Welcome to FLAWN - February 2023

Greetings!

A lot of people think Floridians spend all their time throwing alligators through drive-thru windows, but many of us like to engage in a less dangerous form of wildness: writing and creating art. The Florida Local Artist & Writer Network (FLAWN) grew out of the desire to help connect Florida’s artistic communities and promote their work across the Sunshine State.

Each month, we’ll publish a newsletter with pieces from collective members, guest posts from subscribers, and a calendar of Florida’s upcoming art/literary events submitted by subscribers. We hope FLAWN can help support Florida’s thriving artistic communities and help us come together.

In the next section, we’ll briefly discuss how subscribers can interact with the newsletter, and then you’ll get a taste of work from collective members: 

(Orlando)Brianna Johnson (she/her) is an MFA graduate from The University of Tampa. Her stories have appeared in various journals including Wigleaf, Kenyon Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts, and Split Lip Magazine. She is a 2x Pushcart Prize nominee, O. Henry Prize nominee, and Best Small Fictions nominee. She teaches college English in Orlando, FL.

(Wilton Manors) Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) books include Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, March 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) & To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023).

(St. Petersburg) Eleanor Eichenbaum (she/her) is a writer, artist, and educator invested in interdisciplinary work. She holds an MFA from Image Text Ithaca and has been honored to attend residencies at Trelex in Paris, France and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL.

(St. Petersburg) Tyler Gillespie (he/him) is a fifth-generation Floridian who loves Diet Coke and beach nights. He’s the author of The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (UPF, 2021) and the poetry collections Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018) and the nature machine! (Autofocus, forthcoming May 2023). He sees making art and sharing resources as a way to help build community.

(Jacksonville/Tampa) Yuki Jackson (she/her) is a Black and Japanese poet whose work has been featured by NPR Next Gen, the Goodwin-Procter Law Firm and Creative Loafing. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Four Way Review, Cream City Review and Foundry. As a poet focusing on interconnectedness, she loves the idea of being a part of a united effort within the arts.

(St. Petersburg) Gloria Muñoz (she/her) is a Colombian-American writer, literary translator, and advocate for multilingual literacy and writing. Her poetry book DANZIRLY was awarded the Academy of American Poets Ambroggio Prize and the Gold Medal Florida Book Award. Her work has been published broadly in literary journals and anthologies. She is also the author of YOUR BIOME HAS FOUND YOU. When not writing or teaching, she collects rocks with her toddler and co-runs Moonlit Música. Muñoz is honored and proud to be St. Pete's new (and first queer Latina) poet laureate.

(St. Petersburg) Domenico Pontoriero (he/him) was handed a box of crayons and a mini Casio keyboard when he was four years old, and he has been creating ever since. His focus has evolved into music, visual/digital art, film, and local community building. He is a member of the Car-free St Pete Committee and local neighborhood initiatives. Domenico was recently awarded the Individual Grant from the St Pete Arts Alliance for a local film project, and he has released two studio albums and two EPs of original piano songs which you can find under the moniker Boy in the Rain.

(Orlando) Ryan Rivas (he/him) is the author of Nextdoor in Colonialtown (Autofocus, 2022) and Lizard People (ThirtyWest, forthcoming fall 2023). He is the Publisher of Burrow Press, and the Coordinator of MFA Publishing at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas creative writing program. A Macondo Writers Workshop fellow, his work has appeared in The Believer, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, and elsewhere. He believes a literary community connected state-wide is a powerful thing.

Along with receiving work from collective members, FLAWN newsletter subscribers can: 

• submit upcoming Florida events for the calendar

• submit one piece of writing (<500 words) , art, or multimedia content per month for guest post consideration. As we want to promote the arts in Florida, we’ll consider pieces submitted by those who live in the state, were born here, or whose work is somehow inspired by the state. All genres are welcome. 

Submissions: Guest Post, “Perchance”

Subscribers can submit one piece of writing (<500 words), art, or multimedia content per month for guest post consideration in “Perchance.” The selection of these guest posts is random. We’ll generate a random number based on the number of submissions we receive each month and pick one or two pieces through this “chance.”

We won’t publish anything deemed offensive or inappropriate by collective members.

To submit work, email: FLAWNsubmit@gmail.com

Submissions: Calendar of Events

We plan to have a calendar of art and literary events in the future. Subscribers will be able to submit events and check future newsletters for details. We hope to partner on this with local organizations, existing reading series, art collectives, etcetera. We're a volunteer-based group, so if anyone has experience with wide-scale calendars please drop us a line at FLAWNinfo@gmail.com.

