book birthdays | girl show

Scrolling through some older blog posts this weekend, it occurred to me that this little oddling turns seven this month.  My book of sideshow women set in the 30's/40's, it was initially my MFA thesis in 2007, but then bounced from it's initial press acceptance to Black Lawrence in 2011 and was published in 2014, which made the gestation a little longer than usual. It was the only book I've published that had a lot of hands in it from the beginning--my own, my thesis classmates and advisors. Many of the adjustments made to get it approved for the degree were ditched when I actually started sending it out, actually, so outside of maybe the ordering, the poems are probably a bit different than the version that exists in the Columbia archives (and it's a weird thing to know it's over there.)  Maybe some day if I am ever a fancy famous poet people will write theses on the changes I made merely to please an advisor and get the damned degree, and the ridiculousness of 32 year old me actually  feeling like I  had to do that becuase I just wanted it done (which is a whole other blog entry in and of itself.). But really, this is the better version and I love it so, even though it took 7 years to come to fruition. I also love that people are still, according to my royalty statements, actually buying this weird little book on the regular. You can get your very own copy here: https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/girl-show/