Strong Island Chatham MA
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NEWS, EVENTS, & FORTHCOMING WORK
February 26, 2026— My new essay “Ampflwang,” just out in the winter issue of The Sewanee Review (vol CXXXIV no 1). It’s about an excursion to Germany and Austria, speculation about a particular painting in my family, my father’s experience in WWII, and the contortions of national identity. Sadly relevant contextualized in the US political situation right now.
October 3, 2026—The Legible Element comes full circle, back to Southampton, Long Island, the environmental epicenter/muse of the essays. I’ll be reading with a few other local writers at "North Sea Voices; Poetry and Prose" presented by the North Sea Maritime Center and the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. More details/links to come!
February 2026—Three new poems (“Three Pigs”, “See You in September”, and another increment in the “Contrapunctus” series) appearing soon in the upcoming issue of Birmingham Poetry Review
January 2026— My new essay “Ampflwang,” will be in the winter issue of Sewanee Review. It’s about Germany, Austria, landscape, a particular painting, my father’s experience in WWII, and the contortions of national identity.
January 29, 2026—Reading from my book of essays, The Legible Element, at Concord Art’s Indie Press Prose series, with Joan Wickersham. (Concord, MA).
Nov 6, 2025— Five new poems in Cutleaf: “21st Century Pastoral with Drafthorse and Quarterpipe,” “Nor’easter,” “The Tattoo,” “Downsizing,” and “Don’t Take Me Alive”—curated in a suite that channels the spirit of aforesaid Steely Dan tune and “the aftermath of rhetoric.” Intersections of human and animal worlds, family decisions, and commerce between digital and analog music…
More upcoming shows with the Todd Hearon Band, August-December 2025:
Playing with the crew at The Stone Church “Slow Cooker” this summer (photo Brie Taylor)
August 22, 2025 The Burren, Somerville, MA w/ Liz Frame & the Kickers
September 26, 2025 The Rex Theatre, Manchester, NH w/ Jon Nolan & Good Company
October 4, 2025 The Lu, North Berwick, ME w/ The Kenny Brothers Band
October 11, 2025 The Dance Hall, Kittery, ME w/ Liz Frame & the Kickers
November 15, 2025 The Word Barn w/ Liz Frame & the Kickers
December 13, 2025 The Press Room, Portsmouth, NH w/Sarah Levecque and her band
December 19 2025 Newburyport Brewing, Newburyport MA
June-September 2025—An exhilarating, ongoing summer and early fall facilitating discussion-based teaching workshops at The Kiski School in Saltsburg, PA; Dominion Christian School in Herndon, VA; and working with the Memphis University School English Dept. during their retreat in West Cork, Ireland.
January 2025—Shows with the Todd Hearon Band:
Friday, January 17 at Pembroke City Limits (Pembroke NH). A trio setting with Todd and Alex Keenan (pedal steel)
Saturday, Feb 8 at The Lu, North Buick Lounge (North Berwick, ME), with the full band, “Roots Rock Saturday Matinee”
Thursday, March 13 at the Byfield Community Arts Center (Byfield, MA) with full band
Saturday, April 5 at The Worthen (Lowell, MA) full band
Saturday, April 19 at The Press Room (Portsmouth, NH) full band
November 2024—I’ll be in conversation at Water Street Bookstore with fellow EastOver Press author Joan Wickersham about her ambitious and fascinating new memoir/poems cycle No Ship Sets Out to be a Shipwreck. Thurs. Nov. 14.
Todd Hearon’s new album Impossible Man (produced by Don Dixon of early REM fame) is gaining international momentum with reviews and airtime, and I’m happy to be contributing electric guitar to the tour, which began in August at the Word Barn and Portsmouth Music Hall Lounge and continues this month at Scorpio in Jamaica Plain and The Kittery Dance Hall, with more shows down the road in the New England area.
September 2024—A reading of “Skiff Hill” (in relevant terrain) from Surface Fugue, Instagram reel courtesy of EastOver Press.
March 2024—”Through the Lens of the Littoral”: a downright lovely review of The Legible Element in The Common magazine, by poet Matt W. Miller.
February 2024— “Garden of the Forking Paths”: my interview/conversation with fiction writer Paul Yoon in The Exeter Bulletin. We talk about his new story collection The Hive and the Honey, writing, teaching, mentoring, home and family.
December 2023— Daniel Picker’s review of The Legible Element in The East Hampton Star. Generous local press from the geographical epicenter of the book.
November 2023— Teasers from Yodelady have been trickling onto Spotify, etc. over the past six months, but this FULL digital album release show at The Word Barn on Fri. Nov. 10 (8-10PM) with Todd Hearon & Friends should not be missed. Special guests: the amazing duo Green Heron. This is one of the hippest, friendliest, most versatile venues around—a home for (and steroidal injection of) art on the Seacoast of NH.