Light Pollution
          by Gloria Muñoz
Fireflies are endangered,
don’t know why,
could be pesticides
or light pollution preventing
them from finding their mates.
This is what keeps me
up again tonight
on the eve of my birthday.
The fan drags its whirr
across the ceiling. Dust
filters in, gilded from the street
light. Most of our grandparents
are dead. Or nearly there.
They are quieter now
and less wise or more so,
but definitely full of secrets.
My grandmother is mostly light
as she sews in slow motion.
Her right frontal lobe
is a meshwork of swollen white
matter. She’s stares at my mother
before saying her name.
She, like most of us,
is some combination of happy and sad.
There is a body resting
next to me, one I love.
Love, the construct that drove Dante
through a dark forest to reach his moon.
When did I become someone’s
keeper? Minding. Mending. We live
on a nature preserve, manicured
and monitored. A neon 24-hour
car wash lights the living room
window like the subway track
we once lived next to,
always daylit and humming.
There are whale songs
in my ears tonight,
the bluish yowls resonate
through my fingertips.
My cell phone strobes
on my nightstand. I will thank
friends and family for calling
in these first hours of my new year,
but I am occupied counting
how many whale skeletons
are cradled by the ocean.
And mapping constellations
through the ceiling, I know
there is less phantasmagoria,
less starlight, but we’re still
flickering in the dark.

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We All Do Stupid Things
          by Brianna Johnson
“Please don’t shoot me!” said the man I shot.
I don’t know why I laughed when I did it. Maybe it was the irony. Is that irony? I’ve never understood what that means.
I didn’t even know the man, just some guy by himself in the park. He was probably homeless. He must’ve been, his death didn’t even make the news - I checked.
I never told my son about the man I killed. It was before his time. I was young. We all do stupid things when we’re young. Besides, what kind of man would he turn out to be if he knew his mother was a murderer?
I met my son’s father shortly after; I never told him either. I wanted to be my best self for him. He looked at me in a way I’d never seen, like I was cast in gold. He looked at me like that until our boy was born.
We never married, so it was easy when he left. I almost shot him too, the gun grasped behind my back when he walked out the door. I only hesitated because he turned to wave. Even in leaving he was beautiful. We agreed the baby could visit him on weekends.
He used to look so much like his father, just a few of my traits sprinkled across his face. Sometimes growing up he’d look at me like he knew what I’d done, a low down look that would chill me. I smothered him with love, spoiled him silly just in case he did. I gave him everything he wanted; no was never an option – anything to stop those looks.
Now, looking at him I see my full self in his face, in his body, in his smile. My gun in his hand, that same one, now pointed at me.
“Please don’t shoot me,” I say.
He laughs and so do I. I think I get it now.
This was originally published February10, 2022 in TORCH: Literary Arts a publication dedicated to promoting Black women writers.

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Becoming
          by Domenico Pontoriero (Boy in the Rain)

As part of a grant from the St Pete Arts Alliance, I'm working with a local choreographer/dancer to produce a contemporary dance performance to an original work. This is the piece I've been working on for the project - Becoming.

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Alligator Heart
        	by Tyler Gillespie
A bag of sugar
sized muscle pumps
blood. Most reptiles:
3-chambered heart
but gators have 4-chambers
like mammals & birds
which they used to be
millions of years ago
when they were dinosaurs.
Over time, wings went missing.
Can’t fly anymore.
Their heart makes them
dangerous, of course, but maybe
under scales – a thick set of armor –
they feel wings & remember the clouds.
from Florida Man: Poems

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from Dustin Brookshire

I’m excited to announce that Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing) entered the world on Dolly’s 77th birthday.  I co-edited the anthology with my dear friend, the poet Julie E. Bloemeke. Let Me Say This was recently spotlighted by Obama’s inaugural poet and current Miami-Dade Poet Laureate, Richard Blanco.

The collection features work by emerging and established poets— including but not limited to Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux, National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Denise Duhamel, the current Poet Laureate of Ohio, multiple National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship recipients, and two Lambda Literary Award recipients, among others.

In total, we have 54 poets celebrating Dolly love with appreciation and tribute. I’m proud that a clear majority of contributors are female-identifying and that a little more than half of the contributors identify as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. Julie and I are available for interviews, panels, and Zoom classroom visits. 

