I have not updated my blog since last year, a much larger break then usual. However it has been an eventful year so far. I have had more dental work then I care to recount.

More importantly I am teaching again, a composition class, at Seattle Pacific University. The student population of the school is very different then Berkeley, where I taught in New York. Most of my students currently live on campus and Berkeley did not even have dorms. Next quarter I am going to be teaching an advanced fiction writing class for juniors and seniors which should be fun. I often feel like fiction and poetry are two children, both insisting on my attention and deeply unhappy when I ignore one in favor of the other, even for an hour so.

Because fiction is about to demand a large chunk of my writerly time and attention again, I am going to appease the poet in me by going to Hedgebrook for a week in March between quarters. Hedgebrook is a non profit female only writers retreat on Whidby Island. When I am there I will attend a week long workshop with Carolyn Forché, which is an incredible opportunity. There will only be five of us in the workshop. We will get to stay in our own cabins with our own wood burning stoves which sounds very nice. I plan to get a great deal of writing done.

In other poetry related news my second chapbook, Incident Reports: The Vanishing, was just accepted for publication in 2014 . I don’t know if I am able to say the name of the publisher yet, so I will withhold that information for now, I will say that I am very excited about it.

The last point is somewhat unrelated to writing, but Jacob and I have decided to give up TV shows and movies for Lent. Neither of us are Catholic, but I really like participating in aspects of Lent. Jacob actually came up with the idea,  because he really likes a challenge and he thought we would benefit from a little less TV in our lives. It has given us a lot more time to do things like read, write, and pastel, which is nice.

Next week I will be participating in The Next Big Thing Blog Hop, because I was tagged by the wonderful Jennifer Bullis and by then I should be able to share lots of details about my upcoming chapbook.