writerly world: news & tidbits
May 2025
In this issue: save the NEA; erasure poetry power; banned books; litquake lit crawl; rejection bingo; experimental essays; fall writing workshops; creativity with grief.
ground zero
Poets & Writers (whose mag I devour) was among hundreds of arts organizations to receive notice that their current grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—the nation’s largest single funder of the nonprofit arts sector—is being terminated. The magazine also announced that most of the NEA staff resigned.
President Trump issued his preliminary Fiscal Year 2026 budget, which starts on October 1st, 2025 with zero funding for the NEA as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
The NEA reported that from 2022–23 the arts and cultural sector in the U.S. grew at more than twice the rate of the total economy , adding $1.2 trillion (4.2% of GDP).
TAKE ACTION with Americans for the Arts: Call Congress or Email Congress to Demand They Support and Save the NEA!
power of erasure
The NEA also posted a notice on how it plans to implement Executive Order 14168 (“Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”) in its grant application review process. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community who has worked to end gender-based violence and wrote about Trump’s predation (read: “Content Warning: And Once More, Again”), I find his anti-trans legislation guised as women’s protection abhorrent:
Section 1 . Purpose. Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women's domestic abuse shelters to women's workplace showers.
As shared by the Sonoma County Literary Update, local poet Marjorie Stein “took on the task of correcting the language of this order to clarify its real intent” in her erasure poem, which I used as a model during my Sitting Room Library workshop:
book bans: so 1984
The American Library Association (ALA) and Banned Books Week Coalition announced the theme for Banned Books Week (October 2025): “Censorship Is So 1984. Read for Your Rights.” If you stand for free speech and want to fight censorship, one of the best ways is to read, listen to, learn about, and center marginalized voices:
“Supporting these voices by owning and sharing these books is a great way to resist the rising tide of book banning that we are currently facing. Visit an independent bookstore or public library and read a banned book today!”
All of the books sold in The Banned Shop (Bookshop.org) are either currently banned, or in the process of being banned. Here’s a peek at just a few titles:
litquaking
A couple of weeks ago I participated in the 2nd annual Lit Crawl Sebastopol, a Litquake event billed as Sonoma County’s largest free literary pop-up, with 200+ poets and writers reading at downtown venues like The Livery CoWork.
This year I joined Under the Round Table Writers, coordinated by Karen FitzGerald and including Bridget Hayes, a Sonoma County Library Digital Literacy Specialist who read her award-winning poem “Peace Sign”; Jane Lott, who writes weekly at The Sitting Room; and Jane’s teenage daughter who also read a powerful poem.
I shared “Roadside Markers,” a short piece of creative nonfiction published online last month in Zone 3. Thanks to J.J. & JoAnn, Besser & Adelaide, plus former AWA worshoppers (Beth, Kyle, Margo, Elise & Krista) for showing up to listen!
rejection bingo rhyme
revamped their Rejection BINGO, but I believe the virtual board is missing lingo—
what may be my most despised phrase of refusal:
“your work at this time does not meet our needs.” Oh!
Here are the latest responses from literary rejectionlandia:
six poems sent to Hayden's Ferry Review for the Spring Web Issue: On Desire (“Unfortunately, this one is not a fit for us at the moment.”)
1,500-word essay “Cease Fire” sent to Ninth Letter’s web edition on REVERSAL
(“We're sorry this submission wasn't right for us.”)prose poem “Unanswerable” sent to Tahoma Literary Review
(“We have read your work with interest, but it does not meet TLR’s current editorial needs.”)
Recently I switched from using Duotrope to Chill Subs for tracking submissions. It’s free (basic level), uber user-friendly, and visually pleasing. Click for a glimpse:
Chill Subs has other features, like Browse (search a database of 3,000+ lit mags, writing contests, and indie presses based on genre and other criteria) and Bookmarks (collect your own lists of pubs to submit to) plus Profile (add a bio and published pieces that pop up with links to your work when someone searches the publication).
Learn the how-to’s in a FREE online workshop Saturday, June 14, 9–10:30am PT:
“Explore the many ways Chill Subs can make submitting your work to literary magazines quicker, easier, and more targeted with
[who writes Lit Mag Lab]. She’ll walk you through our most helpful tools and features and show you how to use them.”
getting experimental
In early May I took a wonderful class from Write or Die Magazine on Experimental Essay Forms with Kristine Langley Mahler, director of Split/Lip Press and author of Teen Queen Training, an erasure memoir from The Seventeen Book of Etiquette 1963:
“The walls and woodwork of bones are scratch-pads, your rack of pride tallied on scars.”
Until this introduction I hadn’t read any erasure essays, only poems. I developed a deeper understanding of multiple experimental forms and applied what I learned to revising my hermit crab essay titled “Reading Comprehension” (a form I disliked in school) that uses multiple choice to complicate a narrative without easy answers.
This workshop included writing to prompts for speculative, constraint, and visual essays. For an example of the latter, check out Tone in The Normal School.
fall writing workshops
There’s only a week left in my 8-week workshop series, but fall workshop registrations are starting to roll in. Sign up at Pencil & Pen. And please help to spread the word!
Plus: I’m offering a 6-week series for Newly Trained AWA Workshop Leaders
If you’re an AWA-certified facilitator who hasn’t yet fledged, join other newly hatched workshop leaders in the same “nest.” You’ll gain more experience using the Amherst Writers method and develop more confidence to “fly” on your own.
Thursdays: Sept. 18 – Oct. 23, 2025: 2pm–4pm Pacific on Zoom
I’m also volunteering to lead two upcoming FREE workshop sessions in person:
Round Table at the Sitting Room Library: Saturday, August 17, 10am–12pm
Women’s Recovery Services (collage + writing): Saturday, Sept. 27, 10am–12pm
pools of sadness (and joy)
Last Friday I attended a commencement ceremony for my niece Brooke who graduated in just three years with a double major from UC Berkeley, even while grieving the loss of her cousin to suicide just seven months ago. I drove to Zellerbach Hall, pulling over briefly to say a prayer at a nearby park where Christopher took his life, wishing instead that I could pick him up at his house and take him along.
After a family celebration in SF, I returned home that evening to Kristen and our 5-year-old friend Amara whom she’s taken care of since she was born. Back when we all lived on the farm, Amara called Chris “the big boy” when he visited us. A burgeoning artist, she’d drawn our graduate in a rainbow gown with pastels and a long tassel.
Last year I texted Chris this picture of her copying a butterfly watercolor he’d painted in Kindergarten. He always admired Brooke’s art, including a self-portrait that hangs at their grandparents’ house. After he died she painted this portrait of him he’d never see, which now hangs in my office next to the butterflies.
Some of us write to tend to our grief. Some of us paint. Some orchestrate songs. By an altar with his photo and a potpourri of petals and leaves I placed lyrics I recently heard sung by the Occidental Community Choir, this one by Zanaida Stewart Robles:
She walks in pools of sadness/She walks in pools/Her face is cool in moonlight…
Thank you for all these great resources, Nicole. I'm headed over to the Banned Bookshop!