…also, two nights later at this same amazing local venue, The Word Barn, on November 12—honored to be reading from The Legible Element, joining up with fiction writer Courtney Sender (In Other Lifetimes All I’ve Lost Comes Back to Me) and poet Chelsea Woodard (At the Lepidopterist’s House) to share from our latest.
October 2023— Reading and conversation hosted by Green Mountain Books (October 8, 5PM), Lyndonville, VT at The Satellite Gallery. With Tara Kelly (No Last Words). An EastOver team-up: this will serve as a launch of sorts for The Legible Element, since it’s the first public reading for the book.
Author Tara Kelly and I will be reading from and talking about our recently released books No Last Words and The Legible Element, respectively. Moderated by former Wall Street Journal News Editor John Coston. at The White Hart Speaker Series sponsored by Oblong Books (October 26, time: 6:30PM), Salisbury, CT.
After she reads from her gorgeous new collection At the Lepidopterist’s House (winner of the 2022 Michael Waters Prize/Southern Indiana Review Press), I’ll be in conversation with poet Chelsea Woodard at Water Street Books in Exeter, NH—October 27, 7PM.
August 2023—At the Portsmouth Music Hall Lounge (Aug. 5, 8PM) with Todd Hearon’s band and Old Hat String Band for another showcase/teaser of tunes from the new album Yodelady. (sold out!)
photo: Whitney Roy
July 2023—Coming this summer! My new book of essays, The Legible Element, from EastOver Press. A collection of personal/narrative/academic hybrids about water, as both experience and metaphor.
May 2023—Laying down some electric guitar for singer/songwriter Todd Hearon and his band at Stone Church Music Club, Yodelady album release concert (5/06)
Just found this reprint of my poem “Pigs Watered in Heat Wave” (from my first book) at a website dedicated to all things porcine.
April 2023—Reading at Exeter LitFest (along with Diannely Antigua and Todd Hearon, 4/01)
Reading at Water Street Books, Exeter, NH with poet Michael Brosnan 04/12
March 2023—In conversation with fiction writer Paul Yoon at The American School in London. After Paul’s reading from his collection The Mountain, we talked in front of a live audience about books, imagination, teaching, mentoring.
November 2022—”Stepping-Off Places” is my interview/conversation with John Irving. In it, we talk about his recent novel The Last Charilift, writing, tattoos and, of course, Exeter.
October 2022— “Nabokov’s Octopus: Landscape, Memory and History” was the title of the talk/reading I delivered as the Courtney Steel Lecturer at Spence School in NYC.
July 2022— Hayden’s Ferry Review (ASU) has republished my poem “The Eyes of the Scallops” from issue 24, 1999. “A Promise of Water” is a compelling anthology of water-related poems from past issues (back to ‘86) and was curated by Erin Peters. It also includes work by Rita Dove, Mary Ruefle, Carl Phillips, Sally Ball, Oliver de la Paz, Kazim Ali and others
June 2022— LIVE: "Whole Lotta Love” (a poem about rock ‘n’ roll’s incursion into 70s domestic order) in the San Diego-based Cider Press Review
May 2022—Two music-related poems, “Fearing Street” & “Song of the Jet” in issue No. 5 of Book of Matches literary journal.
April 2022— First in-person READING since Surface Fugue was released. At The Word Barn, Sunday, April 24, 4:00 PM (with poet/song writer/fiction writer Todd Hearon: Do Geese See God, Crows in Eden, No Other Gods, Strange Land).
Surface Fugue wins the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s first “Best Poetry Book of the Year” award for 2021, judged by Lucas Jacob, author of The Seed Vault (Eyewear Publishing, 2019)
November 2021— NOW AVAILABLE! Surface Fugue, a second collection of poems published by EastOver Press. The title poem,“Surface Fugue: Clark’s Island, Wampanoag Bowl, Carcharodon Carcharias,” originally appeared in New England Review, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
October 2021— “Fugues, Evidence, and Arguments: A Poet Finds His Way” Interviewed by Paul Yoon for The Common magazine.
Four poems: “Skiff Hill,” “Language,” “Poem About Walden Pond Without Any Mention of Thoreau,” & “The New Bathymetry” in Cutleaf
June 2021— ”Two of My Favorite Guitarists Named Their Dogs Django” & “Orient Point” (poems) in The Birmingham Poetry Review.
April 2021— “Driving Past the Properties I Landscaped as a Teenager” & “Fish Brook” (poems) in Ploughshares
March 2021— “Canoe” (poem) in Split Rock Review. ”Evidence of the Journey” featured on Delineated: Prose Writers on Poetry, with short story writer and novelist Paul Yoon (on “What Poetry Sparks” at Poetry Daily)
April 2020—“Memory and the First Coast: California Revisited,” an essay, in The Surfer’s Journal issue 29.2
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