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Janine Joseph

@j9joseph.bsky.social
717 followers 270 following 46 posts

🇵🇭 & 🇺🇸| poet, librettist, prof | Co-organizer: Undocupoets | 📚: Decade of the Brain / Driving Without a License / Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora | 🐶♏️ | fka undocumented

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Reposted by Janine Joseph
Library of Anglo-American Culture & History @libraryaac.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
"Here to Stay" collects #poetry & prose from 53 undocumented writers in America. "A poem cannot protect a person without documents from arrest. But it is capable of a resonant whisper" say the #undocupoets editors @marcelohcastillo.bsky.social @j9joseph.bsky.social & @estherwslin.bsky.social
Holding the anthology "Here to Stay" in front of a patch of pink an orange flowers on a meadow
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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 09/07/2025
ALL Haymarket Books are 40% off through August 22nd! ✊🏾✊🏿✊🏽
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
I’m closing my time as a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project with a new op-ed in Prism Reports. Next week is AWP & the piece is perfectly timed—if you’re attending & browsing the bookfair, pay attention to the submission guidelines you come across & invite people into more inclusive practices.
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Noor Hindi @noorhindi.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Excited to release HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry with @haymarketbooks.org, coming to your nearest bookstore in May 2025. The cover is from Palestinian artist Jumana Manna & features brilliant poetry from Palestinian comrades all over the world. @intifadabatata.bsky.social
Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry. Edited by George Abraham and Noor Hindi.
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Celeste Ng @pronounced-ing.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
1000% this. Public libraries are actually pretty radical--free to all, and based on the idea that info should be available to all. Get a library card! Use your library! Those numbers often play into their funding.
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Mahogany L. Browne @mobrowne.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
A workshop opportunity. Limited slots for virtual class partial acholarships available docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
HERE TO STAY, as reviewed by @christophernelson.bsky.social for Green Linden Press: “And what coheres in these pages—despite stylistic and formal variety—is the power of art to make the poet and the reader more whole, and to intend a more whole future and a more complete sense of history.”
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Hill Center @hillcenterdc.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Read this intimate profile on poet, @j9joseph.bsky.social written by @serenazets.bsky.social for the @wcp.bsky.social: washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7565... Janine will be at Hill Center on Thursday, get your tickets now: www.hillcenterdc.org/event/the-li... @poetrysociety.bsky.social #DCTODO
washingtoncitypaper.com
She Grew Up Undocumented. Her Experience Shaped Her Poetry.
Days after Donald Trump's inauguration, formerly undocumented Filipino artist Janine Joseph will discuss the intricacies of immigration and how art can fuel a movement in perilous times. The talk will...
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Hill Center @hillcenterdc.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Tomorrow, we will have the talented (and formerly undocumented) poet and librettist, @j9joseph.bsky.social come to speak at Hill Center. Here is a blog to learn more about her life and work: bit.ly/JanineJosephBlog #ThingsToDoInDC #Poet #Writer
bit.ly
Celebrated Poet and Librettist Janine Joseph Featured in The Life of a Poet Series
The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of conversations that Hill Center launched in 2013. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Featured poets have included Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, Elizabeth Alexander,
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
I’m not looking forward to much of next week, but onwards we go—& a bright spot is Thursday when I’ll be in conversation with poet Kyle Dargan for the Life of a Poet series Hill Center. Many thanks to everyone making this event possible, including Mary Ann Brownlow and Serena Zets.
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Hill Center @hillcenterdc.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
On January 23rd, we will have the talented (and formerly undocumented) poet and librettist, @j9joseph.bsky.social come to speak at Hill Center. Here is a blog to learn more about her life and work: bit.ly/JanineJosephBlog #ThingsToDoInDC #Poet #Writer
bit.ly
Celebrated Poet and Librettist Janine Joseph Featured in The Life of a Poet Series
The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of conversations that Hill Center launched in 2013. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Featured poets have included Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, Elizabeth Alexander,
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Reposted by Janine Joseph
Hill Center @hillcenterdc.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
