I am thrilled to share that my manuscript, my first book, Hua Shi Hua (华画诗) Drawings & Poems from China, will be published by Ahsahta Press! These poems emerged in the year I spent living in Shanghai, working as a writing fellow at NYU Shanghai, and exploring paper museums and factories in Zhejiang and western Yunnan. I admire Ahsahta so much, and am honored to have my work find a home among collections by poets I admire, and poets whose work I've recently discovered, who feel immediately important to me. I'm thinking now of Mary Hickman's new collection, This is the Homeland, begun while she was a surgical assistant for open-heart surgeries. After my second surgery in 2010, Joseph McElroy brought me The First Four Books of Poems of Louise Glück, and reminded me to resist the immediacy of the trauma. I'm glad I tended to my urge to be in Shanghai, and to let my own lyric voice develop develop in a landscape so close to, so inside, my heart.

When I shared my news with my mentor, Jen Bervin, she pointed me to a great interview, Solmaz Sharif and Eileen Myles in conversation, on first books! I look forward to reading Sharif's book, LOOK, out from Graywolf Press in July 2016.