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Submission Opportunity: 2020 SFPA Poetry Contest
The 2020 SFPA Poetry Contest runs from June 1 through August 31, 2020 and is open to both non-members and members.
h+
Richard designed, developed, and maintained the original h+ Tucson website as well as the expanded h+ website for multiple chapters and new transhumanist-related content, including a gallery of transhumanist art, links, and other resources.
Painbow
Richard Leis created Painbow after he witnessed and experienced two incidents of discrimination. His idea was to briefly describe each situation, include the hurtful statement itself, and provide a short response.
RADIO Frontier Channel
RADIO Frontier Channel was a podcast from Frontier Channel hosted by Richard Leis in 2005 that included science and technology news and interviews with scientists at the University of Arizona.
![Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center from The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth - This view of Earth's horizon as the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean was taken by an Expedition 7 crew member onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Anvil tops of thunderclouds are also visible." [Credit from Wikipedia]](https://richardleis.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/main-earth-header-2020-2.jpg?w=800&h=600&crop=1)
Frontier Channel
The Frontier Channel website edited by Richard Leis provided news and commentary about the “Great Frontiers of cyberspace, outer space, the ocean, and destinations in between.”
Flashpocalypse Short List
My flash fiction story “The Canal” was shortlisted for The Molotov Cocktail’s latest quarterly flash contest: Flashpocalypse!
Review: Lightspeed Issue 120 (May 2020)
Lightspeed’s May 2020 issue includes stories by some of my favorite authors, and some new favorites.
Review: In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland
At 94 pages, In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland is a quick read, but be warned that the mounting tension might require an occasional break to catch your breath. You’re going to need the oxygen: the final third of the book, when the breathless pace escalates and characters become even more desperate, becomes unputdownable.
Review: Cricket Hunters by Jeremy Hepler
Cricket Hunters subverts the usual tropes and nostalgia of coming-of-age horror by reaching for something even darker in this tale of friendship and rivalry
Review: Midnight in the Graveyard Edited by Kenneth W. Cain
I have definitely been in the mood for ghost stories, and Midnight in the Graveyard, the first anthology from Silver Shamrock Publishing, delivers the ghostly goods!
Review: Phreak by JE Solo
Phreak often worked against my narrative expectations with its fragmented, time-jumping, and vignette-style approach, and in the process delivered a singular character whose clear and deeply felt recollections warn us how close we are to delivering a similarly bleak future to the next generation. You’ll want to get your hands on this novel as soon as possible.
Review: How We Broke by Bracken MacLeod and Paul Michael Anderson
This little novella full of big revelations and emotions really got to me.
Review: Snow by Ronald Malfi
The rapid pace doesn’t get in the way of good details and atmosphere; I felt the cold, eeriness, and rising tension along the way. What they encounter is creepy as hell and led to heart-pounding horror and heartbreaking deaths.
Review: We Are Monsters by Brian Kirk
It took me several pages to adjust to the direction Kirk takes later in the novel, but I was rewarded with an unexpectedly humane, emotional, and satisfying ending. Despite its challenges, We Are Monsters left me with a lot to enjoy and think about.
On a Successful 2020 Tucson Poetry Festival
Thank you to members of the board, featured poets, and attendees for a successful and sustaining 2020 Tucson Poetry Festival.
Tucson Poetry Festival Featured Poets Reading and Open Mic, April 18-19, 2020
The 2020 Tucson Poetry Festival will include workshops, a reading by the featured poets, and an open mic.
New Poem: “Witch House” in Eye to the Telescope Issue 36
“Little girls in white dresses skipping rope / & chanting singsong in slow motion we stole / from an 80’s horror film.”
Poets and Workshops at the Tucson Poetry Festival, April 18-19, 2020
When Director Melanie Madden suggested the theme for this year’s annual Tucson Poetry Festival—”Poetry to Sustain Us”—none of us on the Board could have predicted how even more necessary this sustenance would become in 2020.
New Poem: “Passage” in Impossible Archetype Issue 7
“I drove Pacific Northwest November numb / through trees like tall green drifts to the ocean / seething with chaos.”
A Submission Process
In this new post, I will provide tips and resources so that my workshop students and other writers can submit their best work to potential markets.