On January 23rd, we will have the talented (and formerly undocumented) poet and librettist, @j9joseph.bsky.social come to speak at Hill Center. Here is a blog to learn more about her life and work: bit.ly/JanineJosephBlog #ThingsToDoInDC #Poet #Writer
bit.ly
Celebrated Poet and Librettist Janine Joseph Featured in The Life of a Poet Series
The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of conversations that Hill Center launched in 2013. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Featured poets have included Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, Elizabeth Alexander,
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Friends in the DC and DMV area! On January 23rd, I’ll be talking with poet, editor, and American University professor Kyle Dargan as part of The Life of a Poet series at the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital in DC. I hope you’ll join us: www.hillcenterdc.org/event/the-li...
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Submissions are now OPEN for the annual Undocupoets Fellowship! Three $500 fellowships + all-inclusive scholarships to attend the 2025 Summer Workshop Program at the Fine Arts Work Center. Open to poets who are currently or formerly undocumented in the United States. DEADLINE: 2/14 at 11:59 pm ET
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Reposted by Janine Joseph
Hill Center @hillcenterdc.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
On January 23rd, we will have the talented (and formerly undocumented) poet and librettist, @j9joseph.bsky.social come to speak at Hill Center. Here is a blog to learn more about her life and work: bit.ly/JanineJosephBlog #ThingsToDoInDC #Poet #Writer
bit.ly
Celebrated Poet and Librettist Janine Joseph Featured in The Life of a Poet Series
The Life of a Poet is a quarterly series of conversations that Hill Center launched in 2013. The series offers a rare opportunity to consider a writer’s entire career and explore the major events that have shaped their work. Featured poets have included Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, Elizabeth Alexander,
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Rebecca Morgan Frank @poetmorgan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Cheers to the poets! It is, as always, a joy to serve on this committee. The @bookcritics.bsky.social poetry longlist is live!
Ten covers of the poetry collections listed in the link below.Titles, authors, and presses. Link provided below.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Help me pick a new author photo
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George Abraham 🍉 @intifadabatata.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
For Mizna, I reflect on this moment of honoring Palestinians at the National Book Awards @nationalbook.bsky.social & sit more deeply with @lenakt.bsky.social & Fady Joudah's earth-shattering books. An honor to publish both finalist readings, including Fady's new poem 🍉🇵🇸 mizna.org/mizna-online...
mizna.org
Honoring Palestinian Poets in a Time of Genocide: Poems from National Book Award Winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha + Finalist Fady Joudah - Mizna
Love takes the form of rain clouds: we accumulate despite our im/possible wounds, gather even in miraculous conditions. We join our kin in the swarm, all of whom gathering, like us, as waters from unk...
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Erika Meitner @rika99.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I am keeper of the post-MFA tumblr (crowdsourced) which has tons of info on post-MFA fellowships, BUT it also has info on residencies—with a whole section of shorter residencies for caregivers! Pass it on! #writers #writingcommunity post-mfa.tumblr.com/residencies
post-mfa.tumblr.com
Post-MFA Resources
Fellowships, Residencies, and other resources for people with MFAs in Creative Writing...
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Hide the poets—
NPR headline: Oarfish keep washing ashore in California. Folklore suggests that could be a bad omen.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Sometimes there are perks to walking your pup in 37 degree weather—above us last night was a lunar halo, which I’d never seen before 🧿
Picture of a lunar halo, explained as “a large, bright ring of light that appears around the moon when moonlight is refracted by ice crystals in cirrus clouds.”
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Sundress Publications @sundresspub.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
We are looking for members for our Reader Board. These volunteer readers’ responsibilities would primarily include reading manuscripts for contests, open reading periods, and solicited submissions, and more! Applications are due by 11/30. www.sundresspublications.com/openings/#re...
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Ilya Kaminsky @ilyakaminsky.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
“A poet is a nightingale who sits in the darkness, and sings” —Shelley, in Defense of Poetry * "In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing About the dark times." —Bertolt Brecht
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Documents like these tell a wild story of my life as a formerly undoc person. My college diploma was signed by Schwarzenegger, who repealed a law allowing undoc people the right to obtain driver’s licenses. My naturalization certificate was signed by Obama, who left office as “Deporter-In-Chief.”
On the left, a blue folder with the official seal of the Office of the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. On the right, a letter from the Governor congratulating me on receiving the 2024 Virginia Literary Award for Poetry. Detailed view of the letter from the Virginia governor congratulating me on receiving the 2024 Virginia Literary Award for Poetry.
