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I'm so happy to announce that Door Is a Jar Literary Magazine will be publishing my poem "A Moth with Hummingbird Wings" this December! The piece will appear in Issue 33 Winter 2024, which will be available in print from various Barnes & Nobles, Books-a-millions, and indie bookstores across the U.S. You can subscribe to the Door Is a Jar Newsletter and keep an eye on my website and social media accounts for updates.
I loved writing poems throughout my childhood and teenage years but left poetry behind when I decided to focus primarily on novels in adulthood. Then, from 2017 to 2018, I wrote numerous Edgar Allan Poe-inspired poems for The Raven's Tale and remembered the magic and satisfaction I experienced when crafting poetry in my youth.
In April 2020, shortly after I underwent a lumpectomy for breast cancer, while I awaited the start of my radiation treatments, I began writing poetry by hand in a journal. It was my way of coping with cancer and my separation from many of my loved ones during the terrifying early months of the pandemic. A documentation of the chaos of 2020, chronicled in verse.
This past April, because it was National Poetry Month, I challenged myself to start submitting some of those poems to literary magazines. I had actually written "A Moth with Hummingbird Wings" shortly before it was accepted, but it was also fueled by my experiences of the past 4+ years.
We'll see if any of my other pieces find homes in the near future. For now, poetry has been helping me stay in touch with my love of writing while I continue to heal from the novel-writing burnout that I've discussed in a previous post.
