2018 Wrap-Up
Dear You—
Nothing special this time; no previously unpublished essays or musings on poetry and roses. Just a list of things I had published and things I enjoyed reading and listening to in the last couple months of 2018. I’d planned on sending this out yesterday, but it was my birthday and I was busy writing poems and drinking champagne. I’m 37 now, and it doesn’t look too bad from where I’m at.
Current Jams
-Chancha Via Circuito - Bienaventuranza
-The Flesh Eaters - “Cinderella” and “My Life to Live”
-Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers - Bought to Rot
-Orville Peck - “Big Sky”
-Rhett Miller - The Messenger
-Worriers - “The Saddest Little Waffle House in Eastern Pennsylvania”
Recent Reads
Poetry
-Collected Poems of Lynda Hull
-Doe, by Aimée Baker
-Final Girl, by Daphne Gottlieb
-Gutter, by Lauren Brazeal
-Kanye West is Not Picasso, by Leonard Cohen
-The Rise of Genderqueer, by Wren Hanks
-Theories of Time and Space, by Natasha Trethewey
-Wunderkammer, by Cynthia Cruz
-these poems by Jack C. Bedell
-these poems by Khalypso
Fiction
-Holiday Party Etiquette for Insects Recently Transformed Into People, by Ashley Memory
-Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, by Andrea Lawlor
-Twelve Angels Weeping: Twelve Stories of the Villains from Doctor Who, by Dave Rudden
-The Whole Girl Detective Thing, by Cathy Ulrich
-The Woman in the Refrigerator, by Megan Pillow Davis
Nonfiction
-The Cursed Interior: Women in Horror, by Gretchen Felker-Martin
-How to Do Magic: Songwriting Made Simple, by Rhett Miller
-How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays, by Alexander Chee
-Pretty Girls Make Graves: How Female Suicide Became a Cultural Obsession, by D.W. Anselmo
-Sobriety Turns You Into a Ghost and the Rust Belt is Full of Life, by Justin Karcher
-Two Sister-Poets Gone Too Soon: Ntozake Shange and My Sister, by Hilton Als
-Was Holly Golightly Bisexual?, by Rebecca Renner
-With or Without My Best Intentions: On the 25th Anniversary of the Murder of Mia Zapata, by Cole Cohen
-these flash essays by Adrienne Novy
(While we’re on the topic of fantastic nonfiction, it’s worth revisiting my favorite essay I read in 2018: Hank Williams is Sacred, by Alex DiFrancesco.)
News
-my poem top tax write-offs for the self-employed poet is now available to read on the Kenosha-Racine Poets Laureate site
-a limited-edition mini zine I put together in December 2017 is now available on Issuu
-my poem lucky knives & holy charms was nominated for Best of the Net
-my poem Designer Sadness was published in the Handwritten Issue of Sad Girl Review
-I was a runner-up in The Ginger Collect’s Halloween contest; they published my poem Nothing Remains Of in the Halloween mini issue
-also on Halloween, Vessel Press published my short story Scary Stories for Daring Girls to Tell in the Dark; sadly VP has since gone dark, but I've put the story up on Medium
-my poem So I Can Sigh Eternally (Sad Boy Cento) was published at Philosophical Idiot
-my second piece went up at Pussy Magic: Just Like U Said It Would B
-my poem Upon A Time was published in Barren Magazine
-and just today, my poem dollar store sonnet was published by Constellate Literary Magazine
I no longer have a Patreon account, because it had become like a shitty job that I was stressed out about all the time but wasn’t making enough money doing for the stress to be worth it. But if you appreciate my work as a writer, editor, or publisher, you can always throw a few dollars my way via PayPal. Or you can order some stuff from the Bone & Ink site or my Etsy shop—but I’ll be announcing some new titles soon, so you might want to hold off on that for another week or so.
You’ll be hearing from me again shortly, dears. Until then, I wish you the best for 2019.
Happy New Year,
Jessie Lynn