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Ross White @rosswhite.com · 08/11/2024
I made a starter pack for Bull City press authors, guests, and friends. go.bsky.app/PhcmmC7
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CherryTreeLit.bsky.social @cherrytreelit.bsky.social · 02/05/2024
Cherry Tree Poetry Faculty Member @j9joseph.bsky.social co-wrote this performance to honor healthcare workers. It definitely shows a poet's sense of sound and structure! www.youtube.com/watch?v=klYA... More info about the Cherry Tree Young Writers' Conference can be found at www.washcoll.edu/ywc
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CherryTreeLit.bsky.social @cherrytreelit.bsky.social · 01/05/2024
Read @j9joseph.bsky.social's poems, Stephanie Burt says, "and you’ll find rare intelligence" as well as "syntactic verve ... at almost every imaginable speed." Janine will lead a Poetry Workshop full of verve & intelligence at Cherry Tree this year, July 16-19. For more info: www.washcoll.edu/ywc
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CherryTreeLit.bsky.social @cherrytreelit.bsky.social · 30/04/2024
The poetry workshop at the Cherry Tree Young Writers' Conference this year (July 16-19) will be led by @j9joseph.bsky.social. Watch Janine read her searing poem, "Everything Signed and Filed": www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu8r... For more info about the Conference, please visit: www.washcoll.edu/ywc
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CherryTreeLit.bsky.social @cherrytreelit.bsky.social · 29/04/2024
The Cherry Tree Young Writers' Conference (July 16-19) offers workshops in poetry, fiction, and journalism. Here's a spotlight on the Poetry Workshop, led by Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social For more info about the Conference schedule, fees, and registration, please visit www.washcoll.edu/ywc
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Hannah Bae @hannahbae.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
Cinelle Barnes is a role model to me, someone who offered critical feedback on my manuscript and someone whose books have made me feel seen. Now she needs our help. Cinelle suffered a brain aneurysm last week. Please give if you can to help her and her family during her recovery: gofund.me/004657e6
gofund.me
Help with Cinelle’s Medical Recovery, organized by Buki P
Dear Family and Friends Many of you will be aware that our beloved sister, Cinelle, surv… Buki P needs your support for Help with Cinelle’s Medical Recovery
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🎃 scarecrowcialism 👻 @swolecialism.bsky.social · 19/11/2023
Bro. Bro. Listen! Bro, shit is turning, bro, turning in the widening gyre, man. The falcon, dude, cannot hear the fuckin falconer, I swear it's true bro, Things fall apart man; the centre? The center cannot fuckin hold bro, not even a little bit It's just anarchy, bro, loosed upon the world, man
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 18/11/2023
See you soon, Miami! ✈️
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Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 16/11/2023
Anne Boyer has resigned as the poetry editor of the New York Times magazine: “Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes all artists have left is to refuse. So I refuse.”
I have resigned as poetry editor of The New York Times
Magazine.
The Israeli state's U.S-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers. The world, the future, our hearts everything grows smaller and harder from from it. This is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is the ongoing devastation of the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.
Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes all artists have left is to refuse. So I refuse. I won't write about poetry alongside the "reasonable" tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to unreasonable suffering. No more g
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 11/10/2023
Yesterday, I got to talk about DECADE OF THE BRAIN, poetic forms, community, and Undocupoets with a class taught one of my favorite humans. Here we are after, outside The American Dream Room at Sarah Lawrence College. Thanks for 17 whopping years of poetry & friendship, @caesura.bsky.social 🤗
Me in a black jacket and dress, smiling and pointing at a placard that says “The American Dream Room” at Sarah Lawrence College. I’m also wearing hot pink fingerless gloves.With R. A. Villanueva, dressed in a blue jacket, smiling and pointing at a placard that says “The American Dream Room” at Sarah Lawrence College. I’m also wearing hot pink fingerless gloves.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 08/10/2023
Search drinks in your camera roll.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 13/09/2023
Thank you to all who signed/shared the open letter to the Pulitzer Prizes, who wrote letters of support, who asked how to help, who answered phone calls & texts, who met on zoom, who advocated for this change. It cannot be overstated how significant a change this is for our literary landscape. 💞🌻
NEW FOR 2025: The #Pulitzer Board has decided to expand eligibility for the Books, Drama and Music awards beyond the current U.S. citizenship requirement to include U.S. permanent residents and those who have made the U.S. their longtime primary home.There is no change in the requirement that entries in Books, Drama and Music be originally published in English in the United States.

