On Poetry, Community, and Publishing

Writers, don't miss this! This really is our BIGGEST news yet!

Dearest Reader,

This post is entirely overdue. One after another, there have been life events and detours to delay my writing to you about this very BIG, BIG news.

So, I am not going to delay. In this newsletter, you are finally going to find out FIRST what I have been dying to tell you all this time! I’ll also be sharing a NEW poem and other fun news from TheWayBack2Ourselves.com.

Be sure to hang on until the end to hear my BIG NEWS!

So, let’s get started!

I am happy to share my new poem, “This Distant Place I Keep,” has just been published with

Ekstasis

Magazine, which I would love for you to read HERE.

“This Distant Place I Keep” is written in response to Walt Whitman’s poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” and it is about the great alienation and dissonance one can feel in a digital age full of division, arrogance, and feigned certainty—though I fear even these words don’t do the poem’s intent justice, as I tried my best in our feeble language to communicate the unspeakable mysteries of nature, God, and the universe. “This Distant Place I Keep” will be featured in my second poetry collection, Exalted Ground, which is coming out soon (more BIG news on this below).

And as you know, we writers love engagement, so I would be honored to read your comments at their website and/or below. Feel free to hit that “LIKE” button over at their website if you enjoyed it, too.

In case you missed it, here are some things you don’t want to miss with TheWayBack2Ourselves.com:

CULTIVATE 2025

Cultivate 2025 is coming June 20-22. This is a virtual (and recorded) event, and we will have some amazing guests with us:

Tanner Olson

of WrittentoSpeak.com, Stephen Roach of the Makers and Mystics podcast and The Breath and the Clay,

Sarah E. Westfall

of The Way of Belonging and the Human Together podcast, as well as

Deidre Braley

,

Edward Holmes

,

Matthew Nash

,

Heather Lobe Johnson

, and more.

The theme this year is Unrelenting Hope. Grab your early bird ticket for just $99 NOW.

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STEAL MY BOOKSHELF GIVEAWAY

Join as a paid subscriber to My Way Back Substack before May 1 and be entered in my BIG “You Can Steal My Bookshelf” Giveaway to win everything in this post below PLUS a free one-hour creative counseling session with me! This is a $250+ value.

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THE SPRING POETRY COHORT

We just wrapped Week 2 of the Poetry Hour Spring Cohort last night. We have 32 full-time students, as well as drop-in students each week. If you’d like to join Week 3, 4, 5, or 6 as a drop-in student, here’s the LINK. We will follow up with you about which week (or weeks) you’d like to attend via email and get you set up.

We are having so much fun! Won’t you join us?

And finally, here is the BIG news you have been waiting for! I can’t believe I get to even type these words, but here goes:

TheWayBack2Ourselves.com is adding a publishing imprint, THE WAY BACK BOOKS, to our offerings! That’s right! You read that correctly. The Way Back to Ourselves is becoming a boutique book publisher dedicated to telling stunning and authentic “beauty from ashes” stories.

And to show my full confidence and commitment in this endeavor, which I deeply feel the Lord has called me (and us) to, I have left my publisher to publish my second poetry collection, Exalted Ground: Poems of Praise and Lament for the Living, under our imprint. My cover reveal is coming soon, and I will NEED YOUR HELP with a book launch, so please stay tuned. It would mean the world to find 100 friends to help support Exalted Ground and this new endeavor with The Way Back Books.

In addition, I am also beyond excited to announce The Way Back Books’s first authors, along with myself:

Rosa Gilbert

and

Deborah Rutherford

will be publishing their debut poetry collections later this year! Please be sure to subscribe to

Rosa Gilbert

and

Deborah Rutherford

to enjoy their work and follow their journeys to publication. More details about their projects are coming soon!

Of course, you might have questions. How can I submit? What are you accepting? What’s the submission process? All of this information will come forth over time, as we are just starting out. For now, we are not open for submissions/queries, but we will let you know when we are ready.

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So, there you have it! I am SO excited I could finally share this news with you and the beautiful future God has in store for The Way Back to Ourselves. What do you think? Can you believe it? Can’t wait to hear from you!

You belong here,

me

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Grab my best-selling debut collection, Of Wings and Dirt, HERE.