poet Laureate, Bremerton, Washington. Marianne Janack (2021): Editor in Chief, Book XI: A Journal of Literary Philosophy. Jill McCabe Johnson (2008): Editor in Chief, Wandering Aengus Press; Director, Artsmith. Adrian Koesters (2007): Contributing Editor, Split Rock Review. Lita Kurth (2009): Cofounder, Flash Fiction Forum. Jonathan Maule (2019): Contributing Poetry Reviewer, RHINO Reviews. Jasminne Mendez (2019): Senior Contributing Editor, Queen Mob’s Teahouse; Cohost of the literary podcast, “Ink Well”; Cocreator, Women Who Submit chapter in Houston, TX. Meghan McClure (2013): Editorial Board Member, Floating Bridge Press. Carol McMahon (2016): Community Outreach, Bloom: Rochester Poetry Project. Ann Quinn (2018): Poetry Editor, Yellow Arrow Journal; Faculty, The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Colleen Rain (2017): Fundraising Board Member, Seattle Arts & Lectures. Ian Ramsey (2015): Founder and Director, The Kauffmann Program in Environmental Writing and Wilderness Exploration. Julie Riddle (2009): Craft Essay Editor, Brevity; Creative Nonfiction Editor, Rock & Sling; Editor, Whitworth Today; Editorial Board Member, Wandering Aengus Press. Michael Schmeltzer (2007): Editorial Board Member, Floating Bridge Press. Tina Schumann (2009): Assistant Director, Artsmith; Poetry Editor, Wandering Aengus Press. Bucket Siler (2016): Founder and Organizer, Santa Fe Zine Fest. Jen Soriano (2018): Contributing Editor, Slag Glass City. Molly Spencer (2017): Poetry Editor, The Rumpus. Billie Swift (2016): Owner, Open Books: A Poem Emporium. Nathaniel Youmans (2020): Editor, Washington Falconers Association; Operations Specialist, Scablands Books. Kelli Russell Agodon (2007): Cofounder and Editor, Two Sylvias Press; Codirector, Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women. Kevin Clark: Poet Laureate, San Luis Obispo County, California. Barrie Jean Borich: Editor, Slag Glass City. Geffrey Davis: Poetry Editor, Iron Horse Literary Review. Jenny Johnson: Contributing Editor, Waxwing. Rebecca McClanahan: Prose Editor, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, 2020. Peggy Shumaker: Series Editor, Alaska Literary Series, University of Alaska Press; Editor, Boreal Books, Red Hen Press; Board Member, Alaska Arts & Culture Foundation; Advisory Council, Storyknife Writers Retreat; Contributing Editor, Alaska Quarterly Review; National Advisory Board Member, The Prairie Schooner Book Prize; Panelist, 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Arts Projects: Literary Arts; Panelist, 2021 Alaska Literary Awards.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/8-literary-citizenship/)
- [Spring 2022](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/) - Featuring Adrianne Harun, Keats Chaves, Katie Duane, Hannah D. Markley, Liz Culpepper, Shawna Ervin, Lynette Vialet, and Preeti Parikh! Editor: Hannah D. Markley. Contributing Writer: Keats Chaves. Assistant Editor: Elissa Favero. Managing Editor: Sydney Elliott. Creative Director: Garrett Brooks.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/6-announcements/)
- [Enchanted Fragments](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/2-harun/)
- [Artistic Intersections: A Conversation with Katie Duane](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/3-duane/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/5-publications/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2022/7-opportunities/)
- [Summer 2021](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/) - Featuring Barrie Jean Borich, Abriel Newton (with Kelli Russell Agodon), Hannah Comerford (with last year's flash classes), and an alumni exhibition.
- [Fall 2021](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/) - Featuring Wendy Call, Keats Chaves (with Sequoia Nagamatsu), and Hannah D. Markley (with a residency photo-essay). Also included: RWW publications, announcements, opportunities, and literary citizenship. / Editor: Hannah D. Markley; Contributing Writer: Keats Chaves; Assistant Editor: Elissa Favero; Managing Editor: Sydney Elliott; Creative Director: Garrett Brooks
- [Summer Redux](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/4-summer/) - By Hannah D. Markley — This year of COVID has been one of uncertainty, a back and forth between anxiety and hope, relaxing into new routines and finding our way back to old ones. The RWW Summer Residency, once again, met through Zoom, but some found ways to safely gather in person, creating mini, in-person gatherings throughout the residency. Wendy Call hosted a mid-residency potluck in her backyard, and there, the newest cohorts met fellow RWW students for the first time. We joined morning talks, faculty readings, workshops, afternoon classes, and celebrated with the 2021 graduates. As online and in-person gatherings connected us with one another, we found new questions, laughter, and fodder for our writing. The routine of seeing one another on the screen for those ten days renewed our sense of connectedness, across states and oceans. A reminder that we, no matter where we put our pen to paper or flip open our computer, are not alone.
