iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Love getting to be part of this cool series & complain about Southern stereotypes!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Truly a gift to be held & understood like this 🩶🩶🩶🩶🩶🩶🩶🩶

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I'm so excited to share that my book, What Good Is Heaven, has won the Weatherford Award for Best Appalachian Poetry! This is the highest honor in Appalachian literature & it's validating to be recognized as part of this tradition, to have my deep love for my Southern Appalachian home seen & known.

Hi Raye,

Ready? Set? Go!

CONGRATULATIONS!

After much deliberation over incredibly high-quality submissions, I'm pleased to share that your book, What Good is Heaven, has won the 2024 Weatherford Award for the Best Poetry book about Appalachia. Congratulations to EVERYONE who helped! btw, Here is a link so you can see the esteemed company that you now keep. If you scroll to the bottom & click "past winners" you'll behold the 55 year tradition of which are now a part!

The Weatherford Awards are given by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association annually to honor books that “best illuminate the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South.” The three categories recognized are fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The conferring of this annual $500 award in each of the three categories has come to be recognized as a major Appalachian event.

The speakers in What Good Is Heaven inhabit those contradictory spaces in Raye Hendrix’s riveting depictions of life in the mountains of North Alabama: the beauty and the blood-letting of farming, the community and the alienation of small town life, and the love for and the revulsion of queer youth cultivated inside the church and inside the home. These poems are splendidly crafted, melodious, and candid, and hearten readers to consider and reconsider their own experiences and ideologies inside Appalachia.—Marianne Worthington

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james o @jamesolearypoet.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

"The mountain / doesn't know any of our names" @rayehendrix.bsky.social

Image of the poem "Any Coyote" by Raye Hendrix. The page is dogeared.

Like tongues of fire on the mountain
the red tails of fox squirrels flicker

as they run from our presence--
the crunch of my boots, chaotic joy

of my large yellow dog who follows
them like smoke. This morning

my father sent me out with a rifle.
We're meant to searching

for something but I can't remember
what. The woods are like that. Dark

spokes of evergreen wheel overhead
to obscure all that lives beneath

and above--their needles sew away
the sky. Behind us an owl

questions everything, and in the clear
cold air the boulders--wihtout

their spring muffle of moss--repeat
the inquiry. Today even the wind

won't whisper its guesses through
the bare branches of trees less fortunate

than pine. The long ghost of its body
quick and gray, a coyote wisps

through the brush. My dog
pursues it out of sight, returns

with one of our missing chickens hanging
broken from his jaw. Yes, that's right:

my father sent us after the coyote--
my dog to find and I to shoot it--

while he repairs the plundered coop.
/The/ coyote, he said. By which he means:

/any/ coyote. My dog leads me back
to the coyote's den: a hole full of red

feathers, gnawed bone, the old blue collar
of someone's missing cat. No--I mean

/anyone's/ cat. The mountain
doesn't know any of our names.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

The third time????!!!!!!!!! I'm so lucky wtf

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Missy @0mismissy.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

“This commission statement refers to people with Autism, ADHD, asthma, auto-immune disease, and chronic illness as a “dire threat to the American people and our way of life”. This is a manifesto against disability. This is the language of eugenics.” - Erin Biba www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

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Susan Kaye Quinn is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 @susankayequinn.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

It is mind-boggling to me that people say "but I had to comply with the fascists because otherwise there would be some cost—" NO FUCKING KIDDING. Did you think you'd never have to make a hard choice in Fascist America? That you wouldn't be asked to sacrifice someone and be rewarded for it?? JFC

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Dis/Connect: A Disability Literature Column @disconnectanmly.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Check out @sfmontgomery.bsky.social 's essay, "Unlearning the Ableist Writing Workshop," and if you're inspired, reach out to interview her about her new craft book, Nerve: Unlearning the Ableist Writing Workshop to Develop a Disabled Writing Practice! Email raye@anomalouspress.org for more info!

Call For Interviews:

Dis/Connect is seeking a thoughtful reader to conduct an interview with author Sarah Fawn Montgomery to discuss her new craft book,
Nerve: Unlearning the Ableist Writing Workshop to Develop a Disabled Writing Practice,
forthcoming from Sundress Publications on March 4, 2025.

Contact Raye Hendrix at raye@anomalouspress.org
with interest and to receive a digital review copy of Nerve.

We aim to publish this interview by mid-late March or early April.

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press, 2022), Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (The Ohio State University Press, 2018) and the poetry chapbooks Regenerate: Poems of Mad Women (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), Leaving Tracks: A Prairie Guide (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and The Astronaut Checks His Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2014). She also has a craft book on unlearning the ableist workshop and developing a disabled writing practice forthcoming with Sundress Publications and a short collection of flash nonfiction forthcoming with Harbor Editions. Her work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays many times, and her poetry and prose have appeared in Brevity, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Electric Literature, LitHub, New England Review, The Normal School, Passages North, Poetry Foundation, The Rumpus, Southeast Review, Terrain, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She holds an MFA in creative writing from California State University-Fresno and a PhD in English in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is an Associate Professor at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts.

