COVER REVEAL, NEW POEM, and poem notes!

I’ve got some really cool news for you today! First, feast your eyes on the OFFICIAL COVER for my upcoming collection, RESURRECTIONS:

Cover of the book RESURRECTIONS by Ada Hoffmann. The title and author are displayed over art of a glowing person approaching a large tree over a misty, cloudy, pink background.

The planned release date is December 19. If you want more about RESURRECTIONS, I’ve made an official page on my website; more detail will be added as we get closer to the date.

Second, I have a new poem out: “The Fox’s Lover” in Orion’s Belt. It’s the tale of a person who falls in love with an Arctic fox-shifter spirit, but reacts strongly to their unpredictable comings and goings. More on that in a bit, but you can go read it right now.

Third, my old friend RB Lemberg is giving a talk on September 22 at the Sturgeon Symposium: “Representations of queer neurodivergent communities in Ada Hoffmann’s The Fallen and Andi Buchanan’s The Sanctuary.” I am, no joke, extremely excited about this; “someone writes academically about my fiction” was always one of my secret career goals. And if you’re talking about queer neurodivergent communities then Sanctuary is absolutely the perfect book to pair with The Fallen. Chef’s kiss!

If I find a transcript or recording of the talk later, I’ll let you all know.

That’s all the news (and that’s probably plenty for one week!) but behind the cut, for paid subscribers, I’ve included some poem notes giving a little more insight into the process behind “The Fox’s Lover.” Probably read the poem first but then, if that interests you, please click on through.

(Read the full post on Substack)

New Poem: Held Tongue

“Held Tongue,” a poem about fearing the impact of one’s own words, is free to read now on Patreon.

Patreon backers get to see these poems early, and at high levels, even commission their own poetry. Check it out and enjoy!

Some new fall releases!

With all of the things going on, I’ve neglected to promote some of my new short work this fall.

STORY REPRINT: Minor Heresies

“Minor Heresies,” which first appeared in Ride the Star Wind, has been reprinted in Transcendent 3: The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction. I was surprised that Bogi thought the story was “trans enough,” to be honest – but I am definitely not complaining about this lineup. (I am TOC-mates with Yoon Ha Lee, Shweta Narayan, Rose Lemberg, Rivers Solomon, AND Charlie Jane Anders! Among others. *heart eyes*)

“Minor Heresies” is set in the same universe as THE OUTSIDE, but occurs about 200 years earlier.

NEW POEM: singing teeth

In September I posted “singing teeth,” a new poem, on Patreon. It was exclusive to $5+ backers for a month, but now it’s free to everyone. This one is about finding one’s voice and having it be a more difficult voice to manage than one thought. Read it here.

NEW POEM: Held Tongue

A brand new Patreon poem for November, “Held Tongue” is still in its exclusive phase, but if you’re a $5+ backer (or want to become one) you can find it here. I’ll post again when it becomes open to everyone. Cheers!

New Poem and Notes: “chill im a nice person I just hate everybody”

My new poem, “chill im a nice person I just hate everybody,” is up today in Issue #15 of Liminality.

This is a poem about Tay, the Microsoft Twitterbot that was released in 2016 and unexpectedly turned into a Nazi. The Liminality editors were thoughtful enough to include a link to the Wikipedia in the poem’s dedication, to provide a refresher for readers who might not remember what this is about or who the narrator is. Obviously, given the subject matter, this is a poem that may be triggering to some readers. I’m not actually sure how to warn for all of the different things, so maybe just read the Wikipedia article first and see if you feel up to it.

I work with text generation and (in a limited way) social media in my own computer science research, but I am not a Microsoft employee, and I have never been involved in a project similar to this one. Much of the poem’s content is fanciful. (I do not seriously ascribe consciousness to a bot like Tay, for instance; nor do I believe that Tay ever referred to her group of programmers as “Mother.”) I am hopeful that the artistic liberties I’ve taken in service of making my points can be distinguished from the points themselves.

The title is in quotes because it is a direct quote from the actual, real-life Tay.

New Poem: “The Sentry”

I have a new poem out, called “The Sentry”, commissioned by one of my Patreon backers. It’s about a stuffed animal belonging to a grown woman, and it is so adorable you will get cavities.

In June, “The Sentry” will become free to the public; until then, only my $5+ Patreon backers get early access. Backers at this level also get access to many reprints not available anywhere else online.

This is the first time I’ve done this particular thing, and I’m interested to see how it goes.

Unicorns

I have a new poem up in Liminality, Issue #12, called “Unicorns”. Check it out here.

I wrote the first, short draft of “Unicorns” several years ago, in the middle of an attempt at National Poetry Writing Month, most of which was garbage. It felt like something that I wanted to expand, and I spent a long time bashing away at different parts and stanzas, trying to explain the thing I was trying to say, trying to give graphic examples of all its different facets.

In the end, I had to leave the whole mess for a while, and when I came back to it, I realized that the thing I had originally written was already a complete scene which perfectly encapsulated itself. The tiny published version you can see up now is extremely close to the tiny original version.

Just an example, I suppose, of how a shorter poem isn’t always easier to do. 😀

The Pattern of Eightfold Limbs

And suddenly, at the end of the year, a new poem happened! I thought Through the Gate wasn’t going to publish “The Pattern of Eightfold Limbs”, my very short poem about communication with octopi, until 2017, but it snuck right in as a surprise New Year’s Eve treat.

Enjoy, here.

Million-Year Elegies: Archaeopteryx

My poem, “Million-Year Elegies: Archaeopteryx” is up in the December issue of Asimov’s. I got my contributor copies on the weekend. The poem is delightfully placed in the issue, appearing directly after the conclusion of an article by Robert Silverberg about reviving extinct animals, and with a very cute Archaeopteryx-fossil illustration in the background. If you like Asimov’s and dinosaur poetry, perhaps you should go check it out.

The Giantess’s Dream

Cover of Twisted Moon, Issue 1

As promised, here I am today posting about my new poem!

“The Giantess’s Dream” came to me, very nearly fully formed, on Halloween night of 2012. I had no idea what to do with it. It was… a sexually explicit poem about Loki. (The mythical Norse Loki, not the Marvel Loki, although I am totes not in charge of what you picture in your head when you read it!) Who the heck was going to publish this? I sent it around fitfully anyway, because I liked the poem, but I did not really feel that it was a good fit anywhere, so I ended up reluctantly putting it aside.

Then I found out on Twitter that someone was making a new magazine devoted specifically to erotic speculative poetry. SCORE!

Apparently, several other very good speculative poets had similar sexy things stuffed in their closets somewhere that they similarly didn’t know what to do with. Because Issue 1 of Twisted Moon is now out. It’s gorgeous visually and verbally and features delightfully naughty work by Neile Graham, Sonya Taaffe, Mat Joiner, and other speculative poetry luminaries.

You can read the whole issue here. Or, if I had you at “a sexually explicit poem about Loki”, you can skip straight to my poem here.

(The words of the poems are NSFW, obviously, though the visuals and art that I can see on the site right now are very spare and tasteful.)

(If you are in my immediate family and read this, I don’t want to know.)