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/1-greetings/) - By Hannah D. Markley — Back in May, Eastern Meadowlarks and Bobolinks strung their notes between the powder-blue tobacco barn and stone fences in a field a few miles from my house. I interrupted their conversations every time I walked the mown paths down there. I hated to interrupt them, but there was no way to hide even the smallest step. They fluttered up from the tall grass and Queen Anne’s lace, and each time I paused and held my breath, hoped one would stay, that maybe we could make a kind of pact to share the place, even if it were just for a few moments longer than the last time. Then, I left Kentucky for the summer, and I returned to find the Bobolinks gone, already South America-bound for the winter. And, I suppose, the eastern Meadowlarks will be leaving soon, if they aren’t already gone. A few farmers baled the fields since I last saw them, so even if they did stay, there’s not much of a place to land. They will return, as will the Bobolinks, but this season they take their leave. This is the way of things, an uneasy alliance with change. This issue, in the craft essay “You Will Not See Zapotec Die,” Wendy Call writes that she came to her work as a translator because of migration. Her essay explores this path from language to language, but also the impact of migration and translation within a language and across generations. Our Contributing Writer, Keats Chaves, interviews one of our newest faculty members, Sequoia Nagamatsu, on his own mentor experiences, and, finally, we celebrate our virtual residency with a photo essay. As always, we celebrate our community’s Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, and Literary Citizenship. Please join me in welcoming Elissa Favero as the new Assistant Editor. I’ll be the Editor for the next year, and I am so grateful to Keats Chaves, Sydney Elliott, and Garrett Brooks for their support coming into this year. Also, many thanks to each of you for your readership and support of Soundings and the RWW community in its many iterations. So, here’s to the next year—I hope that wherever you are, it is one marked by connection in writing and community. —Hannah D. Markley
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/7-opportunities/) - Kate Carroll de Gutes (2010), Review Editor at Fourth Genre, is looking for omnibus reviews of three or more books of nonfiction that are somehow in conversation with one another. Fourth Genre is especially interested in pieces on works by writers in marginalized communities. Query or ask for examples of reviews at kate.degutes@gmail.com. Jen Soriano (2018) will be teaching a two-part creative nonfiction series sponsored by Arts By the People on November 17 and December 15 from 8-9:30 EST. The workshops are online, free, and open to all. To sign up, send an email to info@artsbythepeople.org with CELLAR DOOR in the subject line.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/6-announcements/) - Students Cynthia Lehew-Nehrbass (2024): A book launch party celebrating the anthology Her Path Forward: 21 Stories of Transformation and Inspiration, which includes an essay by Cindy, at ModernWell in Minneapolis. Natalie Marino (2024): As of September 2021, Natalie is an Associate Poetry Editor for miniskirt magazine. Alumni Nancy Canyon (2007) was a Contributing Editor for True Stories IV, from the Narrative Project, 2021. Bernard Grant's (2016) novel-in-stories manuscript, All Hours, was longlisted for the Texas Tech University Press and Iron Horse Literary Review Prize for a First Book of Prose. Joanna McNaney Stein's (2008) first book of nonfiction on k.d. lang's Ingenue has been accepted by Bloomsbury as part of their 33 1/3 book series. Publication is forthcoming in Fall 2023. Jasminne Mendez (2019) has signed a contract with Dial Press to publish her middle grade novel-in-verse, Aniana del Mar Jumps In, in 2023. John Milkereit (2016) won a Jury Prize for the poem “Gogol’s Dream During His Pilgrimage of the Holy Land” at the Friendswood Library Ekphrastic Poetry Contest, October 2021. Preeti Parikh (2021) is Guest Poetry Editor for the Dis/placement/orientation-themed issue with Another Chicago Magazine. Tina Schumann (2009) interviewed local author Judy Temes live at Seattle's Town Hall to discuss her new memoir Girl Left Behind. The event was streamed live and is available to view now on YouTube. Tina also now has her full collection, Praising the Paradox from Red Hen Press, available as an audiobook. The audiobook is also available via Google Play. All poems are read by the author. Jen Soriano (2018) signed a contract with HarperCollins/Amistad for her book Nervous, a collection of lyric essays based on her RWW thesis, to be published in August 2023. Jen is also serving as the 2021-2022 Writer in Residence for Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/5-publications/) - Students Dana Delibovi (2024) Essay: “Found Poetry,” Witty Partition, Issue 14, July 2021; “The Nausea of Craft,” Riverside Quarterly, Fall 2021; “On the Wing,” After the Art, June 2021. Literary Interview: “Simon Van Booy: The Writer’s Art and Practice,” Riverside Quarterly, Summer 2021. Poetry Translation: “The Hands” (“Las Manos”) by Alaíde Foppa, in Apple Valley Review, Fall 2021. Cynthia Lehew-Nehrbass (2024) Essay: “Blue Dresses,” Her Path Forward: 21 Stories of Transformation and Inspiration, My Founder Story, edited by Julie Burton and Chris Olsen, 2021. Winston Lin (2023) Poetry: “Dis jOY Nt hIm,” MixedMag, June 2020; “Poetry-ish-like Scenes of this Writer Brain (A Short Play)” and “The Parable of the QAAPI Boy,” Variety Pack, Issue V, June 2020; “Heterosexual Rumpy-Pumpy,” the lickety~split, August 11, 2021. Natalie Marino (2024) Poetry: “Spring Strawberries,” Twin Pies Literary, Volume 6, August 2021; “Joy Ride in Box Canyon” and “Not a Synonym for Spanish,” Sheila-Na-Gig online, Volume 6.1, Fall 2021; “The Knowing,” miniskirt magazine, Issue 6, September 2021; “Our Garden at Sainte-Adresse,” Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Issue 10, October 1, 2021. Flash Nonfiction: “A Bird in the Orange Sky Turning Purple,” Reservoir Road Literary Review, Issue 4. David Taylor (2023) Literary Profile: “The Novelist Who Re-created 1970s D.C.,” Washington Post Magazine, Print Issue, Sept. 26, 2021. Alumni Cathy Adams (2021) Fiction: “Troublemaker,” Literally Stories, July 2021. Jenny Apostol (2020) Book Review: “Permafrost, by Eva Baltasar,” Rain Taxi, September 2021. Nonfiction: “Twenty years ago, a cancer reprieve for my husband on one of the country’s most terrible days,” Washington Post, 6 September 2021. Nancy Canyon (2007) Fiction: “The Change,” Poetry Marathon Anthology, Edited by Cynthia Hernandez, 2021. Memoir Excerpt: “Lonely in Yakima,” True Stories IV, The Narrative Project, 2021. Hannah Comerford (2019) Nonfiction: “The Family I Need,” Fathom, Issue 44: Family. Jeb Harrison (2015) Short Story Collection: For Want of Grace, independently published, July 2021. Journey Herbeck (2013) Fiction: The Front, University of Nebraska Press, October 2021. Alicia Hoffman (2015) Poetry: “The Beauty of Evacuated Form,” Thimble Literary Magazine, Summer 