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Dis/Connect: A Disability Literature Column @disconnectanmly.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Dis/Connect is on Bluesky! Follow us here!

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NewJukeboxCafe 🇨🇦 @newjukeboxcafe.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

"There's no reason to build this in Guantánamo unless you want to do things you don't think you could get away with on the U.S. mainland. It's easy to put tents in Florida. But they're putting them in Cuba. Ask yourself why." www.commondreams.org/news/gitmo-c...

commondreams.org

'He's Building a Concentration Camp': Fears Grow as Images Emerge of Offshore Prison at Gitmo | Common Dreams

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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

THIS IS HUGE! Researchers have developed a nasal COVID-19 vaccine that BLOCKS transmission of the virus. This suggests vaccines delivered directly to the nose or mouth could play a CRITICAL role in containing the spread of respiratory infections. Phase I clinical trials HAVE BEEN APPROVED! 🧪🧵⬇️

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Marcus @marcusjmerritt.com · 11/02/2025

Here’s a link to a scanned copy of RIOT by Gwendolyn Brooks, published in 1969 by Broadside Press in Detroit. “It arises from the disturbances in Chicago after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968” #BlackHistoryMonth eclipsearchive.org/projects/RIO...

Chapbook cover, mostly black with the title “RIOT” in jangly red letters inside a rough white circle cutout from the black, the author’s name “Gwendolyn Brooks” in white in a dramatic serif font across the middle of the cover, and in smaller white letters at the bottom, “Broadside Press $1.00”

Scan of a poem on a page:

Title in bold a the top:

“RIOT”

An epigraph below that in smaller text, “A riot is the language of the unheard.

-MARTIN LUTHER KING”

Text of the poem:

“John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe, all whitebluerose below his golden hair, wrapped richly in right linen and right wool, almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff; almost forgot Grandtully (which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost

forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim's, the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri.

Because the Negroes were coming down the street.

Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet.

Gross. Gross. "Que tu es grossier!" John Cabot itched instantly beneath the nourished white that told his story of glory to the World.

"Don't let It touch me! the blackness! Lord!" he whispered

to any handy angel in the sky.”

The page number “9” on the bottom

Back cover of the chapbook, with a black and white author photo of Gwendolyn Brooks, a head & shoulders portrait of a middle-aged Black woman with her hair in a short plain Afro and a friendly frown-smile expression on her face, wearing a soft collar shirt with top button buttoned.

Text below the photo that reads: “RIOT is a poem in three parts, only one part of which has appeared in print before. It arises from the disturbances in Chicago after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.

“Riot. By Gwendolyn Brooks, $1.00

“Broadside Press, 12651 Old Mill Place, Detroit, Michigan 48238”

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I can't apply this year because I left the South for a few years for grad school (heartbroken, tbh) but I know lots of southern poets who would be great for this! ***Note that you have to have lived in the same state for two consecutive years, though!

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Jonathan Feingold @jpygold.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Any university that voluntarily shutters a DEI program, office or personnel “Because of Trumps Executive Order” is making a PR decision. Not a legal one. Trumps EO does not change anti discrimination law. If anything, the EO is unlawful. Universities should treat it that way.

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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

This is what the government did with 120K+ Japanese Americans in 1942. I know. I was there in those camps.

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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

People who hate diversity know that on an even playing field they can’t compete. It’s really that simple

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @ocasio-cortez.house.gov · 22/01/2025

SHARE WIDELY. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. With mass deportations starting today across the country, it is vitally important - for both citizens and non-citizens - to know your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Assert it. You have the right to a lawyer. Ask for one. (1/3)

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I joke about my students often thinking I'm younger than I am, but truly I'm so weary of our cultural obsession with youth. I want to hear things that you're glad you got to do or experience because of when you were born. I want to celebrate aging. That feels sortof radical right now.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Seeing reports of ICE trucks in Knoxville TN the last couple days. Y'all be safe out there.

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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 23/01/2025

This is the red scare witch hunt shit that was supposed to be the blaring klaxon for all decent right minded people.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

It may not seem like it but it's SO hard for me to talk about my book. & I think the smaller your press the harder it is because you do most of it yourself, & the vast majority of the time that means getting ghosted by venues for coverage, especiallybigger ones. This shit isn't easy!!!

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Joshua Zeitler @thejayestofzees.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Reading the latest Poet Lore & this poem by @jamesolearypoet.bsky.social floored me—those final 8 lines! “RIP John Keats, You Would Have Loved Hormone Replacement Therapy” by James O’Leary

Poet Lore magazine open to James O’Leary’s poem, “RIP John Keats, You Would Have Loved Hormone Replacement Therapy”

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

In HS in AL after the first Obama election, my history teacher was crying because of the things people were saying about him. She scrapped our lesson & taught us bluntly about racism. She definitely wasn't supposed to. I was a politically unengaged teen until that day. She set me on a new path.

