Have you missed me?

Hoooooooooooy boy. Have I let this blog drag. 

Welcome back to Kat’s Corner Take Two: Electric Boogaloo. I’m hoping these posts will be a more regular occurrence, but with the demands of PhD life (takes drag from cigarette in ornate cigarette holder as smoke encircles my head,) I’m not sure how viable this goal will be in the long run. But for now, for the summer, we’re giving it our best shot. 

A lot has happened since we last spoke (typed?) I went to Bishkek on a Critical Language Scholarship (thank you, U.S. State Department,) I started a PhD program in Comparative Literature at New York University (thank you, The Powers That Be in The Department,) and just finished my first year with straight A’s. In the meantime, I’ve also completed a novel rewrite, a novella rewrite, and am still sending out my second collection, GRIEF SUITE, into the wide, wide world, hoping against hope that someone picks her up. 

I’ve also published fiction! I’m a short fiction writer now too! You can check out my short story A MIRROR FOR THE DEAD at The Masters Review here. 

You can check out my other short story, a finalist for the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Short Fiction Prize and published by The Lindenwood Review, SINGING AT CLOCKS, here. 

And a third one, WRAITH, is incoming in the next issue of the minnesota review. 

Life is funny. I always thought fiction was beyond me—not in a self-doubting way, not really, but when you’ve spent years and years of your career branding yourself as a Poet with a capital P, somewhere along the literal line, you start to wonder if prose outside of prose poetry will always remain elusive. I’m so happy to be proven wrong. I grew up scribbling little stories (my favorite being Countess Violetta and her lover Fernando, who somehow survived getting tossed out of a castle into the ocean and showed up, dripping wet somehow, to her wedding years later. Literal years.) and it really did wonders for my confidence to finish a longer fiction project and then another, and have ideas for another and another locked and loaded. I’ve crossed over to the dark side. 

I believe I’ll find my way back to poetry eventually—I actually have begun writing little poems towards a new manuscript—but the process is slow-going. I’m rediscovering myself as a poet, with new concerns and new experiences and new material to boot to mine and dissect within the cages of sonnets and villanelles and haikus. In the meantime, I’m able to surround myself with incredible work—I was honored to spend time with Susan L. Leary’s MORE FLOWERS, forthcoming from Trio House Books in 2026; it’s truly a feat, and a book I wish I had the guts to have written. What a gift, when a writer you admire so much pulls off not one, but two hat tricks. (Also everyone go wish Susan a happy first book birthday for her collection, DRESSING THE BEAR. That is also a feat, and one of the best books on grief that I’ve ever read.) I’m currently reading through Dylan Webster’s FIGURES IN THE DESERT and Alex Gurtis’ THE GLASS PSALM and enjoying myself immensely. Poets! What a concept. 

Also, new poem in Zócalo Public Square, thanks to the generous inclusion by Airea D. Matthews in her June curation. Honored to be sharing virtual space with Phillip B. Williams, CM Burroughs, and Jonah Mixon-Webster. Check it out here.

In that same vein, it’s BAD ANIMAL’s second birthday. I’m going to repeat myself from my social media posts here: two years of shock, delight, and grateful acknowledgment. Writing a book like BAD ANIMAL was hard work, and to find it still resonating with readers is the best gift. It’s all I wanted for the book to begin with. Continued thanks and an ocean of flowers to Courtney LeBlanc and Riot in Your Throat for giving this book the chance to live. Thank you to every person who has taken the time to read, buy a copy or copies, and supported me and this book through the years. We can’t thank you enough.

Highlight Reel:

• Reviewed positively in LitHub.

• Winner of the 2024 CNY Book Award

• Will be taught in a UNIVERSITY (!!!!!!) come fall.

• Found on the shelves of The Spiral Bookcase, Yu & Me Books, Grolier Poetry Bookshop, and the Harvard Coop, among others.

• Featured at the Gaithersburg Book Festival.

• Readings in Philly, Burlington, Syracuse, and Gaithersburg.

  
  

It’s here I must make a plug for my own material in the interest of my grocery bills: in honor of BAD ANIMAL’S second birthday, we’re having a bit of a sale! I’ve got five copies of the book and two of my shitty college relationships chapbook, SMALL GEOMETRIES. If you’re interested in one of the BAD ANIMAL copies, it’s $12, and if you’d like a chapbook in there too, it’s $15. DM if you’re interested! Supplies are distinctly limited.

I wish I could go back in time and tell Baby Kat, who was writing poems towards death in high school, that one day, her older self would be writing this post. I’m thinking of all the versions of myself who have existed and shaped my writing. So many things could have happened, so many books could have been written between those shades that dog my steps. But this universe is where this book lives. This book changed my life and continues to bring comfort to others. Again: that’s all I wanted for it. 

I hope soon that I’ll have more news for you on the book front, but until then, I’ll sign off. 

Yours, 

Kat