I’m happy to share the publications that I’ve published in 2022. A special thanks to all the editors who selected my work: Doug Draa, Lis Goryniuk-Ratajczak, Shashi Bhat, and Jordan Hirsh.
Prose:
The Adjacent Possible, Weirdbook Magazine #45; Doug Draa, Editor; Wildside Press, Publisher; Cabin John, Maryland; July 2022
Mianong and Capture of the Kawag-Kawag: EventMagazine; Shashi Bhat, Editor; Published by Douglas College, New Westminster, B.C., Canada; Winter/Spring 2022
C, Eye to the Telescope No. 43: “Light,” Jordan Hirsch, Editor, January 2022
Thank you to Lis and the team at Vraeyda Literary’s MacroMicroCosm journal for publishing three of my speculative poems: Ansible Dreams, We Small Readers, and Chaos Theory (The Mandlebrot Set). It’s always exciting when my work finds a home!
My poems can be read via purchasing either the print or PDF version of the journal.
About Astral
A mighty shout out to the two prose pieces within Astral, Matthew Buscemi’s To Shape the Future, and Sacha Rosel’s Into Something Rich and Strange (from Chapter 1 of her newly released novel My Heart is The Tempest). We have multiple pieces of poetry from longstanding contributor Adrienne Stevenson, Peter Graarup Westergaard (from his Warning Light Calling collection done in a dissident Soviet style, not dogma), and returning contributor Matthew Fast, who has the prestige to have been in the primordial issue of MacroMicroCosm years ago. Fast’s poetry is based off his song lyrics for the upcoming The Far Lands album, and I am pumped about hearing it via bandcamp when it hits Abram’s Epilogue.
Michael Janairo gives us three poems, while Sapha Burnell closes us off with one we used to end Volume 7 and bring on the stellar theme to Volume 8. Art by Sarah Melgoza & Katelyn Lane surrounds the poetry, while our last contributor is a posthumous submission by the estate of Cotrina Graham Smith. We hope you enjoy seeing 1980’s layouts, we got a kick out of them! So much so we featured the poems ‘as is’.
About MacroMicroCosm
A Quarterly Digital literary & art journal dedicated to speculative fiction, art & literary criticism. A celebration of the weird, strange and perceptibly odd. A review of books, music, film & art. Home of our MacroMicroCosm Book Review Podcast& YouTube channel. Features articles on creative development & philosophy. MacroMicroCosm embraces a broad base of fiction and non-fiction with fantasy, magic realism, science-fiction and futurist elements in poetry, short story, art, photography, and comic.
This is my second poem in this publication, which is out of India. My first work was “Instructions for Astronauts,” which was in Issue 8. The new poem has been selected be a new editorial team, which started with Issue 15. I think Mithila Review does a great job of bringing together interesting writing and writers from around the world.
Thank you to Ishita Singh, the managing editor, and the whole crew at Mithila Review. Check it out.
More specifically, my poem, “An Offering,” has been nominated for a 2021 Rhysling Award in the category of long poem by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
The nominations are anonymous, so thank you to whoever nominated my poem.
One thing this means is that the poem is being republished in the 2021 Rhysling Anthology, edited by Alessandro Manzetti. You can pick up a copy, check out all the other great nominees, and support the work of speculative poets on the SFPA website.
Someday, 2020 will make sense. As the year draws to a close, there are a few pre-pandemic “lasts” to remember.
Last movie at a movie theater: “1917” on Feb. 2 — Glad I saw it in a theater on a big screen. At the theater I often go to, there is rarely a big crowd for the movies I want to see (and by then “1917” had been out for a while).
Last meal in a restaurant: Le Colonne Restaurant at the Hilton Hotel at Leonardo da Vinci International Airport on March 11 — The food was fine — I can’t remember what we had, but tables had been spread apart for social distancing, and there were diners at only about four other tables. We were only there to be sure to get our morning flight out of Rome, leaving the country early as more and more flights were being canceled, including our flights out of Genoa.
Last workout at the gym: Feb. 29 — I did some warmups and cooldowns, with a 5K run on the indoor track in between at a time of 33 minutes and 22 seconds
Last day working in person at the office: Tuesday, March 3.
Some great news today: Line of Advance, a nonprofit literary journal founded by three veterans of the war in Afghanistan, wrote me this morning to say I poem I wrote inspired by stories of my Lolo during World War II is a winner in the 2020 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Awards. The poem will be published online in September and in print in October in an anthology called Our Best War Stories.
I have always been proud of my family members’ military service, my uncle Raymond, killed in action in World War II, and my Lolo, father, and Uncle Tony — all three of them West Point grads. You can read a little bit more about my Lolo in a previous post.
Now I am also proud to be among the first group of civilians to be honored with this award, for both poetry and prose. This year was the first year military family members were invited to submit to the annual contest. I’m glad they expanded who is eligible. When you are part of a military family, a lot of your daily life is defined by the military experience—everyday things like where you live, where you shop, changes in schools and places of worship.
Thank you to Line of Advance, editor Christopher Lyke, and guest judge Katey Schultz, and congratulations to all the winners!
Among the winners, here are all the prize-winners in my category: poetry by a military family member:
Check out this video adaptation of Julian Peters’ poetry comic for this Emily Dickinson poem. The video is by Jim Avis. The comic is from Peters’ new book, Poems to See By: A Comic Artist Interprets Great Poetry(Plough Publishing)
Michael Janairo 