Writing Workshops for Spring and Summer 2020
In addition to my usual 8-week Writers Studio Tucson Workshop, I’m bringing back my popular online “Crafting Fantastic and Imaginative Worlds” workshop for poets and writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror!
New Short Story: “The Yogurt Swimmer” in Coppice & Brake
“A snout breaks the surface of Greek yogurt in the thirty-two-ounce container I have freshly opened and set on the counter. It sniffs cautiously, then sneezes and sprays yogurt everywhere. I yell. It pokes its entire head out and chirps.”
Review: Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors Edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey
So this is what today’s pro-level horror looks like.
New Short Story: “Rail Work” in HOZ Journal of Speculative Literature Volume 1
“Call it the Singularity or the Rapture, everywhere else in the world, people are young again, transitioning, becoming whatever mind becomes when there are no biological limits.”
Review: Ghosters 3: Secrets of the Bloody Tower by Diane Corbitt
What I like the most about Ghosters 3 are the characters and their personality quirks and other details that make them individual and interesting.
Learning to Horror
After years of focusing on literary poetry and fiction, including completing my undergraduate education in creative writing and taking writing workshops, I’m finally embracing my original genre aspirations.
New Poem: “Elysium to Lethe Through Athabasca Valles” in HiRISE’s MarsPoetica
“Lava, perfectly happy to flow / like water smoothly around / obstructions”
Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2019
I really, really, really want to reach 50,000 words in November and I want to do it in 2019 before the new decade starts and we’re in the far future.
Appearance Wrap-Up: “UNREAL: Readings from Writers Studio Tucson Teachers” at Antigone Books
Five of the writing instructors from The Writers Studio Tucson read unreal, dark, and surreal passages from a novel-in-progress, short stories, flash fiction, and poetry.
Upcoming Appearance: UNREAL at Antigone Books
I’m joining the other Writers Studio Tucson teachers at Antigone Books for a public reading from our latest works that focus on “the unusual, the dark, and the unreal.”
Move It to the Top
I have learned a valuable lesson about writing this year as a result of teaching writing workshops. This led to a breakthrough in writing poetry that has transformed my poems in the past few months. Here is what I have learned.
Philip Ivory’s “31 Days of Classic Horror”
Tucson writer and instructor Philip Ivory dives into “31 Days of Classic Horror” films on his “Write Yourself Sane” website, starting with 1931’s Dracula.
Shadow Award 2019 Short List
In the 2019 Shadow Award from The Molotov Cocktail, one of my entries landed me on the short list.
Fall 2019 Writing and Teaching
I’m preparing lesson plans and writing new exercises for two fall workshops at the Writers Studio.
Review: Kids by The Midnight
One musical act in particular is responsible for my current retrowave obsession: The Midnight.
New Poem: “November in Portland” in Impossible Archetype Issue 6
“Teenagers / grip their friends / to hold off the fact / of a classmate’s death.”
Summer 2019 Writing and Teaching
I’m currently preparing lesson plans and writing lessons for two summer 2019 workshops.
2019 Rhysling Anthology edited by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
Lots of good poems this year, but when I read the poems I later selected while voting for the Rhysling Awards, they really leapt out at me and I love them fiercely.
“Crafting Fantastic & Imaginative Worlds” at The Writers Studio!
I’m teaching a new 6-week workshop titled “Crafting Fantastic & Imaginative Worlds” and it uses The Writers Studio method of persona writing and critiquing. It begins Saturday, July 27, 2019.
Recommendation: “Forever Baby” by Dana Diehl in Cartridge Lit
Dana Diehl’s latest flash fiction piece titled “Forever Baby” and inspired by the game Stardew Valley is available on Cartridge Lit in the new “The Double Click Temple Issue.” Her story is awesome, sad, allegorical for so much, and you don’t need to know anything about Stardew Valley to appreciate it.
Summer Writing Workshops at the Writers Studio!
Two options for the beginning level writing workshop: Saturday morning with me and Wednesday evenings with Lela Scott MacNeil.
Supporting Professional Payment Rates in Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction Markets
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America sets the minimum payment rates for professional short fiction markets. In September, this rate rises from 6 cents per word to 8 cents per word.
