I have written extensively about motherhood and related concerns, both formal and informal writing, published and shared in various formats. Some of those articles have been for national groups or local publications, but I have decided not to link those to my author page. As my children grow into adults and the internet itself changes, I prefer not to have them tangled into my writing career. This is the primary reason there is a large gap in my writing resume in my twenties and thirties.
I have have had editorials published in the Eugene Register-Guard.
Here is a detailed article for the Curvy Sewing Collective.
I appreciate how much I have learned about size , fat positivity, and body neutrality through participating in forums through the Curvy Sewing Collective, the Cashmerette Club, and related movements on Instagram.
I am committed to portraying size diversity in my writing, just like real human beings come in all shapes and sizes.
Poetry
In high school, I became a successful spoken word poet and performer. In the ’90’s as poetry slams became popular, I won the student division of every single poetry slam in Alaska, both individual and group events, for my entire time in high school. I am even more proud that I was able to take this success and bring performances and discussions about poetry to a larger audience.
For instance, my team won the first all-district high school poetry slam, but when the Anchorage Daily News quoted some of our poems and included pictures of our tongue-in-cheek name and costumes, it turned into a discussion in one of the private high schools about the dangers of dark poetry and language. Through another connection, I was invited to be a guest speaker in the classroom in question, where we turned the discussion to poetry and literature as outlets for honest emotion, and created energetic connection and discussion between a liberal alternative school and conservative Christian school. I was invited to be a guest speaker at other literature classes as well.
In my senior year, I was invited to serve on the committee to create monthly community poetry readings featuring one community reader, one from the university, and one at the high school level. I was the high school liason, and after opening the first reading with other well-known poets, I helped select other high school poets from the community and provide any support they needed for a confident and dynamic reading.
I continued to compete in poetry slams, but my primary love was for the connective power of poetry in performance, so I continued to move further towards readings and concerts instead of simply competitions. At the end of my senior year, I presented an entire full-length poetry recital at Side Street Espresso; this one was entirely by poets other than myself. I no longer recall the program, but I remember particularly enjoying reciting Langston Hughes.
In my first year in college, I was admitted into a small and selective poetry class taught by the poet in residence at Smith College. After that point, I did not pursue the obvious path of working towards publishing my poetry, mostly because it was always the interactive, musical, dynamic experience of poetry performance that was my greatest passion.
If you read my novels today, you can see the influence of years reading and training as poet. I strive to apply the perfectionism that is essential to poetry to an entire novel-length work, finding the precise word that conveys the right meaning while upholding (or interrupting) the natural iambic rhythm of English, and listening for the way each character speaks the same way that I used to listen for the best emphasis to present each individual poem.
