What are you reading for August? 📖☀️📚
August is uncontestedly the best month — and, no, it’s not just because it’s my birth month. I’ve always loved long summer days, fireflies lighting up the air, daily summer thunderstorms, enough humidity to drown you, reading away the hours.
Here’s a little bit of what I’m up to this month.
The Sealey Challenge
All August
The Sealey Challenge is a community challenge to read one book of poetry a day for the month of August. Poet Nicole Sealey started the challenge in 2017. It’s a great way to try to diversify your reading. Read poets you haven’t before, poets from your state, poets from different countries, poets of color, LGBTQ+ poets, disabled poets, poets who have published with independent presses, and more! Share your progress and what you’re reading on social media, Goodreads, Bookstagram, or other book networking sites with #SealeyChallenge.
If you’re looking for a book about chronic pain and how outer space makes you feel small, you can always add my book Crumb-sized: Poems to your list :) It might even be available in your local library!
Happy reading!
Live Reading of “Squishy But Firm: Sexcapades of a Crip Girl”
August 24, 2024 | The REACH, Kennedy Center
I'm so humbled and excited to be participating in a live reading of "Squishy But Firm: Sexcapades of a Crip Girl", a play by Regan Linton, a theatre artist, creator, actor, director, writer, filmmaker, educator, voiceover artist, leader, advocate, and agent for change. The play — a tale of soulmates, shitty dates, and the intimate adventures of a paralyzed body — is being presented as part of the Kennedy Center's Local Theatre Festival. The performance is August 24 at 6 p.m., and tickets will be available on August 12.
Come out to support Regan and crip art!
Poem nominated for Best of the Net Anthology
My poem “Valuable weight” was nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net Anthology. Started by Sundress Publications in 2006, it is “an awards-based anthology designed to grant a platform to a diverse and growing collection of writers and publishers who are building an online literary landscape that seeks to break free of traditional publishing.” It is released every year in January, highlighting work from the previous year. Stay tuned to find out the winners who will be included in the latest anthology!
I’m grateful to Kim Roberts and Jon Gann, who published this poem in June in DC Pride Poem-a-Day. The project spotlights LGBTQ+ poets from the greater Washington, D.C. region, releasing a new video and poem each day during the month of June.
Huge congratulations to the other five nominated poets: Richard Hamilton, Danielle Evennou, Ishanee Chanda, Bernard Welt, and AdrianGaston Garcia (aka AGG). You can read our poems/watch them being performed at pridepoems.com.
In peace and poetry,
Marlena