Poet & scholar Rawand Mustafa, my first guest of 2025!

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I had such a lovely, restorative conversation with Rawand Mustafa, the 2024 winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize from the University of Arkansas Press– and our first featured guest of 2025!

This episode was co-hosted by Kathleen Sullivan, Arkansas MFA candidate in literary translation, translation editor of The Arkansas International, director of Arkansas’ Writers in the Schools program, and dear friend!

UMBILICAL DISCORD is available for purchase here from the University of Arkansas Press!

Interested in being a future featured guest? Let me know!

I recently received an Artists 360 community activator grant from Mid-America Arts Alliance!

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Photo Credit: Stephen Ironside, Iron Lotus Creative.


I look forward to using the funding and opportunity to further expand and develop Tightwires, which has long been a labor of love!

Artists 360 is a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance that elevates talented artists of all disciplines in Northwest Arkansas by providing practice-based grant funding and professional development opportunities.

You can learn more about all of the grantees and the program here.

You can read more about my work here.

Thank you to #MidAmericaArtsAlliance, #Artists360, and the Walton Family Foundation!

Artists 360, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance, is made possible through philanthropic support from the Walton Family Foundation.

Translator & poet Cal Paule, my first Season 8 guest!

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BLACK BOX NAMED LIKE TO ME by Diana Garza Islas, and translated by Cal Paule, is easily one of the strangest books I’ve read this year. I can’t wait for everyone else to read it, too.

I’ve been a fan of Cal since I met them in a poetry workshop my last semester of grad school. I’m thrilled to see their meteoric success! They’re in the same MFA cohort as Joaquín (my husband), who is co-hosting this delightful conversation.

BLACK BOX NAMED LIKE TO ME is available for preorder here!

Interested in being a future featured guest? Let me know!

New York Times Bestselling author S.K. Ali, my final Season 7 guest!

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Ecstatic to share my full conversation with longtime fave S.K. Ali, who I first interviewed in 2017 and whose recent break into the fantasy genre has been predictably triumphant with FLEDGLING, a stunning first book in a duology I can’t wait to continue!

Some other topics of discussion: Publishing in Canada, the importance of preserving records, privileged first person perspectives, & the weight of responsibility in an industry that helps shape narratives.

FLEDGLING will be released next Tuesday, Oct 8 and can be preordered here!

Interested in being a future featured guest? Let me know!