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Roxi Wheels @roxiwheels.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Today and in the coming days, remember

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

how we feeling about tomorrow besties

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Tomorrow is my birthday! I have a request! ❄️🤍

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Hi friends! If I haven't followed y'all back on here it's not because I don't like you, it's because I look at the list and get overwhelmed! I'm workin on it!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

New tour dates! Let's hang out!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I'm trying to find words for what it feels like to watch live footage of fires in California while in the Deep South while under the threat of historic winter storms.

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Angry @angrystaffer.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Absolutely heartbreaking overhead of the LA fires.

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C.M. Rosens @cmrosens.com · 08/01/2025

If you'd like to support your fave authors in 2025 but you're skint, you could: - make a social media post about the book, just as basic as "i enjoyed this" and a picture (don't forget alt-text) - rec it in a relevant reddit thread or Goodreads forum or Facebook group Word of mouth has an impact!

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Celeste Pewter @celestepewter.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

All, the Pasadena Humane Society is asking for donations - they're taking in animals right now, and are also preparing to evacuate if needed. Please consider helping:

give.pasadenahumane.org

Eaton Fire Emergency

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Sorry but how the fuck is anyone affording AWP in LA

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

See you tonight, New Orleans!!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Hey! I'll be in New Orleans this Sunday to finish out the fall leg of my book tour, but here are a few dates coming up in the Spring! Working on finalizing stops in Texas (Houston), New Jersey, & other stops as well! Let me know if you want me to come to your city!!!

A gray and white graphic sharing dates for Raye's "What Good Is Heaven" Spring 2025 book tour. January 5th: Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC. January 17: Burdock Book Collective in Birmingham, AL. March 26-29: AWP Conference in Los Angeles, CA. May 28: Read Denver in Denver, CO.

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

If you have a review copy of What Good Is Heaven & you're looking for a place to submit a review, here are some ideas! (* = they've published my work!) Southern Literary Review Southern Humanities Review* 32 Poems* Poetry Northwest* Heavy Feather Review* Barrelhouse* swamp pink

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Mair MacLeod @mairmacleod.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

I LOVED @rayehendrix.bsky.social 's debut full-length collection WHAT GOOD IS HEAVEN, and I aaaalsssoo LOVED writing into that feeling!!! Check out my review of WHAT GOOD IS HEAVEN, out now in North American Review: northamericanreview.org/open-space/r...

northamericanreview.org

Review | Meredith MacLeod Davidson

So much of Raye Hendrix’s debut collection, What Good Is Heaven, is about community–or its traces: what we leave behind, what remains in us. Etymologically, the word "community" draws from multiple

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

"What Good Is Heaven shines in the many gems it is made of; too numerous to mention. This is one fine bestiary with the cover of an ageless hymnal, too beautiful for no other feeling but wonder.” Martins Deep on What Good Is Heaven, @pinchjournal.bsky.social www.pinchjournal.com/blog-posts/e...

pinchjournal.com

Raye Hendrix’s poetry collection “What Good is Heaven” offers nuanced portrait of rural America — PINCH

RAYE HENDRIX is the author of the chapbooks Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press, 2021) and Every Journal is a Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press, 2021). Her poems appear in American Poetry Review, Poetry Nort...

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Your favorite cryptid-in-training (me) opened the internet to find not zero not one but TWO Pushcart nominations today!!!! I'm so so so grateful to the folks at @gnashingteethpub.bsky.social and The Journal for this kindness 🩶🩶🩶

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Workshops4Gaza @workshops4gaza.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Alright this has slowed down a lot but please keep sharing! We are trying to get 100 blankets for ppl in Gaza. There are over a million people in the south alone.

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Rachel Nix @rachelnix.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

I'm not but 26 pages into WHAT GOOD IS HEAVEN by @rayehendrix.bsky.social but Y'ALL. (When I say Y'ALL, that's southern for GO BUY THIS BOOK RIGHT IMMEDIATELY NOW.) www.tamupress.com/book/9781680...

tamupress.com

What Good is Heaven

Set in a rural agricultural community in north Alabama, deep in the Appalachian foothills, What Good is Heaven interrogates the complicated relationship bet...

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Sara Moore Wagner @saramoorewagner.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Just finished this beautiful book by @rayehendrix.bsky.social and I related so deeply. Here are a few of my favs. It’s a must read!!

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Dr. Raye @rayehendrix.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I've got an essay I've been loosely working on, that I'm itching to finish revising over winter break, about losing my religion and college football in the deep South. Where would one submit something like that?

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sarah clark (they) @sarahclark.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Sundress Publications is open for submissions for grant applications from Palestinian writers with a chapbook or full-length book in progress. All eligible authors are welcome to submit during our application period which closes on December 31st, 2024. www.sundresspublications.com/submit#pgrant

sundresspublications.com

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