2021; “Legato for Spring,” South Florida Poetry Journal, Summer 2021; “Waves & Rays & Particles,” Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Summer 2021. Margaret Lukas (2007) Fiction: The Broken Statue, BQB Press, October 2021. Paula MacKay (2015) Book Review: “Gazing in the Broken Mirror,” Earth Island Journal, Autumn 2021. Nonfiction: “Learning from Wolverines,” The Wildlife Professional, July/August 2021. Jill McCabe Johnson (2008) Nonfiction: “The Night Gary Drove Me Home,” Slate, June 2021; “Seasonal Round,” The Madrona Project, Vol. II, No. 1, guest edited by Holly J. Hughes (2006), July 2021; “Slipsilver” and “When You First Came Home,” Waxwing, Issue XXIV, Summer 2021. John Milkereit (2016) Poetry: “Bowen’s Island Restaurant,” Kitchen Sink Magazine, Issue V, Fall 2021; “The Woman in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks” and “Monologue of the Creamed Camel,” The Ekphrastic Review, August and September 2021; “How to Say It,” Naugatuck River Review, Issue 26, Summer/Fall 2021; “Highway 101,” Orchard Street Press, September 2021. Julie Riddle (2009) Essay: “If Swans Could Speak,” New England Review, Vol. 42, No. 3, Fall 2021; “Shadow Animals,” This Impermanent Earth: Environmental Writing from The Georgia Review, University of Georgia Press, 2021. Tina Schumann (2009) Poetry: “Fish” and “Self-Portrait as the Sacred and Profane,” The Ilanot Review, Fall 2021; “October,” The Madrona Project, Vol. II, No. 1, guest edited by Holly J. Hughes (2006), July 2021. Cindy Skaggs (2017) Creative Nonfiction: “The Lucky Ones,” december, Issue 32.1, Summer 2021. Cameron Walker (2008) Fiction: “Some People,” the tiny journal, Issue iv. Faculty Rebecca McClanahan, Poetry: “Early Morning, Downtown 1 Train,” Crossing the Rift: North Carolina Poets on 9/11 & Its Aftermath, Press 53, September 2021. Essay: “The Birthday Place,” The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction, Rose Metal Press, November 2020. Nonfiction/Conversation: Interview, Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, Sarabande Books, August 2021. Brenda Miller and Julie Marie Wade, Creative Nonfiction: Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, Cleveland State University Press, October 2021. Peggy Shumaker, Poetry, “Gifts We Cannot Keep,” Ruminate, Fall 2021. A Decrease font size. A Reset font size. A Increase font size. Cover Greetings You Will Not See Zapotec Die More than a Sage on a Hill Summer Redux Publications Announcements Opportunities Literary Citizenship
- [More than a Sage on a Hill](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/3-nagamatsu/) - By Keats Chaves — Before that I read (and write) a lot of genre fiction, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the seemingly firm division between speculative fiction and literary fiction. I’ve been especially interested in how this division manifests in the teaching of creative writing, so it goes without saying that I was extremely excited to find out that literary/fabulist writer Sequoia Nagamatsu would be joining the RWW community at the 2021 summer residency as the newest fiction mentor. After the residency, I reached out to Sequoia to find out more about him, his writing, and his teaching philosophy, and I am thrilled to share that interview with you now (but I still want to know more about the robot dog!): Keats Chaves: RWW puts a lot of emphasis on the mentor/mentee aspect of the program. Is there someone whose teaching or mentorship has been especially impactful or inspirational for you? Sequoia Nagamatsu: This is a tough one because, while I have an MFA and have had other kinds of learning experiences guided by experienced writers, I wouldn’t say that I could really pinpoint one person who gave me the “keys to creative writing.” I think there are writers out there who are really known for that kind of mentorship style, but what I valued most from others was simply an acknowledgement of my identity as a writer, encouragement, and an honest sense that what I was doing excited them in some way. That maybe—just maybe—something I wrote could one day see print. I try to bring this sincere excitement to my own teaching as well. If I tell a student that something is “close,” that I “could see this being published,” or that I’m excited about a new direction they’re taking, I really mean it. So, instead of naming one person, I’ll name a few people who provided this kind of energy for me: Michael Czyzniejewski, Pinckney Benedict, and Jon Tribble. And I also want to stress the importance of acknowledging how writers we never meet act as mentors through their writing and career trajectory. Someone like Matt Bell, for instance, was really inspirational to me. His work made me realize that unconventional/genre-defying fiction could find an audience; his trajectory through the literary journal ecosystem to indie presses to larger publishers showed me the diversity of what was possible. A Decrease font size. A Reset font size. A Increase font size. Cover Greetings You Will Not See Zapotec Die More than a Sage on a Hill Summer Redux Publications Announcements Opportunities Literary Citizenship BSequoia Nagamatsu KC: Can you tell us more about your own mentorship philosophies, and what you hope to bring to RWW? SN: I spoke to the idea of being honest and passionate about student work above, and I’ll stress that again—and add caring. I don’t think a mentorship is worthwhile if a mentor doesn’t know how to be critical and supportive without a dose of empathy, or if a mentor puffs up their mentee with a false sense of where they are and the realities of potential career trajectories they might take. I want to create a relationship of trust and community with my mentees, and I want this foundation to fuel dynamic conversations about how our reading lives and writing lives and professional paths feed into each other. And this goes both ways: I’ll prompt my mentees to explore, to read new things, to reflect on their lives as people/writers, but I also want to invite them to interrogate me as well and bring up other topics/observations. Mentoring for me isn’t about being a sage on a hill so much as being a hybrid of a friendly resource and a fellow colleague (just another writer who knows what it’s like to stare at a blank page). KC: During this summer’s residency, you gave a morning talk on the “genre debate” and the relationship between genre fiction and literary fiction—your own writing is very much a blend of the two. Could you tell us what, or who, inspired (or continues to inspire) you to write in this gray area instead of writing only genre fiction or only literary fiction? SN: Well, I could say that this inspiration stemmed from a childhood of consuming sci-fi and fantasy and watching a lot of documentaries of the Ancient Alien variety. Apart from the documentary bit, I don’t think this is all that unusual—the media we consume as children is heavily weighted toward the fantastical, and historically (and unfortunately), a lot of people for reasons beyond me cast away these narratives in favor of what they might view as “adult” or “real literature” or “less childish.” I think Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino was probably