I can finally share news I’ve been sitting on since January! I will be one of ten writers—five poets and five novelists—featured in “Resistance: An Anthology of Overcoming.”
The book will be published this summer by Awatum Press; the hard-cover pre-sale began this week.
This two-volume series examines the nature of resistance through different lenses—one literary, the other academic—to arrive at a more full understanding.
Poets and novelists explore resistance as a human tension that permeates many aspects of our lives. The companion volume features essays written by PhD’s at universities around the world that examine the philosophy of resistance in society.
And in a world of AI posing as creativity, I must tip my cap to the team at Awatum for working with the Museo del Prado to secure the rights to Goya’s “Second of May” for the cover.
In addition to my collaboration with Awatum Press, I am busy writing my next full length poetry collection.
When I began writing my new collection, I had in mind a story arc that would start in the less fearful days before the after in which we now find ourselves: democracies in decline and autocracies ascendant; an epidemic of loneliness; our sleepwalk into the unknowns of AI; the degradation of natural resources; war inflicted by dime-store drones.
But that story would have been wrong because it diminishes our uniquely human superpower:
hope.
Bad days don’t replace good days. The reverse is more true. In the after-times ahead, we reclaim our right to trust, to be happy, to feel free.
Better days that have always followed depressions, wars, and epidemics. If this history repeats, as it has, the after-times ahead will bring a resurgence of optimism.
In my first collection, Seeking Ordinary Joy, I traced the journey we take from restlessness to happiness. This collection may be its prequel—a reflection on the tensions we endure, and the choice we ultimately make to move forward
Seeking Ordinary Joy 