Your hold is ready! (8. 30. 25)

Author

Cavar S
August 30, 2025

Happy end of August from Knoxville, TN!

I’m just wrapping up my second week as long-term resident at Sundress Academy for the Arts, where I’m working on half a dozen things, especially my third novel and first academic monograph. It’s been a really wonderful experience so far, balancing desk work, writing, and reading with my duties around the farm, and generally exploring places to run, hike, and enjoy nature nearby. I even got the chance to put final touches on a collaborative piece born from my work with the Remote Access Archive. Overall, judging by the exponential rate at which I’ve made progress since coming here, I think the change in scenery was sorely needed. The 2000-book (and growing) library here at the farmhouse, including many books on my TBR and many more I’ve never heard of, is also a plus.

August has been a month of big changes and hard work for me, particularly in regard to my move from California to Connecticut and my temporary move from Connecticut to Tennessee. I’m also adjusting to life as someone officially no longer in school (even though my teaching responsibilities still start next week!). Given some of the structuring elements of this residency — animal feeding, workshop and gathering opportunities, cleaning — I know I won’t be totally flailing during the day. But given that this is my first fall as a non-student since I was 3 years old, it’s still quite an adjustment.

Lastly – in September, we reach the one-year mark since the publication of Failure to Comply. Every time I think I’m done learning new things about that book and about my readership, I learn new things: my event at Barnes and Noble sold out, something I absolutely did not expect. I found Failure to Comply mentioned on some book-related subreddits (!?!??!) which I never would have imagined. As the time for publicizing my forthcoming poetry collection gets closer, I’m both nervous and excited about going through the publicity wringer (affectionate) again, albeit this time with more know-how.

Housekeeping:

Submissions: manywor(l)ds reopens on Sept 1. Send your work, and check out our August 15 issue (our second anniversary!) here.

Take a peek at how we sheep, co-written with scholarly-(anti-) crush/comrade/collaborator ulysses/constance bougie, is out with Ethel Press. For background on what we’re doing with queerness, Madness, and (a)sexualities, check out our work in) Kairos and Asexualities. You can order it on its own or purchase it bundled with my third chapbook and first with Ethel, Out of Mind & Into Body.

And check out Failure to Comply digitally and in print and on Bookshop in both formats, on Goodreads and Storygraph, and request it at your local bookstores and libraries. Find inspo/similar reads/books that fed Failure to Comply at my Bookshop affiliate page, where each of your orders gives me a dollar.

Now, onto the recommendations!

Today’s Recs:

Books:

Music

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: