Today at Medium, I write about crafting a "mission statement" for your writing career and how it can help you meet your goals. Thinking about your writing as a brand helps to combat self-rejection and imposter syndrome. It puts a bit of distance between you and your work — and that can be a lifesaver in the future when you’re looking at hard decisions about where to publish and why.

Read the whole post here . . . 

I am on the radio today reading poetry! If you're in Houston you can catch my segment in the 2019 edition of Voices and Verses on Houston Public Media. Click above to listen!
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In this sound portrait, Walrath describes how she fell in love with poetry in high school, her love of the weird and her inspirations. She reads her poem, “Blue Cadillac.”

Blue Cadillac

Oh, the way you sat in
the drive, taking it all up.

I climbed into your cool interior, sliding
across the widest, darkest navy seats
spread beyond me, beyond my vision.
They seemed to expand and dissolve
into a bright light on the driver’s side.

We drove, through endless lanes
of white picket fences, long green,
green lawns, the Texas sun staccato
in the trees, and it may be that I wore
an Easter Sunday dress, all laced in white,
and bows on my tights, or white slumping socks
above black buckle shoes shining with polish.

And in the heat of a Texas summer,
how you could swallow me up
in your blue dusty smell, that
sweet sweet tobacco tucked
into the glove compartment
beside a lady’s silver lighter.
For the sun merely seemed
to enclose you, a line of gold
light above the leather dash.

But the very roundness of you, round seats
and silver knobs and panels like porthole
windows into another time, but mostly
the round, stitched-leather steering wheel
which was surely made for white driving gloves.

And somehow in this memory of you,
your massive lines like some primordial
behemoth long since dead and buried in
ice, the very blueness of you, I may have
remembered myself, another classic beauty.

This poem was published in my chapbook, Glimmerglass Girl.

I have a new poem up today at Mirror Dance called Farewell Dead Men. I also talk about why fantasy is a genre I love: 

While science fiction is based in science, mystery is based in the pursuit of a question, and horror is based in evoking an emotion of fear, I believe that fantasy is the only genre which is purely pulled from the author’s deepest dreams and imaginings. The ability to dream up fantastical beasts and worlds seems to me to be a peculiarity of the human condition—one that even the most mundane of minds can learn to cultivate. Where did the idea for a dragon first come from or the hero myth? They are deeply ingrained paths that we continue to walk, following our ancestors through the mists of imagination.

Read my poem "Farewell Dead Men" here . . . 

I have a new post up at Medium that's a comprehensive guide to submitting literary short stories! Find out how to tier your submissions, keep track of them, what multiple and simultaneous submissions are, and more!

Read the full post here . . . 
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I have a new article up on Medium today for writers of short fiction who want to submit their work to Science Fiction, Fantasy, and other Genre publications! This is meant to be an exhaustive, detailed, step-by-step guide for new writers. 

By the way, I've published this for members on Medium, but if you're not a member and you'd like a copy, please let me know and I'll send you one. I'm also teaching an online workshop in May with Writespace about this very topic! Registration is open now at $190 until April 27.

Read the article here . . .

I'm starting a new series on Medium for new writers. My first article is on finding a critique group. ​It can be frustrating to find a critique group if you’re a new writer. Groups often don’t take new members or don’t advertise when they do. That’s why it’s usually easier to just start your own group. I recommend getting out in the community and meeting other writers, then finding those that truly get your voice and what you’re doing with your writing. 

Read the full article here . . . 

I have an essay up at Medium today, on the anniversary of Ursula K. Le Guin's death, about her famous short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." If you haven't read this powerful story, I suggest you get thee to a bookstore and pick up her short story collection, The Unreal and the Real. It will make you rethink your worldview.  

Read the essay here...

I posted a reprint essay over at Curious Fictions for my subscribers -- "Defining Art." 

I wrote this essay several years back when I first started writing. It's about what Art is and how we make our legacies as creative people. As a writer, I often wonder what lasting effect my work will have when I am no longer here. I'm fascinated by artists who only became popular after their deaths. 

If you want to read more essays and stories by me, you can subscribe over at Curious Fictions to receive exclusive content! Curious Fictions is a website similar to Patreon but with a science fiction/fantasy focus. Discover cool stories from new writers and help support my writing by joining!

I've got a new article over at Medium.com on working with a freelance editor. Over my four years of editing, I've come to learn that many writers don't understand what it means to work with a freelance editor. Working with an editor can be a big boost to your writing career, especially if you want to publish your work. I'm glad to share my experience, and if you have questions, please feel free to email me or leave them in the comments!

Over at Medium, I'm sharing five writing tips that I'm carrying into 2019. It's a bit of a "Here's what I learned" mixed with "Here's what I still need." 

Y'all, writing is hard. It's constant work. It's a balancing act. You're never really done. I wanted to recap some things that I'm keeping with me for 2019, but I know I'm still learning. 

​What did you learn about your writing last year?

2018 was one wild ride of a year for me. I published my first chapbook. I took many workshops, attended many conferences, and met many new friends. I wrote a lot of things and learned a great deal while writing. 

I've been thinking about how the new year is an arbitrary date. We tell ourselves that it's time to rethink what we've done and to plan for the future. But the truth is that writing is always there. It's a well of creativity that you constantly have to refill, rethink, and renegotiate. As arbitrary as it might be, I love the new year. I love the idea that I might be able to make a difference in my future just by the power of positive thinking. 

In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need to "see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.”

I hope your new year is fantastic and full of all the things you love and enjoy. I hope we make it to next year feeling a bit less angry about the world. 

Here's what I wrote in 2018: 

• Glimmerglass Girl, Finishing Line Press 

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I published several speculative poems eligible for the Rhysling Award: 

• Star*Line 41.4 (October 2018) - "A Terrible Meat Eating God"
• Liminality Issue #17 (Autumn 2018) - "Dead-Eye Girl" 
• Nice Cage (Issue 006, Climate Change And/Or Die, Summer/Spring 2018) - "Boll Heart," "And Farther Death Goes," "A Deep Enough Abyss" 
• Really System(Issue 19: Stymy a Seller, Summer 2018)- "Orbital Debris" 
• Undead: A Poetry Anthology of Ghouls, Ghosts, and More (Apex Book Company, July 17, 2018) - "Sea Fog"

I also published a few realist poems this year: 

• Texas Poetry Calendar 2019 (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2018) - "Dear Childhood"
• Terse Journal (Oct. 3, 2018) - "What it Feels Like to Play Video Games as a Woman" 
• "Erasure" (after Ralph Waldo Emerson) - in ARTHouston Magazine Issue#7 (September 2018) 
• Storyscape (Issue 20, July 2018) - "A Woman" (erasure of William Faulkner)and "She was a Nice Little Nothing" (erasure of Jack Kerouac) 
• ​Isacoustic, April 14, 2018 -  "espejitos"

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I'm particularly proud to have published several stories in pro-paying publications this year. The following stories are awards eligible:

• Daily Science Fiction (August 13, 2018) - After the First Comes the Last
• Robots & Artificial Intelligence Short Stories (Flame Tree Publishing, September 2018) - Stardust
• Fireside Magazine (February 2018) - knick knack, knick knack

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Here are the essays and reviews I published this year:

• ​Cotton Xenomorph (9/17/18) - ​YUM-DERDOME: Oh My Sweet Pickle Babies
  
• Up the Staircase (8/1/18) Review: Dear Judas by Melissa Jennings
  
• Trish Hopkinson's Blog (7/29/18) 6 Resources for Submitting Your Work
  
• Cotton Xenomorph (6/21/18) Manifestos: Six Principles of Flash Fiction
  
• ​Entropy Magazine (6/15/18) Review: Consolation Prize by Tyler Robert Sheldon 

That's it! Whew! As per usual, I am supremely grateful to the editors who continue to support my work and think it's worthwhile enough to grace the pages, or cyberspaces, of their publications. 