The new eligibility language for Books, Drama and Music reads as follows:

Authors and musicians are eligible to enter their work if they are U.S. citizens, permanent residents of the United States, or if the United States has been their longtime primary home.
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Elana Levin @levin.bsky.social · 09/09/2023
So many folks are sick again so I share this with love: you must rest. Rest won’t guarantee you don’t get long covid but it’s a huge mitigator. Even if you have an accute mild case. Even if you don’t feel it at all. Send this to your boss. Make your partner clean or use disposable dishes etc.
time.com
Why You Should Rest—a Lot—If You Have COVID-19
It could help prevent Long COVID
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 08/09/2023
Drop something blue from your gallery.
Graffiti critters
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 07/09/2023
Move out of the way, orchids and birds of paradise, I’ve fallen in love with coxcombs. 🧠
Bouquets of red and yellow coxcomb flowers, which look like bunches of brains.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 05/09/2023
Deeply moved by this essay by Joe Garcia. “As Swift sang…I thought about a time before my incarceration, when I briefly broke up with the woman I loved. She came to my house to return one of my T-shirts.… I sensed that someone was there, but, by the time I opened the door, she was gone.”
newyorker.com
Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison
Her music makes me feel that I’m still part of the world I left behind.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 23/08/2023
“And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones / and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. / The shared world.” - Naomi Shihab Nye
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 16/08/2023
Many thanks to Southern Indiana Review for this review of DECADE OF THE BRAIN 🥰🧠🤗 The book’s been in the world eight months now & it’s a wonder people are continuing to read & engage with it. An excerpt:
From a tweet by reviewer Nicole Lachat: “My review of Janine Joseph’s collection, Decade of the Brain, is out now in @SoInReview! Many thanks to @tryphena_yeboah  and the team for including it.🌸🤗”“Decade of the Brain is a deeply intelligent, often sensory, book about the demanding act of healing, of reorientation, of getting through—be it injury, trauma, immigration, or love: “I hear the seeds I planted are birds now,” Joseph writes in “Tell Me of Paradise.” And what more could one ask for but to witness such metamorphosis.”
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 15/08/2023
Took a jet-lagged nap upon arriving back in nyc & dreamt I forgot to repack my luggage for Bread Loaf & showed up with three articles of clothing that didn’t fit.
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R. O. Kwon 권오경 @rokwon.bsky.social · 10/08/2023
in case you haven’t seen it yet: there’s an open letter to the Pulitzer Prizes for literature, asking that they change the prizes’ citizenship rules 🌱 please share if you’d like lithub.com/dear-pulitzer-prizes-its…
lithub.com
Dear Pulitzer Prizes: It’s Time to Recognize Literature by Noncitizens
Dear Pulitzer Prizes for Literature: We, the undersigned, are readers and lovers of literature, undocumented writers, first- and second-generation immigrants, Native and Black writers, past winners…
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 08/08/2023
Sign the Open Letter: www.undocupoets.org
“Dear Pulitzer Prizes: It’s Time to Recognize Literature by Noncitizens”“We, the undersigned, believe that we have a duty to ask what constitutes the literature of a nation, and in asking this question, we believe it is essential to veer away from the definitions the State provides as to what it thinks constitutes U.S. selfhood.”
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 06/08/2023
On the bullet train to Seoul—didn’t realize I would have to pop my ears so much!
Black & white photo of my love & me, as reflected on the window of a bullet train.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 03/08/2023
Hello from Busan 🌝
My love standing on the shore of Gwangalli Beach, facing the Gwangan Bridge.
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 28/07/2023
Esther Lin’s debut collection, COLD THIEF PALACE, winner of the 2023 Alice James Award, comes out March 2025. I can’t wait.
Second Marriage

by Esther Lin

In circumstances of love, I am abject; my husband insists he must be abject: I left.
Tourists and horseshoe crabs converge on the beach.
The tourists clap when the crabs mate.
I am abject. The sun watches us watch the crabs.
Wan, disapproving spousal gaze!
By instinct--one I must develop--some women have known not to marry.
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Erika Meitner @rika99.bsky.social · 13/07/2023
a story about me trying to write poems again after a long hiatus or a narrative about the Coney Island Wonder Wheel from the NYT
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Janine Joseph @j9joseph.bsky.social · 10/07/2023
New author photo bc this is who I am now.
Me, in a costume, pretending to be a reporter, but wearing a satin pink bomber jacket, pink reflective sunglasses, and a blue and pink baseball cap. I am holding a light-up flashlight as if it were a microphone. Behind me, a fake mountainous landscape.
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