I write essays, poetry, and the occasional short story. I perform my work at open mics and literary festivals. Along with emceeing a bimonthly open mic at the Commons cohousing community in Santa Fe, I also produce politically themed spoken word/music events.

Below is a selection of my published creative work and some info about my visual art projects. 

Essays

"How to Live Thin" was a finalist in the Michael Steinberg Memorial Essay Contest. It appears in the Spring 2021 issue of Fourth Genre. 

"Femme on a Butch Runway" was published by Queen Mob's Teahouse in August 2018. 

"Are You Worried About a Loved One's Drinking? 23 Questions" appeared in the Atticus Review in February 2018. 

"The Bear Felony" was published in Gravel magazine in September 2017.

"The Trump Pinata" came out in Nailed magazine in January 2017. 

"Why Tuk-Tuks Make the Big Bucks" appeared in The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008 and won a Solas Award for best travel writing. 

Short Stories

I contributed the short story "Radka Zelenkova" as a chapter in Patrick Nagatani's collaborative novel The Race. The story is a lesbian Romeo-and-Juliet tale set in Communist Prague. Read the first page. 

Short Prose Pieces

I've had two short prose pieces published in The Sun magazine's "Readers Write" section: one on the theme of "Habits" and another on "The Morning After." 

Poems and Prose Poems

The prose poem "A Kind of Breathing" appeared in Juked in September 2020.  

"Construction of First Border Wall Segment to Begin in a South Texas Wildlife Refuge" appeared in the 2018 anthology Poets Facing the Wall by The Raving Press.  

"A Way of Seeing" won the Michael Jasper Gioia Poetry Prize in 1989 and appeared in Stanford's literary magazine, Sequoia. 

"The Anorectic's Plea" won the Academy of American Poets Prize in 1989 and was published in the Academy's journal, American Poet.

photos by Esha Chiocchio

Curating

With my collaborators in the art collective The Furies, I curated the 2018 show The Feral Howl: A Feminist Response to Our Time. Featuring the work of 12 women and non-binary artists, this multimedia exhibition--including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video, and installation--addressed the U.S. government's historic and current assaults on the bodies of women, femmes, and Mother Earth. The Furies (Patti Levey, Lauren Ayer, and me) showed our photographic series Infuriated, involving our nude bodies and a Trump pinata. 

The Feral Howl was timed to coincide with the anniversary of 45's inauguration and the first Women's March. It opened Jan.12, 2018, at Freeform Art Space in Santa Fe. A night of pop-up performances was held on Jan. 20, 2018, with proceeds donated to Esperanza women's shelter. 

Events

"Ferocious Feminists Fight Fascism" was the collaboration of Debbie Stehr of Laughing Coyote Productions and me. During 2017 and 2018, we produced spoken word/music events on political topics such as environmental justice, immigration, feminism, and LGBTQ equality, with donations going to related local nonprofits.