one of my earlier introductions to work presenting itself as “real literature,” but was very playful with genre and form. That introduction led me to explore more contemporary writers like Aimee Bender, Angela Carter, Kate Bernheimer, and Karen Russell, who had just come on the scene as I was contemplating taking writing more seriously. “And this goes both ways: I’ll prompt my mentees to explore, to read new things, to reflect on their lives as people/writers, but I also want to invite them to interrogate me as well and bring up other topics/observations.” KC: I know you have a book coming out in January 2022, but do you have any works in progress that you’re particularly excited about? SN: How High We Go in the Dark comes out this January, and, honestly, this one is keeping me plenty busy with marketing efforts. The publicity machine is interesting because it really forces you to reflect on what you’ve produced, who you were when you wrote the book, and how you’ve changed as a writer after having completed it. That said, I am about to return to the trenches of my next book, which is slated to come out in 2024. It’s called Girl Zero (at least for now). The book revolves around the genetic copy of a deceased girl via a Japanese shapeshifting creature, and this replacement’s journey of navigating their own identity and the identity of the original daughter a family lost. KC: Lastly, what’s something interesting or unexpected that you want the RWW community to know about you? SN: Hmm… I own a very expensive robot dog, which figures into my forthcoming novel. His name is Calvino. As far as writing? I’m definitely a planner. I’ll create elaborate outlines, spreadsheets, and flowcharts. I might abandon, or allow these brainstorms to evolve, but I like to have the illusion of a map before I really begin a project. Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the forthcoming novels, How High We Go in the Dark (2022) and Girl Zero (2024) and the award-winning story collection, Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories. He currently teaches at St. Olaf College and resides in Minneapolis.
- [You Will Not See Zapotec Die: Translation, Hip Hop, and Language Revitalization](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2021/2-call/) - By Wendy Call — In 2008, I translated my first poem by Mexican-Binnizá poet Irma Pineda—who writes bilingual poetry in Spanish and Isthmus Zapotec. That poem, “I Was Given This Day,” was the beginning of a collaboration that I fully anticipate to be life-long. Here it is, as published in a U.S. literary journal in 2012: I Was Given This Day I was given this day with songs of silent birds with the smell of wet earth in the balconies’ flowerpots with an iguana drawn on my son’s shirt with sweet words of Zapotec pulled from my sister’s tongue I was given this day with the hummingbird’s absence from my window without cool earth nor stars nor jazmín del istmo without armadillos, whose bones we spurn without my grandfather’s stories embroidered on the wide skirt of the afternoon I was given this day in the heart of the city One of my neighbors in Seattle, who is from an Isthmus Zapotec community as well, asked me to translate Pineda’s poem, “Bedandá dxí di’ naa / Me llegó este día,” into English. My neighbor thought that I was the right person to do it because I was, at that time, working on a book about his and Irma Pineda’s homeplace, Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec. I had lived there for a few years. “I Was Given This Day” is a poem about migration. Pineda wrote it while living in Mexico City, while acutely feeling the absence of her hometown of Juchitán. I came to know that poem—and Pineda’s poetry in general—because of migration. As people move, literature moves. Now, more than a dozen years after my neighbor asked me to render “I Was Given This Day” in English, I have translated three of Irma Pineda’s books into English, and I’m currently working on a fourth and fifth. (This represents only half of Pineda’s published poetry.) A Decrease font size. A Reset font size. A Increase font size. Cover Greetings You Will Not See Zapotec Die More than a Sage on a Hill Summer Redux Publications Announcements Opportunities Literary Citizenship “I came to know that poem—and Pineda’s poetry in general—because of migration. As people move, literature moves.” In January 2017, I spent two weeks in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec with my friend (and former Goddard College colleague) Karen Werner, who is a radio producer. We created a half-hour audio feature for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation—the Australian equivalent of National Public Radio—about one of Pineda’s poems and how it inspired a hip hop song. The poem that inspired the radio feature is titled (in English) “You Will Not See Me Die.” You Will Not See Me Die You will not see me die ______you won’t forget me I am your mother your father your grandfather’s old stories age-old traditions the tear welling from an old willow the saddest branch ______lost among the leaves You will not see me die because I am a reed-woven basket ______where the old spiny lobster ______still waves his pincers the fish eaten by God the snake that gulped a rabbit the rabbit that always teased the coyote the coyote that swallowed a wasps’ nest the honey that wells from my breasts I am your lifeline ______and you will not see me die You may think everyone has gone away but you will not see me die There will be a seed ______hidden in the scrub by the path that must return to this land and seed the future and feed our souls and our stories will be reborn and you will not see me die because we will stay strong we will always survive our song will live forever we will be ourselves and you and our children’s children and the earth’s quaking ______that will shake the sea and we will be many hearts ______anchored to the core of the binnizá and you will not see me die ______you will never see me die ____________you will never __________________see me die Wendy Call Poetry and hip hop are closely linked modes of creative expression. Both rely on rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay. Both have rich histories of sampling and borrowing. Both have played crucial roles in movements for liberation and social justice. Isthmus Zapotec (or Binnizá) culture has an especially long and rich poetic tradition—as well as a new and rich tradition of hip hop. In some cases, this hip hop is composed and performed by teenagers and young adults who are writing and rapping very consciously in Zapotec—rather than Spanish—as part of an effort to keep their home language alive, both in their communities and in their own minds and hearts. In the audio feature, “You Will Not See Me Die,” listeners meet a 19-year-old hip hop artist, Antonio (Toño MC) López, who has sampled one of Pineda’s poems and made it into a rap. That poem, “Qui zuuyu’ naa gate’ / No me verás morir” appeared in Pineda’s 2007 poetry collection, Xilase qui rié di’ sicasi rié nisa guiidu’ / La nostalgia no se marcha como el agua de los ríos. Toño MC says of Isthmus Zapotec: “The language is older than me, it’s older than my