Author: amandashawpoet
It will have been so…complicated: 2024—the Good, the Bad, and the Future Anterior*
On December 31st, 2023, Eileen Cleary posted a beautifully worded Facebook announcement that my book, It Will Have Been So Beautiful, was available for pre-sale. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know it would happen on New Year’s Eve—2024 would be so boldly delineated right from its first hours. Ritualist that I am,…
Wait, Now I Have to Read Them?
THE EXCITEMENT AND ANGST OF PERFORMING MY POEMS NOTE This post was originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books on May 27, 2024. I also decided to put it here on my blog for my friends following my journey as a newly published author. You can see the original post on the publisher’s…
Guest Post: Insights from a Poet’s Husband
BEHIND THE SCENES OF BOOK PROMOTION By Greg Sauter Amanda’S NOTES Apparently, when you have a book out, you need to write about it all the time. This is a new kind of exhausting. So, I am turning over this third musing to my husband. You may recognize him from It Will Have Been So…
Will it have been beautiful?
THOUGHTS ON “LAUNCHING” I opened my email this morning to a notification from UPS: “Hi, Amanda! Your package is arriving today.” I couldn’t remember ordering anything, so I used my truly sophisticated forensic skills and clicked on the baguette-like mustard-yellow button, “Track Your Package.” All that did was give me a window for delivery from…
Yes it will: meet Ruthie.
ON TWEENS, GIRLHOOD, and BARBIE Entering into social media life means that I know more about the Barbie Oscar nomination kerfuffle than I might in another year. I’ve seen Oppenheimer—and yes, I have opinions. But the Barbie craze only became real to me over the Christmas break, when my beloved 10-year-old niece* Ruthie and I…