I’m proud to share that in the fall, Jane Miller selected my poem, “At Publix, the Florida Skunk Ape Hunts Dangerous Game” as the winner of the 2018 Fairy Tale Review Award in Poetry, and it’s now available to read in the The Pink Issue! Head on over to get a copy and read the other magical pieces. I’m so grateful to Jane Miller and the FTR editors I’ve worked with– Kate Bernheimer and Jon Riccio– for their kindness and support.

I’ve also had poems this year in Passages North, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Greensboro Review, Zone 3, Washington Square Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. “Cult of the Deer Goddess” was reprinted on The Academy of American Poets website (!!!), and you can read it here. I owe my gratitude to these wonderful editors and am proud that my poems found homes in their pages.

2018 has been a nonstop wild ride of a year! I moved in January from Gainesville to Cincinnati, and then again last week from Cincinnati to piney and gorgeous Idyllwild, California, where I’ll teach creative writing as the Poet-in-Residence at Idyllwild Arts Academy. In between, I spent a month in Key West at the Studios of Key West, and another month in dreamy Johnson, Vermont, at the Vermont Studio Center. I have met so many bright and brilliant lights in these places, written poems and essays I may not have otherwise written, and come away with the woods, rivers, roosters, and iguanas a little stitched into my bones. I’m grateful, grateful, grateful to these organizations for their generous gift of time and space, and to their staff for all they do for those in residence. If you’re considering applying for either of these residencies, send me a message– I’d be happy to chat with you about the experience.

I’ve also had a few poems published in journals I admire. The Southeast Review published four of my creature poems, and you can purchase “Bigfoot at Siesta Beach” as a beautiful broadside designed by Erik Pedersen here. An extra shoutout to Dorothy Chan and Alex Quinlan for being such generous editors- they were the first to accept my creature poems and have done so much to support them.

Hot Metal Bridge published my poem “Better Homes and Gardens” in May, and two more of my creature poems,“Bigfoot Thumbs a Ride” and “Animal Bride”, found an incredibly fitting home in the Fairy Tale Review Online in June. I also had a poem, “Marriage,” in Western Humanities Review. I am ever grateful to the editors of these publications for their kindness and labor.

In June I also had my second ever creative nonfiction publication when Mississippi Review published my essay, “Sillage,” in their prize issue, where it was a finalist for the 2018 Nonfiction Prize. This essay concerns the Black Dahlia murder, the Rococo painter Fragonard, perfume and the perfuming town of Grasse, France, and what the dead leave behind.

That’s all for now, folks.

I spent the spring writing creature poems, and one titled “Bigfoot to Her Daughter” won The Baltimore Review‘s 2017 Summer Contest! Follow this link to read and listen to audio! I’m so grateful to Barbara Westwood Diehl and the Baltimore Review team for giving my monster this honor.

I also have poems in the current issues of The Pinch and Third Coast, and a little poem for the aliens in Redivider, which you can read below!

2017 is off and running, and I have some recent and less recent poetry news to share!

To begin, my chapbook, Inside My Electric City, is out in the world! Head over to YesYes Books to bring it into yours, and get in touch if you’d like to review it or use it in an educational capacity.

I had the honor of reading from this collection with dazzlingly good YesYes authors at AWP 17 in Washington DC in February. I really can’t emphasize enough how incredible this press is, nor how talented its roster is. I can’t believe I’m a part of it!

I also had the chance to read with Salt Hill and The Southeast Review at Madame’s Organ, and never have I felt more at home in an event space- red lights, dead stuff on the walls, and an actual fire in a fireplace. Such a great venue, and even better company.

Most recently, I’ve had new poems published in Pacifica Literary Review and DIAGRAM. I have also been meaning to post about having won the Louisville Literary Arts Association’s 2016 Writer’s Block Prize for Poetry in the fall. I am very proud of this! My poem “I Don’t Know what People Should Do” was published in the fall 40th anniversary issue of The Louisville Review, and judge Kathleen Driskell had some nice words for it.

My 2016 Nonfiction Prize essay, “Three Things I Remember About Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was also published this fall in Yemassee. This is my first published piece of nonfiction!

I’ve also begun to send out my first full-length manuscript to contests and publishers. No luck so far, but it was listed as a finalist at the Jake Adam York prize through Copper Nickel, which is an honor in itself. Wish me luck for these longshots!

I’ve also joined the masthead for Oxidant Engine, a new online poetry journal that will also soon publish mini “BoxSet” collections of individual poets. Issue 1 dropped on the first of the year, and the next is due later this spring. Send us your poetry!

And on the horizon: poems in New England Review, The Pinch, Four Way Review, Western Humanities Review, and Redivider! Some of those mags have been in my crosshairs for quite a while, so I’m dancing in my seat waiting for them to come out.

I’ll leave you with an older poem published in Willow Springs two years ago, of which they recently shared a photo on social media. Because what year isn’t, in some way, a year of coming close?

Inside My Electric City is available for pre-order through YesYes Books until Dec. 31! If you’re one of the first 25 to order, I’ll write one of the poems on a vintage postcard and mail it your way as a preview. I can’t wait to hold this little book in my hands, and I’m honored and humbled by the YesYes team’s efforts in putting it together. I’m also thankful to artist Brooke Shaden for letting us use her knockout photo on the cover. Holy smokes, that cover!

