Here are the books that I received as holiday gifts, or, in the case of Fiebig’s and Waite’s, bought with some holiday cash:

Fiebig, Johannes, ed. The Tarot of A. E. Waite and P. Colman Smith: The Story of the World’s Most Popular Tarot. Cologne: Taschen, 2023.

Waite, A. E. The Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition Under the Veil of Divination. London: William Rider & Son, 1910. Rpt. Cologne: Taschen, 2023.

These books are part of a box set that also contains a facsimile of the 1910 Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

Grayhall, Patricia. Making the Rounds: Defying Norms in Love and Medicine. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2022.

Harper, Faith G. Unfuck Your Kink: Using Science to Enjoy Mind-Blowing BDSM, Fetishes, Fantasy, Porn, and Whatever Your Pervy Heart Desires. Portland, OR: Microcosm Publishing, 2024.

Lakoseljac, Bianca, ed. Rudy Wiebe: Essays on His Works. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2023.

Rajunov, Micah, and Scott Duane, eds. Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Schlund-Vials, Cathy J., Sean Frederick Forbes, and Tara Betts, eds. The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century. New York: 2Leaf Press, 2017.

Cruz, Daniel Shank. Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024.

My author’s copies of my new book FINALLY arrived after some shipping snafus on the printer’s part. (The book was released on November 21.) The book’s copyright date is 2024 even though it is already out, and even though its Library of Congress call number lists it as 2023. It’s very exciting to finally hold it in my hands!

Erlick, Nikki. The Measure. New York: William Morrow, 2022.

My partner has been listening to the audiobook of this dystopian novel, and bought me a copy so we could discuss it together.

Joseph, Janine. Decade of the Brain: Poems. New Gloucester, ME: Alice James Books, 2023.

Rosenberg, Dan. Bassinet. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2022.

Two of my best friends were recently at poetry readings by Joseph and Rosenberg, and bought me signed copies of their books.

di Prima, Diane. Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1990.

—. The Poetry Deal. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2014.

I love di Prima’s memoirs–I recently read Recollections of My Life as a Woman–but haven’t read much of her poetry, so I decided to buy these two books. I’m about a third of the way through Pieces of a Song and am enjoying it thus far.

Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of our times (which were especially terrible this month), and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I will include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a queer disabled Latinx writer because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of an oppressed group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order. It was a busy month!

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

3. Submitted eight poems to Frogpond.

4. Submitted my memoir to a publisher.

5. Had my memoir reach another publisher’s final judging round, but then ultimately get rejected.

6. Had a poem accepted by Modern Haiku for their next issue.

7. Submitted the ekphrastic poem for an anthology of artwork celebrating Anabaptism’s 500th anniversary in 2025 that I was commissioned to write last month to the editor.

8. Interviewed Casey Plett about her new book, On Community, at an event at McNally Jackson Seaport.

9. Had a poem published in the Haiku Society of America’s 2023 members’ anthology.

10. Had my second book, Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature, published by Penn State University Press.

di Prima, Diane. Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. 2001. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

I loved the other two of di Prima’s memoirs that I’ve read (Memoirs of a Beatnik and Revolutionary Letters), so I’ve had this one on my list to read for a while. I bought it and Dear Vaccine with a gift certificate I received for my team winning a trivia contest at work.

Nye, Naomi Shihab, David Hassler, and Tyler Meier, eds. Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2022.

I remain obsessed with literature about the pandemic, and have therefore had my eye on this poetry anthology for a while. I was able to find a new copy for a deeply reduced price.

Whipple, Allyson, ed. Fractured by Cattails: The Haiku Society of America 2023 Members’ Anthology. New York: Haiku Society of America, 2023.

The Haiku Society of America’s annual anthology came in the mail earlier this week. It’s always a fun read because a lot of people (myself included) submit poems that are more playful or adventurous than the stuff that usually gets accepted by journals.

Butler, Octavia E. Octavia E. Butler: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2023.

I spoke at an event at McNally Jackson Seaport earlier this week, and they gave me a voucher for a free book. I used it on this new collection of some of Butler’s interviews. I love her work, and this particular volume caught my eye because it has an introduction by my favorite author, Samuel R. Delany.

smith, sb., ed. Disabled Voices Anthology. Nanoose Bay, BC: Rebel Mountain Press, 2020.

I first heard about this anthology because one of my favorite authors, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, wrote the Foreword for it. I ordered it because I’m always hungry for more crip literature.

Kennel, Maxwell. Ontologies of Violence: Deconstruction, Pacifism, and Displacement. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2023.

I am participating in a special issue of a journal about this recently-released book. My review copy came in the mail a few days ago.

Saitō, Sanki. Selected Haiku, 1933-1962. Trans. Masaya Saito. Tokyo: Isobar Press, 2023.

I’ve been focusing more on reading and writing haiku lately, and read a glowing review of this book, so I decided to buy it.

Shea, James, and Grant Caldwell, eds. The Routledge Global Haiku Reader. London: Routledge, 2024.

As part of my recent reading about haiku, I am trying to read more haiku history and literary criticism. I read a review of this recent book (so recent that it does the weird but not totally unusual thing of having a copyright date for the year after it actually comes out) that recommended it, so I decided to buy it.

Acevedo-Quiñones, Claudia. The Hurricane Book: A Lyric History. Brookline, MA: Rose Metal Press, 2023.

I heard about this piece of creative nonfiction about hurricanes throughout Puerto Rico’s history a few weeks ago and pre-ordered it immediately because of my family’s history with them.

Beary, Roberta, Lew Watts, and Rich Youmans. Haibun: A Writer’s Guide. Bath, UK: Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023.

I love Beary’s haiku and have been slowly starting to write haibun lately, so I decided to read this recently-released book.

Garth, Kristin. Daddy: Stories. N.p.: Anxiety Press, 2023.

I enjoy the poetry of Garth’s that I’ve read, so when I saw she had a new collection of fiction out I decided to buy it.

Torres, Justin. Blackouts. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Torres’s long-awaited second novel was finally just released, eleven years after his first. I bought it immediately and read it this past week. It’s excellent.