mom, it’s older than my grandpa; it’s a language that must not disappear. It’s not going to disappear—even if the world wants it to disappear. This language grew and grew, and it’s going to keep on growing. And in daily life, there isn’t a single day that I don’t hear Zapotec. If I don’t hear it here at home, I hear it in the street. When I walk down the street I hear men talking to each other, all in Zapotec, old men speaking totally in Zapotec.” “In some cases, this hip hop is composed and performed by teenagers and young adults . . . as part of an effort to keep their home language alive, both in their communities and in their own minds and hearts.” Here is a rough English translation of an excerpt from the hip hop song that Toño MC wrote, sampling Pineda’s poem “No me verás morir”: Zapotec language, you will never die. I can’t bear to hear that one day you will take flight and never come back. Because you are my guiding light. Every day that I wake up it’s Zapotec, Zapotec, language of my ancestors. Zapotec, you will never die. You will always live on my tongue. You will not die. We won’t say goodbye. López discovered Irma Pineda’s poetry on YouTube, even though he lives only a dozen miles from her home in Juchitán. Pineda, in turn, discovered that her poem had been sampled in Toño MC’s rap via Facebook. That rap was an intergenerational creative project. Teenage López, who is Spanish-dominant, was inspired by Pineda’s poetry. Pineda is from the most fully bilingual generation—people now in their 40s and 50s. To create his hip hop, López collaborated with his grandfather, who is probably in his 70s and fairly bilingual, but Zapotec-dominant. López’s song-writing is both a creative project and language lesson for him. The collaboration wouldn’t be possible without the specialized skills and knowledge of each of these three generations. López’s grandfather, Hermilo López Peña, was surprised and pleased to learn that my co-producer Karen Werner and I had found Toño MC’s music on the internet—which the grandfather has access to at his house. When I asked Sr. López Peña if he uses the internet himself, he replied, in Spanish, “I can’t do it. Because I still don’t know how to read.” He describes his grandchildren using the internet: “They just look for things and eventually they find them. Lots of things! That’s how it goes.” In their interviews with Karen Werner and me, both Toño MC and his grandfather linked the international movement of people with the international movement of hip hop. They explained the migration of both people and music from their community as functioning within a global economy. As Toño MC struggles to learn Zapotec, he also sees the fragility of the language in his globalized community. Though he talks about hearing Zapotec every day of his life, and raps that “Zapotec will never die,” he recognizes his own struggle to learn the language and knows that being surrounded by Zapotec is contingent upon resisting the pull of the global economy and staying in his home community, perhaps knowing the wider world primarily through the internet. There is a saying in Juchitán: “Xtiidxanu’ hruzá’ xquendabiaaninu’.” “Our language molds the gift of our thoughts.” Stories are preserved, history is contained, and worldviews are shaped through the act of using Isthmus Zapotec and keeping it alive. The specific words that compose poems, stories, songs, and jokes all transmit values, culture, history, identity, and cosmology from one generation to the next. The continued creation of those poems, stories, songs, and jokes is an important part of continuing to transmit Zapotec to the next generation. The video that Antonio López created for his rap, “No Me Veras Morir,” originally inspired me to co-create the audio documentary “You Will Not See Me Die” with Karen Werner. The video demonstrates Toño MC’s connections to his hometown of Chicapa de Castro, to his family, to his language, and most especially, to his grandfather. That focus on community connections and elders is not peculiar to Toño MC’s video. Similar imagery and lyric celebrating elders, traditional celebrations, rituals, and local plants and animals can be seen in the videos of other southern isthmus hip hop artists, including Juchirap, Mani Rap and Aldri Pineda, and Vladi Muriel, and other Zapotec and Ikoots hip hop artists from the region. Hip hop is a genre of resistance. To speak Zapotec is an act of resistance. In the radio documentary I co-produced with Karen Werner, Irma Pineda explains how many of the lines in “Qui zuuyu’ naa gate’ / No me verás morir” are references to Isthmus Zapotec fables and stories. She explains one of them: “When I talk about this story of the rabbit and the coyote, that is a very traditional story from this region; it is a story about struggle and resistance. Coyote is a strong character; he’s big and ferocious with sharp teeth and claws that can kill. In the story coyote is threatening rabbit. Rabbit is a smaller creature, seemingly defenseless. But rabbit is very smart and shrewd. It’s going to successfully resist and it’s always making fun of coyote and tricking him. Rabbit always escapes and survives. I think this is why we tell this story a lot here. It’s to teach us that strength alone isn’t enough for survival. Intelligence is also really important.” Note: You can listen to a podcast interview that Ilan Stavans completed with me and co-producer Karen Werner about translation, poetry, and radio. Wendy Call is co-editor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide, author of the award-winning nonfiction book No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy, and translator of two forthcoming (2022) poetry collections by Mexican-Binnizá poet Irma Pineda. She was a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar in Bogotá, Colombia, and teaches creative nonfiction at PLU’s Rainier Writing Workshop. She lives in Southeast Seattle, on unceded Duwamish land.
- [About <i>Soundings</i>](https://rwwsoundings.com/about-soundings/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/6-publications/) - Publications by RWW students, alumni, and faculty.
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/1-greetings/) - Sitting beside my computer right now—between my coffee and my cat—is an old, battered paperback copy of The Great Hunt, the second book in the late Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, which I recently picked up again as “light” reading (the joke here being that each book is, on average, about seven hundred pages).
- [In the In-between Times: A Look Back at the 2020–2021 Flash Classes](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/4-in-between-times/) - Our work as writers is, by nature, often solitary, and even without the pandemic, we usually spend a year between happy reunions with our RWW family alone with our writing.
- [The Work is Not All That](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/2-not-all-that/) - If you are preparing to graduate, you are probably thinking—or even worrying—about whether or not that state of being, or social value, or bird with turquoise feathers we call success, awaits you on the other side of those graduation gates.