I have one more thing to be grateful for. This December, I decided to finally launch a small press and magazine. Now, there's not much to share right now as the ink is not quite dry yet on this new venture, but I promise to post soon about my plans. 

Now, who's ready for 2019? Let's do this.

I was delighted to get to do a fun and quirky interview over at Riddled with Arrows literary journal. Riddled with Arrows publishes metafiction/ars poetica, one of my favorite genres of writing. 

When did you first meet poetry? 

HLW: I was maybe fourteen, sitting outside the crappy pizza joint across from my high school, where I often went to wait for my mom to pick me up after school. I think I was scribbling in my journal, you know, the kind of dreams and chapstick-scented hopes at that age. Maybe I was in love, or maybe just as lonely as only a teenager can be, when poetry came up to me. She had this lopsided grin on her face and she was wearing a cloak made of stars. Her face was cracked and two-toned like a faded map you might find rolled up in a scroll, hidden under the porch stairs in a dusty box buried in the dirt . . . 

Read the full interview here . . .

This past weekend I participated in Zinefest Houston - one of my favorite local events. In this event, local paper artists create zines to sell--small, hand-made, individual books, pamphlets, and other paper ephemera. I've participated twice and I always enjoy this well-crafted event. What I like about Zinefest is the audience. It's mostly young people who are interested in meeting other writers and artists. It's also one of the most diverse and well-attended events I go to every year. I always end up meeting some lovely folks!

For me, the zine is about vulnerability. You can put something in a zine that you might not want to put online. You can also show off your skills with your hands. Each zine I make is hand-folded, hand-cut, or hand-colored. In this way, zines are ephemeral and special. Like chapbooks, they usually focus on one specific theme. I love making them and buying them because I always learn new ways to play with paper. We often forget that paper is what physically connects us to readers. It's a precious resource. Perhaps this is why most of my writing starts out as a handwritten draft. That connection to paper propels my imagination. It says, it's okay to make a mistake, in a way that Word, with its myriad of editing options, doesn't. 

Zinesters are some of the coolest people I've ever met. They might seem strange to outsiders, but every time I'm around them I feel at ease. It's like finding your tribe. 

​I'm already thinking up new ideas for next year's festival!

This #NaNoWriMo, I'm writing 10 short stories, all fairytale retellings! 

The fairytale genre has always fascinated me, even from a very young age. This is probably the case with most speculative writers, and also with people of my age who grew up in the golden age of Disney. Drawing inspiration from authors like Carmen Maria Machado, Shirley Jackson, Naomi Novik, Helen Oyeyemi, and Gregory Maguire, this November I'm focusing my short story writing on fairytales. As the month goes on, I'll update here with the list of fairytales I'm retelling. To begin with, I've focused on fairytale tropes as story seeds. 

1. Rip Van Winkle

2. Beauty & the Beast

3. The Country Where Death is Not

4. Origins of the Hidden People 

5. The Girl without Hands

6. The Willow Wife

Check back for more updates as my month of writing progresses. I usually try to post excerpts from my stories as the month goes on, both on my blog, Twitter, and Instagram. 

If you want to add me on the NaNoWriMo website, my username is Hwally.

Happy writing!

Sometimes being a writer can be a little surreal. Yesterday, I went out to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to take pictures with the butterflies, today I get to share with you this Houston Chronicle feature about my writing. 

Poems have always been there for me. I've had a whirlwind of personal life stuff lately. Putting out a new chapbook. Moving to a new house. A death in the family. But I can always come back to poems. 

Thanks to everyone who has come with me on this journey and to those who've always supported my writing. It's lovely to know all of you. I'm grateful to get to share my words with the world. 

