@sandrabeasley
Author of four poetry collections (most recently Made to Explode, published by W. W. Norton in 2021) and a disability memoir (Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life). Freelancer, teacher, poetry editor for Blair, & DC resident.
Potted plant with spiky trunk and tall, thin green leaves. Positioned in front of a window with street view. Rainbow flag hanging to left.
Ahem. Please meet my new Madagascar palm!
I know I’m from the last generation that did cold calls, but sometimes I wish there was a rule that you had to try calling one random friend, to catch up, before going online. I think it would save me hours of time. I’m usually looking for connection and end up with distraction & depression instead.
I closed out last year by writing a little post for Chicks Dig Poetry (keeping the lights on, stubbornly) and sending out four applications for creative writing residencies. 2025 was a brutal year! But you're here. I'm here. Let's try to change our luck together. sbeasley.blogspot.com
My favorite reads of 2025 with books by (among others) @israelbonilla.bsky.social @sandrabeasley.bsky.social @juliafspa.bsky.social @nnedi.bsky.social @morgantalty.bsky.social @agustinabazterrica.bsky.social @thelincoln.bsky.social
Misread “December” as “remember” and I thought, “same friend, same.”
Photo is taken inside a bookstore. Close up of a book on a stand. The cover shows that it is All These Ghosts by Silas House, with a card beneath that has a bookseller's review, including the phrase "I love this book!!!!!"
Hooray for All These Ghosts! Silas House's collection is the Top Book of 2025 at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, VA (H/T for their photo). This kind of recognition is so important in independent publishing—congrats to Silas & the @blairpub.bsky.social team, where I'm proud to serve as poetry editor.
Just sent out an advance reading packet with a knockout array of poems about food. Want a look? My seminar, "An Appetite for the Page," is this Sunday (11/16), 1-4 PM ET online with the wonderful @poetcamp.bsky.social. Sliding scale registration & a couple of seats left! poetcamp.com/an-appetite-...
Upper right corner image is of Blair Publisher logo. Text: Wren Poetry Prize Last Call, Closing Nov. 15 (capped at 300). The Wren Poetry Prize is for a first, second, or third full-length poetry collection. Judged by Sandra Beasley. Bottom right corner image is photo of Sandra Beasley.
Text: Wren Poetry Prize. Submission info: Free to enter. Link on Submittable. Opens: October 1. Closes: November 15 OR after 300 submissions. This award is for a first, second, or third full-length poetry collection. Winner receives $1,000 in the form of an advance against royalties and a standard publishing contract. Manuscripts should be 54 pages of poems with each poem beginning on a new page. No identifying information in manuscript or file name. Acknolwedgements for previously published poems can be included. Current or former colleagues, current or former extended-length students, and close friends and family of the contest judge are not eligible. For updates and reminders, follow Blair on instagram or Facebook, or sign up for our newsletter at www.blairpub.com. Contact ops@blairpub.com with questions or accessibility requests.
It's time, poets! Last chance to submit for the Wren Poetry Prize. Winner receives $1K advance against royalties and gets to work with Blair. No reading fee. Send in by Saturday, Nov 15—but note, the portal will close early if we reach 300 submissions first!
Hey there! I'm the final judge of this year's Wren Poetry Prize for @BlairPublisher, and we're looking to give a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd collection of poems a great home. Is it yours? NO reading fee. Get your entry in soon—at 300 submissions, we close the Submittable portal. blair.submittable.com/submit
Looking for book-ish community & convo in August? Join our @politicsprose.bsky.social seminar on contemporary memoir—we'll read Kiese Laymon's HEAVY, Chloé Cooper Jones's EASY BEAUTY, and Hua Hsu's STAY TRUE. 3 Mondays (8/11, 8/18, 8/25), 6:30-8 PM ET over Zoom. politics-prose.com/list/online-...
Text: The Ivy Bookshop presents.... Steven Leyva with Sandra Beasley 5.19.25 - 6 PM - On the Patio Author photos are of Leyva, a man with black skin tone wearing a red sweater and blue collared shirt, and Beasley, a white woman. Both are looking at the camera in close-up. The book's cover art is a designed image that emphasizes a "mirror" reality of above and below, and includes roses and a spiral staircase. The larger image has a light green background with ivy decorative elements.
