Lit Chat

Inspiration for being human.

Surviving Chaos, Assumptions about Our Mothers, and Being Excited to Write Poetry

Wednesday April 8, 2026

Welcome to the first edition of Lit Chat, a weekly newsletter with bits of literary and artistic inspiration for being human! I hope some of the ideas and questions here inspire your own writing and conversations. Feel free to reply to my email, or join the Lit Chat online discussion to see what others are saying and share your own response.

As you may know, I have been working on a book for the past several years, and I am excited to share that my speculative fiction poetry collection Woman Outside the City is officially published and will be released in October! Find out more about the book and pre-order a copy from the bookseller of your choice. Throughout the coming months, I will also share lots of behind-the-scenes info about my writing process and inspirations. 

Here is this week's inspiration for being human...

Let's consider the bardo...

Human lives and human experiences are messy, and it feels even more chaotic during periods of transition. Lucky for us, a word exists for such moments of fundamental change: the term bardo originally comes from a Tibetan Buddhist concept referring to a transitional state between death and rebirth. It is often used to describe any intermediate state of existence between one significant phase and the next. The bardo is a transitional time and space "where one's usual sense of self or reality shifts"—a place in which conventional frameworks no longer hold, such as in George Saunders's experimental historical fiction novel Lincoln and the Bardo, and in my speculative fiction poetry collection Woman Outside the City. During transitional states, we often experience deep uncertainty, profound change, and powerful inner experiences that can be difficult to explain. Words like bardo are good; they allow us to acknowledge and name aspects of our reality so that we can speak of our reality in ways that lead to greater understanding and agency.

Are you in a bardo period in your life? If contemporary human society is in a bardo period right now, what does it take to embrace the bardo? What awaits us in our next phrase of human society?

Let's discuss assumptions about mothers...

“Your mother was your mother was

your mother. That’s who she was. She was also what she did for a living. Your mother was an action figure—she was the role

she played in The Reality Show you’ve been watching all your life.”

—from “Retrofit” in Woman Outside the City

Prompt: What assumptions have you held about your mother? Have any recent developments led you to question those assumptions? What questions do you wish you could ask her? What do you want to know about her and her experience? How have your assumptions about your mother influenced the way you view yourself and your relationship to the world?

Let's read poetics of freedom...

"i didn't eat the sun" by ire-ne lara silva is a beautiful testament to artistic and personal freedom. Silva's poem breaks convention in several ways, using language to celebrate the physical sensations of nature and life on earth. The cascading lines in the poem, together with vivid nature imagery in lines like “my soles drank / in the saltwater” and “i didn’t run with the / coyotes but i howled with them,” make me feel keenly aware of the many ways we experience and express freedom. It makes me feel excited to write a poem simply for the joy and freedom of play with words and creating something beautiful. 

What expressions of freedom do you notice in art or life? How might these expressions of freedom inspire your writing and your life?

Let's listen to lofi radio...

Lofi (low-fidelity) music is an subgenre of instrumental hip hop that is incredibly relaxing and perfect for relaxing and for doing work that takes a lot of concentration. During the pandemic lockdown period, our entire world was shifting, and everything we assumed about our daily lives was thrown into uncertainty and chaos. It was a stressful time for most of us, and as a teacher and parent, I had to find new ways to maintain a sense of calm, despite all of the chaos and unknowns. My daughter, a high school senior at the time, introduced me to Lofi Girl's  lofi hip hop radio beats to relax/study to, and it has been an essential part of my work environment ever since. This Lo-fi Music Guide from MasterClass reveals the history and characteristics of lofi music. 

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