The Big News

Friends, I've been okay-ed to let out my recent good news. Sorry for the unnecessary mystery lately, but here we go:

I'm thrilled to announce that NYQ Books, the book imprint of New York Quarterly magazine, will publish my first book, a collection of poems entitled After the Ark.

It's looking like a Spring 2011 release, which is perfect for me as I'm not in any huge hurry to get it out there, I just want a book I can be proud of, one that folks can get their hands on if they're interested in reading it. One in which the poems look like poems should look. It's still surreal. I'm still dumb with excitement, disbelief, and gratitude. Not to get all Roberto Beinigni on you guys (where he coins the phrase "a hailstorm of kindness"), but it's been a joy to have this space in which to share my boons and disappointments, whether or not they're literary or personal, it's always been a source of encouragement for me to know that there are so many others (you guys!) out there struggling and succeeding in these same pursuits (literature, life). I started this blog in Fall of '07 as an unpublished entering-MFA-student as a way of proving to my friends that I was, in fact, writing something (anything). Now we're here, a first book on the way and new poems being written. As my folks in North Carolina say: "Well, I'll be."

Thanks-a-million everyone. Much more to come on this front. Stay tuned.

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We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

-via New York Times

Interesting and crazy stuff, that there.

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Saw these guys at block party. Love this video (dig that Seattle public transport).