This year’s installment of Women Speak is almost out, and here’s the cover. So proud to be included alongside so many wonderful women writers. Yay!

Writer, Teacher
This year’s installment of Women Speak is almost out, and here’s the cover. So proud to be included alongside so many wonderful women writers. Yay!


The newest Women Speak anthology is out. I’m proud to have three poems in it. The anthology focuses on women writers in Appalachia. In this issue, Volume 10, you will find work by Sheila Carter-Jones, Natalie Sypolt, Linda Parsons, Chrissie Anderson Peters, Lisa Kwong, and so many others! It’s edited by Ohio poet laureate, Kari Gunter-Seymour. Buy it here:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=VFPMU4FHXUN9L

I have a short story in Troublesome Rising: a Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky. This anthology focuses on the historic flood in summer 2022. So many people lost their lives in that flood, and University Press of Kentucky decided to publish this anthology in remembrance of them.
I’m proud to be included in this beautiful book with so many good writers! Here’s a link to purchase it:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781950564422/troublesome-rising/
Y’all, I have exciting news! My book, Daughters of Muscadine, has just won the Tennessee Book Award in fiction! This is a huge honor. It comes with a $2,500 cash prize, and I’m invited to give a talk with Denton Loving and Rachel Louise Martin, the poetry and nonfiction winners, at the Southern Festival of Books this Sunday. I’m grinning big as can be! ❤️❤️❤️

I read Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn several years ago, and I also enjoyed that movie adaptation. Right now, I’m listening to the sequel, Long Island. This book follows Eilish and the events that occur after she and Tony have been married for twenty years. They are living in New York with their two children, and they live near Tony’s brothers and mother. The opening of the book really hooked me. A complete stranger with an aggressive posture shows up at Eilish’s door. The stranger sounds like an Irishman, and he says that Eilish’s husband has impregnated the Irishman’s wife. He goes on to say he refuses to raise the bastard and that he will deliver the baby to Eilish’s door once it is born. Eilish is shocked and hurt. She doesn’t want the baby, and she’s surprised and mortified to learn that her mother-in-law is considering adopting the baby.
This book reminds us that Eilish also had an affair in the previous book. We catch up to Eilish’s previous lover in here, and I like that I don’t know where exactly the author is going with these two storylines.
I’m only about six chapters along so far, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s a good premise for a book. I like the family dynamics in the story, and I have always loved domestic novels! I look forward to finishing this one.