We hope that you’ll ask your local library to carry Let Me Say This. Order information, event details, “Let Me Play This” (official Spotify playlist), and other information about Let Me Say This is here. 

Feel free to contact us at letmesaythisanthology@gmail.com.  

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Sunshine State of Life
          Yuki Jackson
the Battleground was birthed
from a series of gunshots and love–
you see, sometimes what's bad is good
although it seems like it's only worse–
but inside a black hole
is the only way we can create the Sun–
and isn't this what we're known for,
our nickname
when we're not known for being a joke
and oppressing people,
being the first colony in the States
saying falsely that it was discovered
when there were already inhabitants?
a vain search to find this youthful fountain,
some man named after a lion
who ran off the natives living on the land,
showed up to take their place
instead of learn from them–
so I say I want to change this narrative
showing up in a space not to take over
but to exchange enlightenment–
like the juice that grew from the field
as fruits that we may hold in our palms
like a grenade until it's time to pull the pin–
and so I put my pen to these words
so that we can understand
what we have to do to move forward–
to connect to our inner self
to understand that while searching
for Paradise above
or beyond in a foreign land
we need to first search
inside our own hearts to find the savior
we might have to just look into the mirror
and see what reflects back–
an imperfect being,
someone we can only witness the flaws of,
something we can only see as having sinned
and so we put it down–
we can't imagine how something so unholy
can have so many holes
that we can plant seeds in to make grow
into a field of flowers
like this land we love and hate
called Florida,
Spanish for “land of flowers”
and now it's time for us to bloom

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The sixth annual ReadOut: A Festival of LGBTQ+ Literature will be held February 17- 19, 2023, live in Gulfport (FL) as well as virtually on Zoom.
          by Tyler Gillespie
The city of Gulfport has long been an oasis for LGBTQ+ Floridians. Near St. Petersburg, Gulfport counts about a third of its 12,000 residents as members of the LGBTQ+ community. It also has one of the state’s only public LGBTQ+ Resource Centers located in a public library.
The library’s LGBTQ+ collection started with a donation of about 250 books from the Women's Energy Bank (WEB), a lesbian feminist group started in the 1980s. The collection has since grown to include around 9,000 materials.
The LGBTQ Resource Center has also created initiatives like a BranchOut Scholarship for local LGBTQ students, ArtOut exhibition for visual artists, and ReadOut: A Festival of LGBTQ+ Literature. In 2020, ReadOut was the last live programming at the Gulfport library before the pandemic hit. The free event drew nearly 145 people. The following year it went virtual. Their attendance ballooned to nearly 1,000 registrants from 22 countries.
“We had no idea what we were doing,” said Susan Gore, president of the Resource Center’s board. “Zoom made it happen, and the library was extremely supportive.”
Recently, the Florida Humanities Council (FHC) has also been supportive of the big dreams of this small-town team. The FHC’s Center for the Book awarded ReadOut a $10,000 grant for its upcoming weekend of events taking place from February 17- 19.
In its sixth year, the festival will offer a hybrid listing of in-person events and virtual presentations, all to be livestreamed on the site. The festival put out a call for submissions – for panels, readings, and the like – and received submissions from all over the country. This year, they’ll feature over 80 authors.
“We are doing more than we have staff for,” said Gore. “We're all volunteers, but we will make it work.”
To find out more information on the literary lineup and reserve a free ticket visit ReadOut’s website: https://readout.lgbtqgulfport.org/

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Outdoor Wedding
          by Eleanor Eichenbaum
Banyan tree.
Oh, love stories.
Catch the roots in buckets.

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The Writer’s Corner
          by Dustin Brookshire

The Writer’s Corner is a monthly interview series where Dustin Brookshire interviews writers residing in Florida with a focus on south Florida writers. The inaugural installment features Miami-Dade poet Caridad Moro-Gronlier.

Dustin: Your debut full-length, Tortillera (Texas A&M Press), turned two in January. (Happy birthday, Tortillera!) It’s a damn good book. We all have favorite poems in our books. Have your favorites from Tortillera remained the same or have they changed over these two years?

Caridad: Thank you so much for having me as the inaugural poet in this series, Dustin. I’m honored. I know I’m not alone when I say I’m just so grateful for all your efforts and hard work on behalf of poets and the poetry world.