- [Moving Gently in the World: A Chat with Kelli Russell Agodon](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/3-moving-gently/) - Sometimes you don’t necessarily need to know where you’re going or how to get there, but you just need to point yourself in the right direction and start walking.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/7-announcements/) - Announcements from RWW students, alumni, faculty, and former faculty.
- [An Exhibition of Inspiration: A Year of RWW Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/5-recent-releases/) - An important thing for us to remember as creators and artists is that inspiration is cyclical. We all have someone—or many someones—whose creativity has taught us and shaped us through their words, their works, and their actions, and in turn, our creative work teaches and shapes others, whether we’re writing engaging poems, heartfelt memoir, or just Star Trek fanfiction.
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2021/8-opportunities/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/5-publications/) - Recent publications from the RWW community.
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/7-opportunities/) - New opportunities for the RWW community.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/6-announcements/) - New announcements from the RWW community.
- [The Gift of Flight](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/4-gift-of-flight/) - “This little studio is where I did all my writing for RWW, so it feels good to be able to offer it to other RWW writers to enjoy."
- [The Business of Poetry](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/3-business-of-poetry/) - "I think we could use more poetry in the world—as salve, as avenue for understanding, as a uniting element for community—and my hope is to promote poetic encounters, to surprise those who might not normally read poetry."
- [Our Paper Anniversary](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/2-paper-anniversary/) - Four uplifting micro-essays by Peggy Shumaker, Rick Barot, Wendy Call, and Suzanne Berne.
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/1-greetings/)
- [Spring 2021](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2021/) - This issue of Soundings features Peggy Shumaker, Rick Barot, Wendy Call, Suzanne Berne, Aldric Ulep, Keats Chaves, Abriel Newton, and Sydney Elliott.
- [Sherry Simpson](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/9-sherry-simpson/) - Sherry Simpson, RWW Faculty. 1959–2020.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/8-literary-citizenship/) - The literary citizenship of RWW\'s participants, alumni, and faculty!
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/7-opportunities/) - Recent opportunities for the RWW community.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/6-announcements/) - Recent announcements about the RWW community.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/5-publications/) - Recent publications by RWW participants, alumni, and faculty.
- [We <3 RWW!](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/4-album/) - by Sydney Elliott. "It was bittersweet seeing our community on the screen instead of in person, but what the screen could not hide is our love for RWW. . ."
- [A Kind of Prayer: A Profile of Sejal Shah](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/3-sejal-shah/) - by Abriel Newton. "Sejal Shah . . . danced on Zoom, having reconnected with her teacher of Indian classical dance, Rathna Kumar, after thirty years."
- [A Moment for Fairy Tales](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/2-renee-simms/) - by Renee Simms. "Through these novels and several essays, I’ve considered what the fairy tale form can do for fiction, particularly in times of radical change."
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/1-greetings/) - by Keats Chaves, Editor. "What a unique year this has been; and, as the year heads to a close, we stand on the precipice of uncertainty."
- [Summer 2020](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/) - Featuring articles by Molly Spencer, Sydney J. Elliott (with Rebecca McClanahan), and Nathaniel Youmans (with Wendy Call).
- [Fall 2020](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2020/) - Featuring articles by Renee Simms, Abriel Newton (on Sejal Shah), & Sydney J. Elliott; also publications, announcements, opportunities, & literary citizenship!
- [Summer 2018](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/5-publications/) - Recent 2020 publications by RWW participants, alumni, and faculty.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/8-literary-citizenship/) - The current literary citizenship of the RWW community
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/7-opportunities/) - Recent opportunities from the RWW community.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/6-announcements/) - Recent 2020 announcements by the RWW community.
- [Found in Translation: A Conversation with Wendy Call](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/4-call/) - Nathaniel Youmans | "This summer, poetry translator, editor, and nonfiction writer, Wendy Call, joins the RWW faculty."
- [Storing What Remains: An interview with Rebecca McClanahan](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/3-mcclanahan/) - by Sydney J. Elliott | "Rebecca stores these stories carefully; they will remain with me, and I hope to see the city that shaped this book."
- [On Scavenging, or, How to Read Like a Poet](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/2-spencer/) - by Molly Spencer | "I woke early to read poetry and write things that no one ever saw, writing that was informed by no class, no craft essay, . . ."
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2020/1-greetings/) - Abriel Newton | "This year has proved emotional and baffling, near twilight-zone, and has left many of us without our support systems, isolated and walled up."
- [OE Reports](https://rwwsoundings.com/oe-reports/)
- [Contact](https://rwwsoundings.com/about/contact/)
- [Header](https://rwwsoundings.com/header/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/6-announcements/) - Recent announcements from the RWW community.
- [Spring 2020](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/) - Geffrey Davis, Kristy Gledhill, & Nathaniel Youmans (w/ Kelli Russell Agodon & Jill McCabe Johnson); RWW publications, announcements, literary citizenship.
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/1-greetings/) - by Abriel Newton | "It’s rained for weeks in Pennsylvania. When it snows, it hardly sticks on the ground and we’re left with this damp, dark, freezing . . .
- [A Poetics & Practice of Philia](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/2-philia-geffrey-davis/) - by Geffrey Davis | "I promised to never love any metaphor or image or sound they would make more than the breath they needed to create poems and narratives."
- [The Case for the Perpetual Outside Experience](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/3-perpetual-kristy-gledhill/) - by Kristy Gledhill | "The real question eventually became, 'What is it about the place that raised you that makes you you?'"
- [Footer](https://rwwsoundings.com/footer/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/7-literary-citizenship/) - Literary Citizenship from the RWW community.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/5-publications/) - Recent publications from the RWW community.
- [Pressing On](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/4-pressing-nathaniel-youmans/) - by Nathaniel Youmans | "Recently, I had the pleasure of talking with RWW alumnae Kelli Russell Agodon (2007) and Jill McCabe Johnson (2008). . ."
- [Perpetual Outside Experience](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2020/3-perpetual-kristy-gledhill-3/) - by Kristy Gledhill
- [Be Interested in People](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/3-interested/) - by Nathaniel Youmans | "After the summer residency, during which Renee gave a riveting morning lecture about M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!, . . ."
