June 11, 2018
My hybrid nonfiction memoir essay with photographs, COYOTE ON HOLY MESA, is forthcoming in the anthology STRANGE ATTRACTORS on the esteemed University of Massachusetts Press, alongside stunning work by – gasp – Ana Castillo, Rikki Ducornet, Rebecca Wolff, Sejal Shah, Terese Svoboda and many others who have inspired me since I began writing!
This piece is from my hybrid memoir in progress, OUT HERE DEATH IS NO BIG DEAL about gender violence and post-trauma liberation along the US-Mexico borderlands and features the character we’ve come to know as COYOTE VAGINA DENTATA. The essay has a nice preamble about how talking to a coyote and strategizing about how to get back the teeth he took from my vagina is not fiction, but is in fact nonfiction. So I’m delighted that the tidy little box of literature has been disrupted, and those of us who know that the supernal is real are represented in the pages of official nonfiction anthologies. Keep at it, people! We can bend the conventions of reality! Yes we can!
Stay tuned for details about the March 2019 launch date, pre-sales, book tour, release parties, and special appearances at AWP 2019.
EXCERPT:
The desert has opened my ribs. My chest is the mouth of the cave and we listen for the wings of bats, silent in the dark, listen to the heart of a small dark creature hanging low. My heart, a fist, upside down and dreaming. This small dark angry thing, awakened. A mat and tangle of black membrane, folded before flight.