"Poems That Helped Me Write Novels" on the Submittable Blog & Upcoming Events

It's my birthday, and I'm home in Brooklyn. Today is full of treats. Mimosas and chocolate croissants with my family (and bagels, but I've been gorging on bagels since Saturday and have nearly reached my bagel limit), a stroll by Prospect Park, and a reading from Daughters of the Air at WORD Brooklyn at 7 pm. If you're in town and free, I hope you'll come! There will be wine and treats.Over on the Submittable blog, I have a craft essay on poetry's effect on my prose. Here's how it begins:

Poems are tuning forks. When I am lost in the darkness of a novel-in-progress, fumbling through and then and then and then, they key me back into the precise and intimate. They pull me closer to the unknowable.  continue reading

After tonight I have two more stops on my east-of-the-Mississippi tour, in Chicago on Saturday, March 3 at The Book Cellar, with Gint Aras, and then three events at AWP in Tampa: Strange Theater: A Menagerie of Fabulists (Thursday, 3/8, 7 pm); a book signing at Lanternfish Press's table at the book fair Friday (3/9) from 10-11:30 am; and Spontaneous Reading Party by C & R Press Friday (3/9, 7 pm), celebrating the release of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Source Book For Creative Writing. Then I'm back on the West Coast for the next little while, with a full docket of events you can see here. Huzzah!