Yeah, I know, Wile E. Coyote isn’t saintly, but all those years ago, watching Saturday morning Looney Tunes, young me empathized with him way more than with the smug, always-victorious Roadrunner. I hereby salute everyone giving creative chase this summer, painting tunnels on rocks, building devious literary contraptions to trap a fleeting spirit, even knowing we’ll take a lot of canyon falls.
I recently revised a brief lyric essay starring Wile E. and Krazy Kat and placed it under submission, along with a lot of poems, as I hunt out which magazines are open during these dog days (Virginia’s humidity blanket has settled on my valley). Oh, Ploughshares, how I’ve tried and tried to snag your attention almost every June for decades now: will I ever catch you? Some of my poetry submissions from earlier this spring landed well, thanks to editors at The Common, Ecotone, and SWWIM Every Day. Thanks, as well, to a few editors for sending me encouraging notes with their rejections. The longer I trudge through the desert, the more I appreciate that kindness.
Here’s what my summer and fall look like in terms of venturing out of my lair (I keep my Events page up-to-date as things crop up):
- Jun. 16, 6 pm EDT: MER Launch Party Pt. 2, fast-paced virtual reading, 1 poem per writer
- Jun. 28, 3-6 pm EDT: Poet Camp Virtual Workshop: Poetry from the Underworld
- Jul. 31, 6:30 pm: Chain Letters, 960 Monacan Trail, Charlottesville, VA–a reading series I’ve never been to before
- Aug. 12-16: Telluride Mushroom Festival, Telluride, CO
- Sept. 13, 2-4 pm: Stone Soup Books, Eco-Poetry Reading and Workshop with Jeanne Larsen and Sarah Ann Winn, Waynesboro, VA
- Oct. 4: Old Dominion Literary Festival, Norfolk, VA
- Nov. 12-14: Poets for Science Gathering, Kent State University, OH
I tuned into Pt. 1 of the MER Launch Party yesterday and it was really good. The editors there, including the late and much-missed Jennifer Martelli, put a high priority on emotional power and vulnerability, so all the pieces felt like they mattered. The group was large yet the reading felt intimate.
I’ve been getting my calendar together as an editor, too. Shenandoah has added a “no AI” clause to its submission page (sigh–suspect pieces have appeared in the subs), and I recalibrated a couple of reading periods as the lead editors set up more lead time for issue production, which has been crunched up till now. I’ve already filled the poetry sections for Fall ’26 and Spring ’27, believe it or not (and the issues will be GREAT–those poems are the bomb). Inside info, since the submission page isn’t quite up to date: I’ll read poetry twice during the coming academic year.
- GRAYBEAL GOWEN PRIZE FOR VIRGINIA POETS: Sept. 1-15, 2026, free to enter for 3 poems, prize $1000 plus publication, and the final judge of the 12 finalists will be Denise Duhamel (we sometimes publish a couple of other poems from that pool, too, FYI). You have to have lived in VA for 2+ years at some point during your life, per donor restrictions, but you don’t have to live here now. This pool never hits the cap, so you’re safe to submit any time during the reading period.
- OPEN SUBMISSIONS: starting January 15, 2027, free submissions, submit up to 5 poems/ 10 pages, $80 per poem upon publication. Be prepared to submit that day–lots do and we’ll hit the cap of 200 faster than you can choke on the Roadrunner’s dust plume. I’ll be reading here for the Fall ’27 issue. Note, if you’ve published in Shenandoah before, that Ed-in-Chief Beth Staples has set a rule to separate each author’s magazine appearance by 5 years–a long time, but it allows us to include as many different voices as possible.
- Another period will open in sometime in Spring ’27 for the Spring ’28 issue, TBD by our guest editorial fellow in poetry. Stay tuned.
Otherwise, lots of chores are hitting including, yikes, submitting my book orders for fall classes. I’m doing all right, though, at prioritizing writing for part of each day. After hard work on the next poetry collection, I’m letting that project rest for a while and pivoting to prose. I spent last weekend in Pittsburgh doing site research for what may one day be my third novel, and now I’m starting to draft it.
The second novel is under editorial submission. Cross your fingers for me. Only a persistent coyote has a chance of catching the bird, right?
