Prints prints prints
I’m down to the last twenty or so copies of my chapbook, Take Me to the Water, which was released by Bloof Books last October. We extended the initial 150 copy run twice, so now there are 250 little pieces of my heart out floating around the in the world. If you have one of those copies, here are my list of suggestions of good settings in which to read it:
By any body of water
Accompanied by a little beverage (I bottled my first batch of homemade kombucha this past weekend, so that’s my current recommendation)
With a person you’re hoping will fall in love with you while taking long walks around a park
If you don’t have a copy and would like one, give me a holler before March 8.
As someone in the business of books, I spend a lot of time thinking about books as physical objects. I work with artists and designers whose visual skills far exceed mine as they translate words back into images, select paper weights, choose fonts, all in service of curating the experience that we know as reading. Being in the weeds for those choices, whether as an editor at Levine Querido or as an author with Bloof, is one of the elements of working with a small press that I hold dear. You might not be able to buy a copy at Target, but if you have one of those 250 copies of Take me to the Water, you know that someone (me or Shanna, my lovely publisher at Bloof) made an intentional choice to make it beautiful, to make something that we hope you’ll hold dear and perhaps share someone you love.
A few notes on the fonts in Take me to the Water: the display type (on the cover and in the title of each of the poems is called “Carrie,” named after political strategist, suffragist, and peace activist, Carrie Chapman Catt. The typeface was designed by Tré Seals, a Black designer and founder of type foundry Vocal Type; he names all his fonts after advocates for social justice. The body type (the text of the poems themselves), is Adobe Fournier, which I picked mostly because it’s the body font in Jericho Brown’s The Tradition.
Can you tell I love print culture? A day after Take Me to the Water launched in October, I stumbled upon Archie’s Press, a gallery and letterpress print shop in the East Village. I got to chatting with Frankie, one of the designers there, and together we collaborated on a limited-run broadside of my poem “Glory From Above.”
If you’ll be at AWP or any of my upcoming readings come and grab one so I can regale you with more of my nerdy font knowledge.
Upcoming Events
Association of Writers and Poets Conference, Seattle, March 9-11, 2023
BOOKFAIR
Friday, March 10, 10:00 am I'll be signing the last few copies of Take Me to the Water and broadsides of my poem "Glory From Above" at the Riot in Your Throat Table (T1522)
OFFSITE READINGS
Thursday, March 9, 7:00 PM - Reading with Muzzle Magazine, Loving Room: diaspora books + salon 1400 20th Avenue Seattle, WA 98122
Register here
Saturday, March 11, 3:30 PM - Reading with Essay Press, Noemi Press, & Bloof Books, Crescent Lounge, 1413 E Olive Way, Seattle, WA 98122
Thursday, March 23, 2023, 7 pm
Reading, West of Willow, Cafe Vista, 527 Monroe St, Hoboken, NJ
register here
Recent publications
"Each curl is mighty - Black hair as architecture," Houston Chronicle, January 2023
"I Didn't Like Needing People. Running a Half Marathon Changed That," Houston Chronicle, January 2023