WLYA

7/6/17

So much to report so I will get right to it:

My son is visiting from MA and I am so happy! He helped me sort of rebuild this site; I was so overwhelmed by it that I was putting it off for far too long. Thanks, Aidan!

My chapbook, Your Hand Has Fixed the Firmament, is finally out. Thank you so much to Scott and Grey Books Press for taking this little love letter on! You can own it for a mere $6, which as we all know is just .75 more than a Venti Dirty Iced Chai Latte from Starbee’s.

Drunk Monkeys has a call for submissions for our special September issue: Vices and Virtues. So if you want to send me anything about your genitals, now is the only appropriate time to do so!

Additionally, I had an editor’s letter in the June issue that I felt was important; it’s all about how you build your own family. Check it out.

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Zoetic Press has a new Nonbinary Review issue out: Urban Legends/ Snopes. And guess who it’s guest edited by? You’ve got it… ME! For a mere $2 you can read 29 pieces of Snopes inspired work. This was such a blast to be a part of, and I loved every second of it.

Speaking of ZP, we have an open call for Hans Christian Andersen inspired work that closes at the end of July. AND we’re hosting Write Like You’re Alive again!

Really, that’s all I have for now. Everything I’m working on is stalled while Aidan is here. He leaves next week, and while I’ll be heartbroken, at least I’ll be able to get some stuff done.

(PS: How about that new Twin Peaks?!)

8/1/16

August, you fickle b, where did you come from? It seems like only yesterday I was basking in the humid heat of July! (It was only yesterday). I have a few things worth reporting.

I guess before anything else I should let you all know that the special edition of Drunk Monkeys (in response to the Orlando PULSE shooting) is now out. This was such an amazing endeavor and I am so happy to have been a part of it, even from just a social media standpoint. I beg you all to read it. It has some stellar contributors.

My poem “Our Bones Will Be Our Ruins” is featured in Clever Girl issue 4. You can buy it via their website.

I finished Zoetic Press‘s 31/31 Write Like You’re Alive challenge. Well, I mean, I got like 25 pieces in, but that counts. I hosted 4 live chats on Twitter and I am considering keeping them going. I did a series of erasure poems based on Dax Riggs songs and made them into a short chapbook. If you’d want one, order one here!

In July, Pokemon Go debuted. I am going through a hard time emotionally– probably the hardest of my life, a time where old hopes are dying and new hopes are clawing desperately at the dirt covering them, trying to emerge. Pokemon Go lifts that depression and those suicidal thoughts, albeit temporarily, and my Facebook rant about those bashing it was crafted into a more viable essay that Five 2 One Magazine was kind enough to publish. Weeks later, I still love it, regardless of what the whiny babies at r/pokemongo have to say. I even got my first piece of hate mail, from a man in my city who told me to start renting here (?) and go home by 10, and when I replied to him he told me if I replied back it would be considered harassment! People are sort of crazy.

Yesterday my friend Dan and I took my son Aidan on a 5 mile scavenger hunt in Salem MA, and we caught tons of Pokemon, so shut up, ~haters~.

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I think that might be it for now. It’s back to being distracted and submitting poems to different places for now.

7/5/16

Summer is in full swing and things are going well. I am participating in Zoetic Press‘s 31/31 Write Like You’re Alive challenge, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t write two pieces of flash fiction! I never write fiction. CRAZY.

Last month I participated in Feminist of Salem’s first Feminist Art Wednesday at Koto (all this, of course, in Salem, MA). I read a few poems from the aforementioned chapbook and listened to other super- fierce women read and perform. It was excellent. Here is a video from the whole thing– I’m the sleepy looking one around the 1:05 mark or so.

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I was pretty excited to see that The Review Review… uh… reviewed Drunk Monkeys Issue 1, which hosted my poem “There is a Creature in the Desert with the Sharpest Claws”. the write-up can be found here, but I will quote the part that focuses on me because I am vain:

“This thread is continued in some of the poetry selections in this first issue of Drunk Monkeys, especially in Kolleen Carney’s poem “There is a Creature in the Desert with the Sharpest Claws:” “What matters is your skin / that toughened with time, feet on the hard ground / and running, pointed nails like talons.” There is momentum and running rhythm in this poem, in sync with the pumping arms of the creature. “Even the gentlest animals / will gnash and bare,” Carney concludes, “when backed into a corner.” Here again dichotomies are being challenged, as Carney’s language breaks down the barriers between gentle and savage, between surface and depth.”

Thanks! This made my day.