Link to pre-order:

http://www.yesyesbooks.com/product-page/b2af46e6-5c87-ac6e-30f1-ca83fcfb9f64

Links to some sample poems:

http://www.alicebluereview.org/twentythree/twentythree.html

http://phantombooks.net/caylin-capra-thomas/

Link to Brooke Shaden’s gallery:

http://brookeshaden.com/gallery/

I’ve got new poems in four journals I have admired for a long time!

Most recently, I received my Salt Hill contributor copies, which contain some great work from my friend Philip Schaefer, plus two of my poems, “A Pilgrim Is a Foreigner,” and “Like Kanye Rapping About Kanye Rapping About Kanye.”

Head over to Salt Hill to pick up a copy!

Over the summer, Quarterly West published my poem, “Hot Date,” which you can read online here. The editors were also kind enough to nominate this one for a Best of the Net! It’s full of good stuff, but I really loved these poems by Emily Skaja: “My mother says, Why not date yourself for a while. / Accordingly, I listen to all seven Harry Potters. // I go for long walks in a circle & insult Scalia on facebook…” Anything that can marry Harry Potter and insulting Scalia in one poem is a win in my book.

In the spring, Ninth Letter published my five-poem series called “Uncertainty Principle” in its (impressively handsome) print issue. Here’s the fifth installment:

Salamander published my poem, “Ricochet,” in their Spring / Summer 2016 issue, and you can read some samples or order the issue here. I’m particularly fond of “Abandoned Nest,” by Angela Voras-Hills:  “The boys had left // guns in the closets. They would be back / soon for sandwiches. In the living room, / the buck’s head collected dust.”

I remain ever-grateful to the editors of these journals for their (almost always unpaid!) labor, generous attention, and support of my work and the work of other writers. Support these editors, writers, and their work! Go buy an issue! Better yet- subscribe!

I have some poems in the new issues of The Journal, Puerto del Sol, and Whiskey Island!

The Journal put out two poems, “Caveat” and “Husbandry,” in issue 40.1 this winter. They were also kind enough to nominate “Husbandry” for consideration in Best New Poets 2016, along with Catherine Pond’s poem, “Riding the Invisible Horse.” I saw Catherine read at CutBank‘s “Best of the West” AWP off-site event with LA Review and Pacifica this year, and really loved her poems and her reading style. Be sure to check out her work, along with that of my heart-and-soul friend, Alicia Mountain, who has three poems in this issue. Another Montana alum, John Coleman Bennett, is also featured! Good poems abound! You can pick up a copy here.

Puerto del Sol published two poems, “Actually I’m Going to Keep It All,” and “Maze” in  their spring issue. Such a beautiful magazine- order it here!

I also have two poems, “Fretted Note” and “G-Spot vs. Moon Landing,” in the current issue (67) of Whiskey Island. There’s a lot to love in here, but holy moley “Maternity Leave” by Lauren Yates. Just. Go read that. Also, Kat Moore’s nonfiction piece, “The Wounds,” and Theodosia Henney’s poem, “Every Girl Learns.” Buy the issue here.

I would like to conclude by noting that the covers of Whiskey Island and Puerto del Sol both feature freaky bunnies. I love freaky bunnies. How’d they know? (Also pictured: The Boss peeking through, young and bandana-ed, Rolling Stone, 1984.)

Hey internet! My nonfiction essay, “Three Things I Remember about Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” was recently selected by Matthew Gavin Frank as the winner of Yemassee’s 2016 Nonfiction Prize! This will be my first-ever nonfiction publication, and I’m so psyched it’ll be in a journal I have such warm fuzzies for. (If you scroll down, you’ll see they published a poem of mine a few issues back, and they’ve also shown a lot of love for other writers from the Missoula community.) The essay will be in the next print issue, and you can read some some kind words from the judge by clicking here!

I came home to my New South contributor copies in the mail today!  The editors were kind to include in this issue a poem of mine called “Questing,” which has something to do with hemotophagy in general- ticks in particular- and the smoke dome that covers Missoula during fire season.

And isn’t this a fine-lookin’ lit mag?  Not even Beardog can resist its pages!  (Although she looks a little skeptical of my actual poem.)

(Confession: I might have slipped some Pup-peroni behind the cover…)

Order the issue here!

Hello from Kennewick, Washington!  I’m pit-stopping here en route to Portland, where I’ll be reading alongside other contributors for the Portland Review’s Winter 2016 issue launch and 60th anniversary party.  PR was kind enough to include my poem, “Friends Long Absent Are Coming Back to You” in this issue, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.  The event is at Literary Arts in downtown Portland, 7 pm.  If you’re in the area, check it out!  Click here for details.

As I rolled into the motel parking lot here in Kennewick, my phone dinged with Twitter and Facebook notifications and I saw that my poem, “Fold,” was up on Vinyl Poetry’s (recently redeisgned and gorgeous) website as the poem of the week!  I’m really grateful to KMA Sullivan and Phillip B. Williams for giving my piece this special slot, and it’s safe to say that this is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me at a Super 8 in Kennewick. (And very cool in general, not just in the ultimately thin realm of good things you can find out in motel parking lots.)  Click here to read!

And then cruise around the rest of the site.  Among the many gems to choose from, there are poems from friend & fellow Missoulian Philip Schaefer up last week,  CutBank’s All Accounts and Mixture contributor Kayleb Rae Candrilli, and CutBank 82 contributor Anders Carlson-Wee! I also keep returning to this poem by Alysia Nicole Harris, and this poem by Jessica O. Marsh.  Vinyl is updated every Wenesday and Sunday, so check back frequently- the hits just keep on coming!