Movie Review: Assimilate (2019)
Assimilate isn’t the cheap and nauseating found-footage film the trailer led me to believe it would be, but instead an effective low-budget thriller that relies too much on jump scares but tempers these with earned emotions and suspense.
New Poem: “Distraction” in Impossible Archetype Issue 5
“I watch light flicker under the bathroom door. / I watch the clock. / I watch one foot with a sock on jealous of the other.”
Review: The Low Passions by Anders Carlson-Wee
Anders Carlson-Wee’s poems in The Low Passions feel like they have exactly the right words; the perfect, accessible, blunt, beautiful, challenging, and surprising words.
The Limits of Success
I was not prepared for how much worse imposter syndrome would get once I started writing regularly, getting published, participating in public readings, teaching…
New Writing Instructor at the Writers Studio Tucson
I’m now a writing instructor at the Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona and I’ll be teaching an 8-week introductory workshop in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction beginning Saturday, April 20th!
Supreme Court Reinstates Transgender Military Personnel Ban
I condemn reinstatement of this bigoted ban by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
13 January 2019🎥 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a fantastic movie! I love the energy, art style(s), story, and characters. If this is the future of the Spider-Verse (and Venom 2 turns out to be a major improvement on the first one), then I’m eager for the franchise to expand.
Alice Hatcher Craft Class
📚 I participated in a fantastic craft class today with Alice Hatcher, author of The Wonder That Was Ours. She was interviewed by Reneé Bibby, Director of the Writers Studio Tucson, and local students in the Master and Advanced workshops.
Recommended: “What’s Done Can’t Be Undone” by Reneé Bibby and “CARBORUNDORUM > /DEV/NULL” by Annalee Flower Horne
How does the writer of genre fiction approach difficult subject matter like sexual assault? Two excellent and potentially triggering recent short stories by two fearless writers suggest two effective approaches.
Space as Solace During a Government Shutdown
The recent space activities I’m writing and posting about provide solace during this government shutdown that has furloughed most NASA and related departments employees and contractors.
“Meet Ultima Thule”
And Ultima and Thule, according to New Horizons’ principal investigator Alan Stern at today’s NASA press briefing, the informal names the team have given the two lobes of the red object out in the Kuiper Belt New Horizons spent New Year’s encountering. The contact binary connected by a neck of material indicates two objects that came together and stuck sometime in the distant past when these kinds of interactions were leading elsewhere in the solar system to accretions that would eventually form the planets and their moons.
New Year, New Day, New Image of Ultima Thule
During a morning press briefing aired on NASA TV on New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons mission team leaders revealed the latest best image of Ultima Thule. Still a blur, the Kuiper Belt body’s shape is more apparent in this latest image. Still unclear: are the two lobes connected or are they in fact two separate objects orbiting each other? The pole of the object was pointed toward the spacecraft, meaning Ultima Thule rotates from that perspective like a propellor. Artist and planetary scientist James Tuttle Keane has helped visualize this geometry in his illustration included next to the image.
New Horizons at Ultima Thule
6.5 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away from where some Earthlings are celebrating New Year’s Eve, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is beginning its close flyby of a tiny world in the Kuiper Belt known as Ultima Thule (2014 MU69.)
HERE: Poems for the Planet by Copper Canyon Press
New Kickstarter for HERE: Poems for the Planet, from Copper Canyon Press.
InSight Lander on Mars
As we do, the HiRISE team took a high resolution image of the InSight lander safe on the surface of Mars.
Review: Horror 101: The Way Forward edited by Joe Mynhardt
Horror 101: The Way Forward edited by Joe Mynhardt explores a tremendous territory of information, advice, and experience with essays written by many different creatives who work in the genre.
Review: Save the Cat by Blake Snyder
The tone and humor might be a little dated, even insensitive and problematic at points, but there’s no question that Save the Cat by Blake Snyder is a book packed with useful, easily digestible, but comprehensive information.
Preparing for NaNoWriMo 2018
I’ve written an entire novel before, a few of them in fact, but I’ve never completed 50,000 words during National Novel Writing Month in November.
