Cynthia Arrieu-King

It's obviously nerve wracking for writers at the end of the year to see best of lists come out. You can end up feeling pretty queasy about whether or not you're seeing your own work appear or not. However, I love to find out about books my friends love because I almost exclusively read books suggested by people in my sm feeds and friends, and not by any of the major book outlets, which takes the rat race factor out of it for me. (Not all who gain the spotlight are the most talented, and every writer I know knows this--it's a good protection against the feeling of being unsung).  In case anyone is wanting to know, here are the books I read this year and I did write at least notes on most of them if not an out and out mini review. That was almost all prose, so if you want to know what poetry I really really recommend for this year, please check out The Last Word's Instagram page, and consider listening to The Last Word here on Spotify. I'm on sabbatical this year, ...

I used to do a radio show on WLFR Lake Fred Radio , Stockton's independent radio station. A great great radio station, by the way, to listen to at any time to see what the jockeys are up to. I've brought back for this year The Last Word, a show about writers and writing, and I've found a way to make it post on Spotify. So tune in every other Thursday (June 30th is the next time it will air) on WLFR at 11AM until noon. At the end of the radio broadcast aka noon, the podcast version of the show (unbleeped) will drop on Spotify here. So far, our guests have been: Angel Dominguez on their new book Desgraciado, hilarious and fierce! Sommer Browning read from Good Actors on comedy, writing, and the pros of DIY museum spaces; Joel Dias-Porter aka DJ Renegade read some of his poems from the new book Ideas of Improvisation , a virtuosic piece of prosody that includes many references to the jazz greats; Nancy Reddy on her new poetry book Pocket Universe and the excellent antholog...

 For the South Jersey region: #quilt #quilts #quilting #crafts #sewing #materialculture

Very pleased to have appeared right next to Ginger Ko in the November/December issue of American Poetry Review.  It's an honor to appear with her anywhere, in print, internet, or in person. Check out her new book, Power On , which comes with a collaborative app. * Am pleased to have my books in some end of the year round ups for 2021: Once again, I read the Elisa Gabbart year end write up of all the books she read for the year. From it, I always hear about a book, or several books, that are definitely off my radar, and her list reminds me that we are in conversation with the living and the dead writers too. So I was really amazed to see my book on there. Ms. Gabbart had written a really kind blurb for use in marketing the book, so this write up of The Betweens was gravy: The sadly departing Entropy included The Betweens in their year-end creative non-fiction list, which makes me proud since I spent 2021 listening to CNF books on Libby, one after the other, chain-smoking style. ...