Thanks as well for the Tortillera birthday shout-out! As you can imagine I’ve spent a lot of time with these poems over the past two years, but some have been with me from the start and when I put together a set list “Coming Out to Mami,” “Analfabeta,” and “That Night at the Rack ‘Em Room” always make the cut.

Other poems have become favorites over time, poems that give me a rush when I read them to an audience, like “Unpacking the Suitcase,” “For My Lover Returning to Her Husband,” “and “What You Learn at The Track”. I learned that those poems gather their strength line by line as I read them and I give myself over to their cadence, their rhythm and lose myself inside them—a gift to a chronic overthinker like me.

To quote Mary Oliver, “And what does this have to do/ with love, except / everything?”

Dustin: Are you currently working on your second full-length or another project?

Caridad: In 2021 I started to work on a creative non-fiction project (still in progress) made up of lyric essays. I wanted to write outside of my comfort zone, but no matter how much I tried to immerse myself in prose, the poems continued to muscle their way into my consciousness and shouted themselves into existence. I didn’t deliberately set out to write a second book, but recently I gave a reading that was made up of entirely new work and in reading the new poems as part of a set, in a particular order, I realized they were starting to knit themselves together into a cohesive unit, so yes, my second full length book is well under way.

Dustin: Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing (Beacon Press), which you edited with Richard Blanco, Nikki Moustaki, and Elisa Albo, is also turning three this year. Grabbed is such a necessary anthology. What feedback are you receiving today about the book? Do you have a follow-up to Grabbed planned?

Caridad: If I am remembered for no creative project other than Grabbed, the first anthology of its kind, that’s just fine with me. It is by far one of my proudest achievements. We’ve gotten a lot of wonderful feedback on Grabbed and it’s proven to be a valuable resource in classrooms, book club discussions, rape crisis centers and writing workshops. I am most moved by those readers who share their own stories, who tell me that they found their experiences reflected and validated throughout the book’s pages, who thank me for finally giving their stories credence, for giving agency to marginalized voices, for offering a space to be heard, to heal. That is everything.

As per a follow up, there’s nothing currently in the works, but the possibility certainly exists. Unfortunately, sexual assault is still heartbreakingly pervasive and there are still many stories yet to be told.

Dustin: You’re an associate editor for SWWIM Every Day. What do you enjoy most about your work with SWWIM?

Caridad: Aside from the gorgeous work we publish by incredibly talented poets, our dynamic reading series at The Betsy Hotel, and our wonderfully engaged readership, what I enjoy most is the solidarity and connection that I find among my SWWIM sisters— Jen Karetnick, Catherine Esposito Prescott, Alexandra Regalado, and Mary Block. I love being a part of an organization that runs on the engine of collaboration, communication, camaraderie, and a combined love of poetry.

Dustin: What is the name of your last poem published online?

Caridad: Split This Rock published my poem “Abuela Warns Me a Caravan of Esa Gente is Headed Our Way” online in November of 2022.

Dustin: What are you looking forward to in 2023?

Caridad: I look forward to more laughter, new succulents in my garden, bread breaking with beloved friends and family, the heartfelt hugs I’ll get at AWP in Seattle, card games my wife and son, and of course, more poems, more essays, and maybe even a finished draft or two.

Dustin: Let’s close out with recommendations. Please name two books and two chapbooks by living poets that everyone should purchase after they finish reading this interview.

Caridad: Two books that have recently wowed me are Relinquenda (Beacon Press, 2022) by Alexandra Lytton Regalado and All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin Press, 2022) by Paul Tran. As per chapbooks, check out These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books, 2021) by Meghan Sterling and Sad Girl Poems by Christopher Soto (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016).

Caridad Moro-Gronlier (she/her) is the author of Tortillera (Texas Review Press, 2021) winner of The TRP Southern Poetry Prize. She is an Editor for Grabbed: Poets and Writers Respond to Sexual Assault (Beacon Press, 2020) and Associate Editor for SWWIM Every Day, an online daily poetry journal for women identified poets. Visit her online at cardiadmoro.com.

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FLAWNT IT! 🎉🎉🎉
          compiled by Gloria Muñoz
Congratulations to Kitchen Table Literary Arts for receiving the Poetry, Programs, Partnerships, and Innovation Grant from the Poetry Foundation.
Three cheers for Julia Koets for receiving a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts.
Let's spread the hype forthcoming poetry books EMBERS by Miesha Brundridge-Baker & EVERWHEN by Anne Bangrover!

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FLAWN branding and artwork by DXP