"Walrath’s “Glimmerglass Girl” is an intense collection of poetry that speaks out from the first page. Not for the faint of heart, it’s open, but sharp as Walrath doesn’t shy away from letting her readers see the blood, even if she lets it drip across flowers and suburban kitchen countertops.

The female experience is a large part of Walrath’s poetry. Much of the work does match her interest in the speculative. The spirits of nature and the wonder of fairytales are common themes across her verses. However, like fairytales there is something dark and primal underneath the resemblance to children’s literature."

Read more at the Houston Chronicle . . . 

Fellow poet and SFPA member Matt Betts asked me to do a "poetry post-mortem" for his blog! This is basically a behind-the-scenes of one of my poems, how it came to me, what inspired it, and why I wrote it. I chose "Two Hundred Fifty-Seven," a poem from my new chapbook Glimmerglass Girl. 

Read the poem and its post-mortem here . . .

I had the pleasure of chatting with fellow Finishing Line Press poet Andrea Blythe about what it means to be a weird writer, how Melville's poems are way better than that whale book, and refusing to cater to genre rules. 

Read the Interview here!

Today I've got a new post up at Curious Fictions for subscribers about creating an environment in your life where you give yourself license to try new things. As a writer, this is so important to my process, but I think it applies to other places in your life too. 

I've got a new post for subscribers up at Curious Fictions on how art can be an entry point for writing. Curious Fictions is a platform similar to Patreon where you can subscribe to receive updates from me including reprinted short stories and writing-related exclusive posts, previews of upcoming projects and early releases! 

Subscribe today for just $2/month...

Submitting your writing is hard and a little bit terrifying. But you don't need to go it alone! Over at Trish Hopkinson's blog, I wrote a guest post on the different resources you can use to submit your work, including submission trackers, query trackers, manuscript wish lists, submission stats, and places to find calls for submissions. 

Read it here...

I was interviewed by Charles Christian, editor of Grievous Angels who has been kind enough to publish my work in the past, about Glimmerglass Girl, witches, ghosts, and other weird things! Weird Tales Radio Show is available on iTunes and other podcast apps and also streams as an internet radio webcast on the Paranormal UK Radio Network Thursdays fortnightly.

I have an article up at Cotton Xenomorph today which lists the six elements of flash fiction for me. 

Writing advice is tricky. I struggled approaching this article because some part of me was adverse to the idea of the word "Manifesto." It seems so apart from what I understand flash fiction to be. So let me just say that this is just how I read and write flash fiction and not some grand set of rigid rules. 

We are all humans and we write in our own ways. I know this especially from working as a freelancer. I work with authors and I have to come into their space of writing gently because everyone is different. Some writers wake early in the morning to write before taking their three kids to school. Some stay up late chatting with friends online while revising. We fit writing into our lives, but we rarely sit down and think: What am I really doing here? How does this fulfill me and how can I nurture that feeling? For me, this list is how I nurture my writing of flash fiction and how I understand the genre. But it's just my own experience and understanding. 

The most important rule on this list to me is #1: Empathy. ​I think this also applies to our own work. I see so many emerging writers, marginalized writers, women writers, who are afraid to put their work out into the world. I wish I could say to all of you, your voice matters. Because putting your own vulnerabilities on the page creates empathy. We are humans who need to live in a shared world of experience.

I have a new post up at Curious Fictions, an essay on writing flash fiction. Subscribers also get a free eBook of my story "Mermaid Hunt." 

Curious Fictions is a website similar to Patreon where I post occasional content, essays, and other random stuff. 

​I've got a new post up at Curious Fictions for subscribers. This one's about how we can learn to love ourselves as artists. How do we negotiate the market and the successes of others? Once you start publishing your work, where do you go from there?

I was interviewed by the SFPA - Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association about my writing background, my favorite trends in poetry today, being a Texas writer, and my love of dragons. 

Read it here!