Baltimore friends—tonight at 6 PM ET (Monday, 5/19) I'll get to be in conversation with the stellar poet @stevenleyva.bsky.social at The Ivy Bookshop to celebrate Leyva's collection, The Opposite of Cruelty (H/T @blairpub.bsky.social). Please join us on The Ivy's patio at 6 PM!
Screenshot from Poets.org Vocation Sandra Beasley For six months I dealt Baccarat in a casino. For six months I played Brahms in a mall. For six months I arranged museum dioramas; my hands were too small for the Paleolithic and when they reassigned me to lichens, I quit. I type ninety-one words per minute, all of them Help. Yes, I speak Dewey Decimal. I speak Russian, Latin, a smattering of Tlingit. I can balance seven dinner plates on my arm. All I want to do is sit on a veranda while a hard rain falls around me. I'll file your 1099S. I'll make love to strangers of your choice. I'll do whatever you want, as long as I can do it on that veranda. If it calls you, it's your calling, right? Once I asked a broker what he loved about his job, and he said Making a killing. Once I asked a serial killer what made him get up in the morning, and he said The people. From / Was the Jukebox: Poems. Copyright © 2010 by Sandra Beasely. Used with permission of W. W. Norton & Company.
I was sitting on my porch in the rain and remembered my favorite poem with a veranda in the rain, and I initially couldn’t find it, so here it is for the good of everyone. Vocation by @sandrabeasley.bsky.social
Text - Lit Box: Book Vending Machine Launch Celebration Saturday, May 17, 3-4 p.m. With Books by Local DC/DMV-area Authors And Readings from: Sandra Beasley - Poetry Kyoko Mori - Memoir Martha Anne Toll - Fiction Western Market 2000 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC Graphic of LitBox shows an open-window front (inside blank) with a decorative edge based on the D.C. flag. Side of LitBox shows a collage of iconic DC images including the Washington Monument, Capitol, Walt Whitman, and Martin Luther King Jr, with a typewriter superimposed in the center.
The only thing better than having my book in a vending machine of DC authors would be if our books were piled in a big heap and you had 15 seconds to manipulate a claw to pick one at random. (LitBox 2.0?) Looking forward to the LitBox launch this Saturday (5/17) with Martha Anne Toll & Kyoko Mori!
"I can't decide which / catfish is frying, history or memory, in the skillet." Happy pub day to @stevenleyva.bsky.social for THE OPPOSITE OF CRUELTY from @blairpub.bsky.social!
Thanks for this, as awful as it is. I couldn’t join in real time, but figured I’d be searching out the recording this week. I also followed the process to submit a question beforehand, and asked for clarification regarding application of the EOs to individual fellowships. This is…an answer, I guess.
“You hit on me. You hit on everyone. / You pour gallons of lightning punch / into a trash bag, explaining that sobriety / is just a 2 AM Waffle House away.” — @sandrabeasley.bsky.social, “Love Poem for College” www.angelfire.com/zine/bluefif...
Photograph taken from the sidewalk at night looking up at a very tall tree, with small white bulb lights strung all around its trunk and through its branches. The tree sits in front of a three-story white brick building. There is also a lit street lamp and black wrought iron fencing in view.
Was heading home last night from hearing Anne Carson read in Georgetown University and saw this tree. It's about to get worse. We need to fight. But also, there is still joy in the world, and we need to honor that too. Thank you to whoever makes sure this tree is doing what it is doing.
What gets me is the familiarity of being in that exact place in the curve of approaching to land at DCA. The cumulative memory of, so many times over so many years, looking out the window and (in my case) thinking, "Home safe."
A white woman with mid-length brown hair is looking directly at the camera and grinning. Her hands are brought togther in front of her and tipped under her chin. She has orange sunglasses set on top of her head, hoop earrings, and a blue-and-green Southern Foodways Alliance lanyard around her neck.
Pableaux Johnson had many gifts—cooking skills, generosity of spirit—and absolutely irreplaceable talent as a photographer. People lit up for his camera (like I did, at a Southern Foodways Symposium) because of who was behind the camera. You are so missed, friend. www.foodandwine.com/pableaux-joh...
Thank you so much!
* Waves * I was just asking Maureen for an update about you!
2025 might seem like a very weird time to resolve to spend MORE time on social media, but life circumstances put me on relative hiatus back in 2022, and I miss y'all's voices. Kicking off by sharing an essay, "I Am Cat Lady," which I published in VQR late last year: www.vqronline.org/fall-2024/be...