View From True North: a reading

The event would include a reading from my recent collection of poetry. My collection of poetry, View From True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018) won the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, is a volume of braided narratives that examine trauma and addictive family cycles. Written in the tradition of Stanley Plumly and Sharon Olds, the collection is a work of witness and autoethnography, exploring themes of familial violence (sexual, physical, and emotional) and sexual identity, specifically trauma associated with long-term closeting. It has been featured or reviewed in such venues as the Texas Review of Books, the Billings Gazette, Plume, Crab Orchard Review, the South Dakota Festival of Books (hosted by the South Dakota Humanities Council), Midwestern State University’s the Hawkeye, The Florida Review, Devil’s Kitchen Literary Festival (hosted at Southern Illinois University Carbondale), the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s the Daily Nebraskan, The Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, and two radio programs for South Dakota Public Broadcasting: “In the Moment” with Lori Walsh and “Poetry from Studio 47” with Patrick Hicks.