Spring! Almost!

Hello all, happy almost April!

It's hard to believe that we're at the end of another month, the third in this year, because time isn't real and New Years didn't just happen and what is time anyway? I never know where the time goes but the thought is so unoriginal that I hestitate to write it out to begin with.

Let's start at the top. What's happened since last we chatted? Not all that much. But some stuff. The main thing I did the last month was travel, travel, and travel. Mostly work-related, but some recreational stuff in there too.

I attended the American Comparative Literature Association annual conference in Montreal----my first time spending time in Canada beyond Niagara Falls, and it was lovely. I took the 12-13 hour train ride there and back, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. That is, the way up: barely anyone in the train car, the winter landscape hushed and still, quietly crocheting a sweater in my seat, barely getting stopped at the border. The ride back to NYC, and the hour and a half we got stopped at the border, less so.

The sweater I was working on on the train ride up to Montreal.

Then, and less grand, the realization after I'd crossed the border that I did not have my global roaming turned on and could not for the life of me google how to, because, no service. But we made it with minimal (after that episode) hassle, and I made it to my dear friend Delia's and got many hugs, so it was all worth it.

Montreal is delightful, and somewhere I could definitely see myself living in the long run. More than the unique staircases and relatively low rent and friends in the area, something else stood out: my ability to use my French. I grew up speaking French and English, and although my French was beyond rusty, jockeying as it was for space with Russian and all the other smatterings of languages that I have somehow in the course of my life acquired, speaking it again felt like coming home. My inner child was so beyond happy, I spent the days I was there using it as much as possible, and I was shocked at how much came bounding back once I was in the thick of it. Immersion really is the best teacher.

Poutine cam!

Ate some truly delightful poutine as a bonus, and also saw some wild posters (see below the poutine for an advertisement in the same eatery.)

Then it was off to Baltimore for the Association of Writers and Programs Conference, otherwise known as AWP. Now anyone who knows me knows that AWP and I have somewhat of a love-hate relationship. Every other year, something absolutely bad has happened to me at this thing, and honestly, I've resigned myself to it because it's the one time a year I'm able to see my writer friends and hang out, and it's great. When it's good, it's great. But let's do a roundup.

I think I'm good without the borsch being sexualized, but you know what, you do you, poutinerie.

AWP Philly: got mugged! My first time at AWP, and I got mugged.

AWP Seattle: Nothing happened. Lovely time.

AWP Kansas City: I got a concussion the night before the conference started and had to work four days in a professional capacity, unaware that I had badly injured myself because I have zero sense of self-preservation.

AWP LA: Nothing, because a grad schoool stipend does not typically make AWP in Los Angeles possible.

AWP Baltimore: Found out the morning of the last day about some bad health news of a dear family member.

But there were bright moments. I got to link up with some poet friends of mine: the wonderful Alex Gurtis, Susan L. Leary, whose new book More Flowers I was honored to blurb just came out from Trio House Press, and Mckendy Fils-Aimé, whose debut book, sipèstisyon, is being published by YesYes Books in June 2026. I got to read new work from what I hope will be my third poetry collection, Fragile Acts, and it brought the house down, if I do say so myself. I sold out of my first poetry collection, Bad Animal and the Riot in Your Throat table. I got to stay with a beloved best friend of mine from college and she whooped my ass at marbles and I couldn't even be mad about it. I am trying to resist the urge to catastrophize all the time, and this was a balm against all the existential dread that is ubiquitous these days.

While at AWP, I also got to pick up my contributor copy of the new Ocean State Review which features two poems from my unpublished second collection, GRIEF SUITE, "Suicide Note" and "Ask." You can check them out below.

Now we're back to our regularly scheduled grind. I'm 27,000 words deep on the Chile novel, and gearing up for finals----hard to believe the end of the second year of my PhD isn't that far off anymore.

All the best, and get some rest,

Kathryn