- [So Much Can Be Said](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/5-so-much/) - by Abriel Newton | "A lot of times, the writing world and the real world don’t seem to mix. . . That’s why it’s so fascinating and delightful when. . ."
- [Fall 2019](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/) - Articles by Jason Skipper, Nathaniel Youmans (with Renee Simms), Chris Liek (with Justin St. Germain), & Abriel Newton (on Carl Phillips).
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/6-publications/) - Recent publications from the RWW community.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/9-literary-citizenship/) - Literary Citizenship from the RWW community.
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/8-opportunities/) - Recent opportunities from the RWW community.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/7-announcements/) - Recent announcements from the RWW community.
- [Places We Come From](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/4-places/) - by Chris Liek | "Anyone who was at the 2018 residency will remember Justin’s wonderful morning talk on scope, and his reading from his work-in-progress. . ."
- [Learning to Let Go](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/2-let-go/) - by Jason Skipper | "The first story I wrote that would later appear in my novel Hustle was about a fifteen-year-old kid named Chris whose alcoholic father. . ."
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2019/1-greetings/) - by Abriel Newton | "Today at 9 a.m. the natural gas power plant in my town will implode two smokestacks from the old PPL coal-fired plant. . ."
- [Summer 2019](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/) - Articles by Holly Hughes, Nathaniel Youmans, Sydney Elliott, and Hannah Comerford, with Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, & Literary Citizenship
- [AWP 2019: Snapshots](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/5-awp/) - by Hannah Comerford | If you’ve ever attended the AWP conference, you know it can be a blur. . .
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/1-greetings/) - by Nathaniel Youmans | I am fortunate enough to be writing this missive from the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference. . .
- [Fall 2018](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/8-opportunities/) - Opportunities for RWW writers.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/9-literary-citizenship/) - The Literary Citizenship of RWW writers.
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/7-announcements/) - Announcements by RWW participants, alumni, faculty, and former faculty.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/6-publications/) - Publications by RWW participants, alumni, faculty, and former faculty.
- [Looking Inside the Outside Experience](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/2-outside-experience/) - by Holly Hughes | For fourteen summers now, at the end of July, I’ve packed my Subaru Forester and headed south across the Narrows Bridge to PLU . . .
- [The Sound of Seeing](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/4-sound-of-seeing/) - An Interview with Jason Skipper, by Nathaniel Youmans | . . . at the 2017 residency, Jason Skipper gave a chilling reading of his current fiction project.
- [Not Far from Home](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2019/3-home/) - A Profile of Jennifer Foerster by Sydney Elliott | Titanium. Creation and location. Moon and the sea. Leslie Marmon Silko. Painter. Diver.
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/literary-citizenship/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/opportunities/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/announcements/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/publications/)
- [“There Is Only Renewable Vision”: A Day with Camille Dungy](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/renewable-vision/)
- [Learning by Going: Place-Based Outside Experiences](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/learning-by-going/)
- [A Conversation with Alumna April Ayers Lawson](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/april-ayers-lawson/)
- [Temporal Time and Eternal Moments](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/temporal-time/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/greeting/)
- [The Now-ness of Catastrophe](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/3-catastrophe/) - The email arrived the fifth morning of the fire. On that day, the numbers were: 30% contained, 13 fatalities confirmed, total number dead, 42. . . .
- [A Marriage of Words](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/2-marriage-of-words/) - by Wendy Willis & David Biespiel | It is impossible to write about the blessings and pitfalls of literary love affairs without first paying homage to . . .
- [RWW at AWP](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/5-rww-awp/) - The full schedule for RWW at AWP this March in Portland, Oregon.
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/8-opportunities/) - Opportunities for those in the RWW community.
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/1-greetings/) - by Nathaniel Youmans | Some of us may be experiencing the early onset of spring, with windows open and a 60-degree breeze slinking by, while some . . .
- [Spring 2019](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/) - Spring 2019. Articles by Willis, Biespiel, Pape, & Comerford | Publications, Announcements, Opportunities, & Literary Citizenship. | RWW's 15th Anniversary!
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/9-literary-citizenship/) - The literary citizenship of RWW participants, alumni, and faculty.
- [Boyd Benson](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/10-boyd-benson/) - Boyd Benson. RWW Class of 2007. 1961–2018
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/7-announcements/) - Announcements for RWW participants, alumni, and faculty.
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/6-publications/) - Publications by RWW participants, alumni, faculty, and former faculty.
- [On Being a Writer on the Internet](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/spring-2019/4-on-the-internet/) - by Hannah Comerford | There’s a reason why Flannery O’Connor became good friends with her agent: marketing ourselves as writers has never been easy. . .
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/9-literary-citizenship/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/8-announcements/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/7-publications/)
- [Inspiration, Revisited](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/5-inspiration-revisited/)
- [A Note from the Director](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/6-note-from-director/)
- [A Hybrid Investigation with Paisley Rekdal](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/4-hybrid-investigation/)
- [Have Courage & Don’t Burn Down the Library](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/3-have-courage/)
- [Endings, Continued](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/2-endings-continued/)
- [Greeting](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/fall-2018/1-greetings/)
- [Fall 2016 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2016-issue/)
- [Keven Drews](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/9-keven-drews/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/8-literary-citizenship/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/7-opportunities/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/6-announcements/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/5-publications/)
- [Lighting Lanterns: A Profile of Marie Mustuki Mockett](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/4-lighting-lanterns/)
- [The Hard Labor of Joy](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/3-the-hard-labor-of-joy/)
- [The Neglected Art of Middles](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/2-the-neglected-art-of-middles/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/issues/summer-2018/1-greetings/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/literary-citizenship/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/opportunities/)
- [Announcements - Spring 2018](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/announcements/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/publications/)
- [What Happens Next?: <br>Three RWW Alumni Weigh in on Publication Experiences](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/what-happens-next/) - We’ve asked three alumni who published their creative theses after their time at RWW to share some of their experiences and advice with us.
