I think I mentioned to you that Jeanne Marie Beaumont and I are going to do a virtual book launch together, and yesterday we figured out the date: Monday, October 14 at 7 p.m. As soon as I can, I'll put together a coherent announcement and share the signup link, etc. I'm really pleased to be doing this with Jeannie. I've always looked up to her: she wrote a blurb for my very first poetry collection, when I knew no one to ask and Baron Wormser had to get his friends to read my poems. Since then, I have admired her from close and from afar, have often taught her poems in classes, and have more recently formed a collective with her (and Teresa) that we call the Poetry Lab. It will be wonderful to share a launch with her.

That's going to be a stressful week, though. I've got the virtual launch on Monday, the in-person launch on Thursday . . . oy. I hope I keep my hair on my head and my fingernails on my fingers.

While Jeannie and I were confabbing on the phone, the mailman dropped a box of books on my stoop: the first copies of Calendar had arrived! That moment never stops being exciting. When I was a child, I believed that being an author with a book was the most wonderful thing that could ever happen to a person. And I still pinch myself, every time it happens again. Look! I am an author with a book! Me!

Of course, the inevitable post-publication depression is just as real. But let's not talk about that now.