Review: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas is beautiful, emotional, full of love, humor, and hope, and also horror and tragedy. It’s devastating.
Review: Nightmare Magazine, Issue 10
The highlight of this issue is most definitely the interview with Joe Hill. I haven’t read any of his work yet, but I’m really interested now that I’ve read this interview.
Review: The Wonder That Was Ours by Alice Hatcher
The Wonder That Was Ours by Alice Hatcher is a deeply moving novel that makes smart use of its narrator—the collective “we” of cockroaches—to explore the legacy of colonization. Hatcher’s collective cockroach narrator is funny and astute, and finds the disturbing and heartbreaking parallels between our species, while pointing out the ways humans might be far worse.
Review: Nightmare Magazine, Issue 9
An issue of mostly Lovecraftian horror (including an essay asking what the hell that even means.)
Review: TV Girls by Dana Diehl
With TV Girls—six incredible flash fiction stories in one fantastic chapbook—Dana Diehl’s compassion for reality TV stars flattened by the medium recovers their individuality and complexity by exploring in gorgeously-crafted prose how they are vulnerable, exploited, and managing the relentless attention.
Submission Class Contribution: “Work Schedule” on the Submittable Blog
“COMMANDMENTS
1. Work on one project at a time until finished.
2. I’ll be done when I’m done: Don’t set or worry about deadlines; finish and move on to the next task.”
New Poem: “Foolishly Into the Ocean”
“Divert the river from the ocean! / Divert the stream from river, / from lake. Divert the rain / from ground, / from rooftop, / from cloud.”
Review: For Every One by Jason Reynolds
I’ll keep this with me for a long time, and you should, too.
Recommended: “The Mushroom Hunters” by Neil Gaiman
“The Mushroom Hunters” by Neil Gaiman is one of the best poems I’ve read this year. It was my top pick when voting for the 2018 Rhysling Awards, and must have been for many others because it recently won in the long poem category!
A Few General Tips About Attending Craft Classes and Writing Workshops
How you participate in class can mean the difference between a rewarding learning experience and an utter waste of your—and everyone else’s—time and money.
Review: The 2018 Rhysling Anthology
Neil Gaiman’s “The Mushroom Hunters” was my personal favorite in the collection, along with Mary Soon Lee’s “Advice to a Six-Year-Old” and all her other poems, Linda D. Addison’s “Sycorax’s Daughters Unveiled”, Cislyn Smith’s “Hot”, and Shannon Connor Winward’s “The Raven’s Hallowe’en.”
“Getting some air, Atlas?”
Boston Dynamics occasionally uploads these short videos demonstrating their latest robotics technology and capabilities. I’m always amazed by the leap forward in movement smoothness and efficiency. 🤖
New Poems: “a haunting” & “Annular Eclipse” in Manzano Mountain Review #2
“the lizard / in the bathroom / where I left it alone / now dead”
“I knew not to reach for your back without rectangle welder’s glass.”
New Poem: “My Unbelievable Man” in The Laurel Review 50.2
“To see a man / My man / Invisible man / I plan accidentally to / meet every day”
New Short Story: “The Center of Dirty” in Cold Creek Review #5
“Rachel hung up on her mother while she was telling Rachel about her niece’s birthday party. The abrupt silence was packed with glass. Rachel stared at the dark screen of her phone until the greasy prints bothered her. She wiped the phone across her jeans and set it face down on the table. It rang. She brushed at crumbs.”
Sunday Task
How to group poems into manuscripts that will go out to several potential markets?
I have no idea.
New Poem: “Nervous Bambi” in Impossible Archetype Issue 3
”I’m dazzled by headlights / while flaming forest fire sits / smug on my couch under my roof / smoking up his coming out to me / like its air itself. He told me over the phone. / He’s here now. I pull from the breast / pocket of my work shirt a folded list / of questions I wrote.”
Review: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Simon and the other characters are the highlight of Simon vs the Homo sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, about a high school student on the verge of coming out as gay dealing with doubt, first love, and blackmail.
Review: The World to Come: Stories by Jim Shepard
Every single story in this collection of historical fiction and contemporary fiction pieces is breathtaking, full of incredible and often all-too-real details, and features characters (whether based on real people or not) that leap off the page.
Review: Third Class Superhero by Charles Yu
Short, genre-defying stories that look at people and things—mothers, relationships, language, infidelity, etc.—in unexpected ways.
Review: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
An incredible if interminable reading experience made nauseating by deplorable racist interjections (sometimes an excruciating chapter long) and gory slaughter.
Review: Shekhinah by Eleanor Wilner
I find Wilner’s style to be very straightforward and clear (as is her reading style) and her poems full of beautiful sensory detail and movement, featuring persona narrators who are typically distant and generally focus almost all their attention on the subject and themes of the poem.
Recommended: “Leave” By Katie Predick
I’ve been fortunate to have been in several workshops with Katie Predick, a poet I highly regard. Her poetry is rich with images and surprises as she explores myth and nature and themes of womanhood and parenthood, relationships, science, and human impact on the environment (she’s also an accomplished scientist.)
Recommended: “How We Cured Racism” by Philip Ivory
This is a story that will get under your skin, no pun intended.
Appearance Wrap-Up: “Room: A Literary Reading” at Antigone Books
Last Friday, two other writers and I from the Writers Studio Tucson had the singular opportunity to read our fiction and poetry that we wrote in response to a spooky prompt by guest judge Ted McLoof for the third annual “Write-to-Read” contest: “Three people wake up in a room. They have no idea how they … Continue reading Appearance Wrap-Up: “Room: A Literary Reading” at Antigone Books
Happy National Coming Out Day!
I came out to my mom twenty years ago, the day after Ellen Degeneres came out on national television. I was so inspired but I was so terrified. I could only make the attempt over the telephone and I couldn’t even say the words; I made my mom guess until I finally said “Yes” when … Continue reading Happy National Coming Out Day!
Notebook Full of Poetry Fragments
A tiny celebration for a small accomplishment: a little notebook full of handwritten poetry fragments.
Book Review: Lace & Pyrite by Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil
A short chapbook of beautiful epistolary poems between Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay. Ostensibly about their individual gardens, the scope of these poets’ poems frequently expands in breathtaking ways.
Book Review: Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
I know when poems are working for me when the images suddenly erupt in vivid virtual reality in my mind and I gasp; several poems in this collection had those effects on me.
Movie Review: Everything is Free
When I say that Brian Jordan Alvarez’s queer film Everything is Free is not afraid of penises, I mean that as high praise … and this is your opportunity to bail out of this review if this isn’t subject matter you’re comfortable with.
Movie Review: Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World)
My goodness is this a rich, complex, brutally emotional movie that I need to watch a hundred more times.
New Poem: “Looking Ahead”
“I’ve seen the eclipse already. / I’ve seen how it begins: / the radiant sun, the vanished / moon. See how they are going / to collide, the many decisions / the moon made, the sun in its / place and bright and not waiting, / but willing.”
My First Published Poem: “Roadside Freak Show” in Impossible Archetype Issue 2
“The thing crafted from fabric and plaster, / more pile of dirt and wet cardboard / than realistic human skeleton, lies / under glass in a white cinderblock / coffin elevated over the concrete floor / in the last of three corrugated steel sheds / at the roadside attraction.”
New Poem: “Condemn”
“Condemn / Condemn / when necessary / Condemn / Condemn white supremacists kkk nazis / whatever name gone by Condemn / always”
Making the Poet
I don’t believe in natural talent. I use “believe” on purpose because I might be wrong; nevertheless, there’s more to talent than whatever innate capabilities a person might be born with that makes them prodigy and genius.
Book Review: Shard Atlas by Wren Awry
A micro-chapbook of impactful poems concerned with what needs to be preserved, what needs to be acknowledged, and what needs to be torn down. Beautiful and timely.
Counseling the Writer
Counseling, when you find the right counselor and when you engage with them honestly and with a willingness to do what they suggest, can work wonders and reshape your entire life.
A Writing Process
My writing process is just one example of a writing process that will hopefully inspire you to build your own.
Book Review: In Another Country: Selected Stories by David Constantine
I loved several of the stories and the rest, though somewhat opaque to me, were generally thought-provoking, evocative, and beautifully written.
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