- [In It for the Long Haul: Debbie Clarke Moderow and Her Journeys as Dog Musher and Writer](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/debbie-clarke-moderow/)
- [Box and Cylinder, Crystal and Flame: <br>Some Thoughts on Form and Tension](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/scott-nadelson/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/greetings/)
- [Opportunities](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/opportunities/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/announcements/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/publications/)
- [Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/literary-citizenship/)
- [Reaching Out, Giving Back: Profiles in Literary Citizenship](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/reaching-out-giving-back/)
- ["The Ugly Fringe of the Beautiful": <br>A Profile of Rigoberto González](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/profile-gonzalez/)
- [The Way(s) Forward: Essays by Seven RWW Faculty Members](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/the-ways-forward/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/greetings/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/publications-summer-2015/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/announcements-summer-2015/)
- [An Invitation: How Do You Make Time for Writing?](https://rwwsoundings.com/an-invitation-how-do-you-make-time-for-writing/)
- [The Sound of Writing: <br> Interview with New Faculty Member, Oliver de la Paz](https://rwwsoundings.com/the-sound-of-writing/)
- [Writing the Surreal Memoir](https://rwwsoundings.com/writing-the-surreal-memoir/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/greetings-summer-2015/)
- [Summer 2015 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2015-issue/)
- [Fall 2015 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2015-issue/)
- [Spring 2016 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2016-issue/)
- [Summer 2016 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2016-issue/)
- [Spring 2017 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/)
- [Summer 2017 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2017-issue/)
- [Fall 2017 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2017-issue/)
- [Spring 2018 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2018-issue/)
- [Greetings Summer 2014](https://rwwsoundings.com/greetings-summer-2014/)
- [Fall/Winter 2014 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-winter-2014-issue/)
- [Summer 2014 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2014-issue/)
- [Fall/Winter 2013 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/soundings-fallwinter-2013-2/fallwinter-2013-issue/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/publications/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/announcements/)
- [Profiles: Peggy Shumaker](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/profiles-peggy-shumaker/)
- [Writers Who Blog: Virtual Letters to the World](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/writers-who-blog-virtual-letters-to-the-world-by-kelli-russell-agodon-2/)
- [Talking Points and Tidbits](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/imaginary-winter-issue-article-i-by-bugs-bunny/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/winter-issue-2011/)
- [Spring 2011 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/winter-issue/)
- [Summer 2011 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/summer-2011-issue/)
- [Fall 2011 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/fall-2011-issue/)
- [Winter 2011 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/current-issue/)
- [Spring 2012 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/spring-2012-issue/)
- [Summer 2012 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/summer-2012-issue/)
- [Winter 2012 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/back-issues/back-door/)
- [Spring 2013 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2013-issue/)
- [Summer 2013 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2013-issue/)
- [Spring 2014 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/soundings-spring-2014/spring-2014-issue/)
- [Spring 2015 Issue](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2015-issue/)
- [Craft Essays on Trimming <br> by Lia Purpura, Meghan McClure, and Hilary Schaper](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2016-issue/craft-essays-on-trimming/)
- [<i>Soundings</i> History](https://rwwsoundings.com/soundings-history/)
- [Publications](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/publications/)
- [Announcements](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/announcements/)
- [Literary Citizenship: An Interview with Michael Schmeltzer](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/literary-citizenship/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/greetings/)
- [The Imaginative Power of Fact](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/imaginative-power/)
- [The Poem at Hand: A Profile of Jenny Johnson](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/the-poem-at-hand/)
- [The Rules of the Dance:<br>Proposing an AWP Panel Like You Really Mean It](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2017-issue/the-rules-of-the-dance/)
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- [A Conversation with Tracy Daugherty](https://rwwsoundings.com/fall-2016-issue/daugherty-conversation/)
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- [What and So What: Loyalties](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2016-issue/loyalties/)
- [Across Three Time Zones <br> An interview with alumni Natalie Tilghman and Bill Sommer](https://rwwsoundings.com/summer-2016-issue/across-three-time-zones/)
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- ["At-Risk Poetry"](https://rwwsoundings.com/at-risk-poetry/)
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- [Nameless Daffodils, Commas, and Passion: <br>  Thirty Years of Editor/Author Work with Judith Kitchen](https://rwwsoundings.com/nameless-daffodils/)
- [Curious Gifts: Remembering Judith Kitchen (1941-2014)](https://rwwsoundings.com/curious-gifts/)
- [RWW 2014 Retreat](https://rwwsoundings.com/reunion/)
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- [The Welcome Mat: <br> How Chaos Encouraged My Outside Experience(s)](https://rwwsoundings.com/the-welcome-mat/)
- [Glimpses of the God: A Conversation with C. Dale Young, Recipient of The Stanley W. Lindberg Editor’s Award](https://rwwsoundings.com/glimpses-of-the-god/)
- [Between Havoc and Responsibility—Good Lord, What to Do?](https://rwwsoundings.com/havoc-and-responsibility/)
- [Greetings ](https://rwwsoundings.com/greetings-fall-2014/)
- [A Note From <i>Soundings</i> Staff](https://rwwsoundings.com/disclaimer-fall-2014/)
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- [Profile: Barrie Jean Borich](https://rwwsoundings.com/profile-barrie-jean-borich/)
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- [Profile: Poet and Incoming RWW Director, Rick Barot](https://rwwsoundings.com/soundings-spring-2014/spring-2014-profile-of-rick-barot/)
- [Greetings](https://rwwsoundings.com/soundings-spring-2014/spring-2014-greetings/)
- [Nocturne for Left Hand, 1988](https://rwwsoundings.com/soundings-spring-2014/spring-2014-feature-essay-scott-nadelson/)
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- [Small World (Without End): From Me-More to Memoir](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2013-issue/small-world-without-end/)
- [Interview: Sam Ligon,Winner of the 2012 Stanley Lindberg Editor’s Award](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2013-issue/interview-sam-ligon/)
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- [RWW Alumni Retreat 2012](https://rwwsoundings.com/spring-2013-issue/rww-alumni-retreat-2012/)
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