Coming Back After Some Not-So-Literary Months

Ok, so I've been on a bit of a hiatus. I wasn't planning on taking a break from Billow Talk so early in the game, but it happened. To be honest with you all, life has been kicking my ass lately.

Over the past few months, my decade-long romantic relationship came to an end, I've struggled to come to terms with estrangement from my beloved grandma, started family therapy with my mom, and my stepdad faced more than one whiplash health scare–all related to his ongoing battle with cancer.

For a while, it felt like I couldn't catch a break to stabilize myself. Writing and reading felt impossible, my racing thoughts sending me into self-deprecating spirals. Deadlines for writing opportunities I'd had on my calendar for a year in advance came and went. Reading goals fell by the wayside. Emails and texts went unanswered. Months passed and I hadn't published a new installment of my newsletter. With each of these "failures", I beat myself up even more.

Like all of us, I've had hard seasons in my life. Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and into young adulthood, I had developed a mentality that no matter what was happening to me personally, no matter what emotional struggles I was facing, I had to push through. I had convinced myself that depression and anxiety were not viable "excuses" to let my grades fall, to stop applying for awards and fellowships, or to find a new job.

I tried to face the turbulence of these past few months with that very attitude, but my methods of keeping my nose to the grindstone and seeking external validation as a balm for emotional distress...well, that just wasn't working this time around.

Actually, it had never worked.

For the first time in my life, I consciously put writing, reading, and my "performance" aside. Accolades, accomplishments had never actually made me feel better in the long run. They'd always just been bandaids slapped over an internal hemorrhaging.

I needed to care for myself and so I followed what I felt called to, something without the faintest strings attached to my literary career or interpersonal relationships.

Enter the bicycle.

Biking has been a longstanding source of anxiety for me. When I was learning to ride a bike as a kid, my dad had often yelled at me when I stumbled and, more than once, had sent me careening down a hill unable to stop myself until I collided with something. I'd come to associate the activity with fear. Helplessness. And, later, embarrassment when I confessed to my peers that at age thirteen, seventeen, twenty, twenty-five that I didn't know how to ride a bike.

I'm 28 years old and, this past spring, I finally learned. I was tired of the limitations that childhood trauma had placed on my freedom of movement, independence, and potential for fun. Once I started, I couldn't stop.

Biking has been a refuge for me, getting me out of my head and into my body, into nature. This past October, my partners and I completed a 155.5 mile, 4 day bike ride along the Great Allegheny Passage from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD. I didn't do this for an award or money or as something to put in my writer's bio. I didn't even do it for fitness "gains." I did it as a gift to myself, to give myself extended time doing something that's become a source of peace. I did it because I deserve to spend time on joy and, sometimes, that's essential to healing.

I turn 29 next month. I had expected to have nearly a dozen installments of Billow Talk out by now. That isn't the case. And that's ok. It took me months to realize that that's ok.

I'm just glad to be back :)

Yes, I took a bit of a reading hiatus–here are some of the books that brought me back to reading recently!

She Who Remains by Rene Karabash

This slim, hypnotic novel follows a person from a modern, rural Albanian village who takes a vow to become a "sworn virgin", thus socially adopting manhood. Through poetic, genre-defying prose, readers are made to unravel the mystery of why the protagonist made this decision. While this book wasn't really the trans Balkan rep I was hoping it would be (hey, I can dream!), it was so beautifully written and included such rich details that I didn't care. I would recommend this to fans of K. Patrick's Mrs. S and anyone looking to read queer international lit in translation!

The Face: a Time Code by Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki was one of my earliest writing instructors. I had the pleasure of taking a fiction workshop with her while I was an undergrad at Smith. I've been in countless workshops since and hers still sticks out as one of the best I've ever participated in! Needless to say, I'm a huge fan. As a nonfiction writer, I was eager to get my hands on The Face: a Time Code, which is a documentation of Ozeki's experiment in which she sat in front of a mirror, examining on her own face for 3 hours straight. The result is an insightful, delightfully honest series of micro memoirs that wrestle with aging, biracial identity, inheritance, being a woman in the public eye, and the philosophy of Noh masks. If you love a reflective personal essay and deep dives into individual perspectives, you'll love this.

Stranger Faces by Namwali Serpell

Ok, you caught me...I'm really into reading about faces recently. This book is part of a wonderful series from Transit Books called Undelivered Lectures. If you are a nonfiction reader or writer, you've got to check this series out! Stranger Faces is a book-length essay, a series of reflections on appearance and how our faces, our visage impacts how we move through the world. The book covers subjects ranging from Joseph Merrick and the sensationalization of facial differences to emojis and visual slang. What I love most about this book is that Serpell is both so well-read on the subject and so brilliant without being a total snob about it. Long live down-to-earth academics, long live nonfiction writers who can laugh at themselves!

Emerging Writer Fellowship at GrubStreet

• Deadline: April 7th 2026
• Recipients Receive: 5 multi-week courses, 5 three-hour seminars, access to mentors, free complimentary GrubStreet membership after conclusion of the fellowship year
• Bonus: I was one of the 2023-2024 Emerging Writer Fellows and can't recommend this experience enough!...if you click the link above, you might even see a picture of me smiling like a dweeb. How fun!

SmokeLong Quarterly Fellowship for Trans Writers at Sundress Academy

• Deadline: May 6th 2026
• Recipients Receive: 1 weeklong farmhouse residency for a trans writer

Community Anthology EIC at Seventh Wave

• Deadline: April 10th 2026
• Recipients Receive: chance to curate and edit a community anthology of 6-8 pieces, cohort-based mentorship, $1000 stipend