On Shared Suns
more of a shorter rambling than anything else, but alas here we are
Much of my life I have been told: writing is a solitary act.
Sometimes it starts that way, sure. But to continue to pursue writing, to live it, means to admit there is no such thing as a solitary writer. We don’t write in a vacuum. We don’t exist without lineage and community.
That said, I do know there are a lot of points in life where remembering the collective nature of writing is harder than others. I visited my alma mater for an alumni career event last month, and a student came up to me after my panel to ask how they could find meaning in their work if their work was incapable of enacting change in the larger world. I recognize the ongoing horrors of the world make writing seem arbitrary. Audre Lorde always surfaces here for me though, the differentiation between I think, therefore I am and I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry has never been a luxury for me as it has been for others. As I’ve said in prior newsletters, poetry is a means of survival. It is how I commune with my ancestors, my predecessors, my gods, myself.
Last week, I was in Baltimore for the 2026 Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference. Minus 2020 and 2021, I’ve been attending AWP yearly since 2018, Tampa. My first time, I was in my last semester of my senior year of college. I was starstruck easily, unpublished, bright-eyed, and so deeply overwhelmed. I wanted to do everything, see everything, go everywhere. I got little to no sleep, scarcely remembered to eat, and could not believe I was walking the same buildings as poets and writers I’d been fawning over for years. Suddenly, the tongues who shaped the words I’d absorbed were standing before me, fifteen dollar convention center caesar wrap in hand, laughing with their other writer friends.
I don’t think I could name it in the moment, that that was what I really wanted.
The week before I leave for Baltimore, we host Sarah Kay on campus as our Poet-in-Residence. I hoped so dearly that she would not remember the sleep deprived twenty-one year old girl who asked her to sign a book and then cried in front of her at AWP Tampa. Sarah Kay was the poet I watched on YouTube at seventeen who made me realize what poetry could look like, who made me realize that I actually wanted to do this with my life.
I spend the week with Sarah, taking her to meals, laughing in my car, hearing her read poems in front of me that make me cry not just for the seventeen year old version of myself who saw possibility through her words, but for the knowledge of my own students’ wide eyed wonder. At poetry’s continued capacity to break open worlds. A student tells me I know what Sarah Kay means to you, but I need you to know you’re my Sarah Kay. I have to not immediately sob.
In the first book Sarah signed for me at twenty-one, she writes Hooray! and I cherish it. Eight years later, almost to the day, she signs it in a way that feels so much like a marker of time. Like a quiet admittance (whether she meant to or not) that I am in fact, in this world as I have always wanted to be.
Her visit coming the week before AWP 2026 could not have been more timely. Which is to say, the universe has a sense of humor. Which is to say, I continue to never believe in coincidences.
On my drive from Pennsylvania to Maryland, I know something feels different. I try to attribute it to my three hours of sleep. And then, I co-host a reading at the Baltimore National Aquarium where we had to turn people away and think, oh. At the close of the reading, I stand up there and say something to the effect of: what a beautiful life we get to live where there are people angry at us for not being able to get in to a poetry reading. One of my students who is on the trip with us later tells me she didn’t quite realize how many people cared about literature like this, like she always has.
If you’ve never heard of AWP, imagine 10,000-15,000 writers descending upon a designated city for about four to five days once a year. Hundreds of panels on writing and craft and pedagogy and editing and books. Dozens of readings in bars and cafes and art spaces and hotels. Chaos and introverts and extroverts and ambiverts. I often describe the book fair as Scholastic Book Fair for adults. As a writer, it is your highest likelihood of spotting a doppelgänger.
After Baltimore, whenever anyone asks about how the AWP went, I keep saying that it felt like a culminating career kind of conference. Not for my books or my professional connections or any kind of accolades—but simply that this was the AWP in which the number of faces that filled with joy upon seeing me were too many to count. So often I quietly believe I am behind my peers. Not enough books, not enough publications, not enough paid events, no awards. The truth is though, absolutely none of that actually matters to me.
The people who thanked me for my poems, the friends I swapped books with, the folks who walked by my table with the coolest earrings I’ve ever seen who smiled when I shouted a compliment out, the hugs that lingered because my perfume simply smelled too good.
Often when I sign books of friends, I will say how grateful I am to be writing in the same world as them. I hope every single person I’ve written that to knows I absolutely mean it. Because how lucky am I? To be in conversation with these stunning poets, these stunning humans, these stunning hearts. To be read at all is such a privilege. To be held, to be considered, to be loved.
Sometimes a student will look at me now and say how much they want this, and I have to look right back at them and tell them that my life is only a version of what is possible. That they can be or have anything, even and especially futures they can’t even dream up on their own yet. And every time, I tell them that it takes so much more time than you think.
Nothing I have in this life right now would be possible if not for every person who extended their hand out to me, every person who chose to speak my name in rooms I was not in. Writing, the act, by definition could be solitary. But writing, the life path, the philosophy, cannot be solitary. It is so necessary to rebel against the western world’s insistence on individualistic culture because if you really, truly believe you are only one singular voice and that your voice holds no resonance—I’m sure you’ll be less likely to ever really say anything. If you can be convinced you are powerless, you will accept being powerless.
You are not the center of the universe, but no one else is either. If anything, we are the sparkles in a snow globe. A single sparkle can seem underwhelming, but when shaken all at once—we shimmer.
Empire thrives on making us believe we are alone. Which to some, may seem like I’m making a leap. But the thing is, if you believe you are the first person to ever feel or experience a thing, of course you’ll feel alone. Imagine the kind of world we’d live in if everyone realized there are more things connecting us that keeping us separate. Poetry is simply one of those connectors. It is my primary connector most of the time, and not even just to other poets or writers. But being in a shared space for a few days where I get to see the endless web of strings leading to every person I or my poems have found their way to, feels like an immense gift from the universe. Is, in fact, an undeniable privilege.
Look, there is a child / mother / elder on the other side on the world from you who will one day turn their gaze to a sunrise and their mouth will open in awe. That poem now, belongs to all of you.
Until Next Time Beloveds,
Jess
Lover Girl Life Stats
Reading: Maybe the Body by Asa Drake
Watching: One Piece Live Action Season 2, Once Upon A Time (rewatch)
On Repeat: Hozier, Noah Kahan, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, Naïka, SZA
Go-to Recipe Recently: me and a salmon fillet over white rice go hand in hand
Hyper-fixation/Project: I have FINALLY begun the slow process of cleaning out and actually setting up my office/second bedroom. I unpacked all of the boxes that have been there for three years, I sold one of the bookshelves on Facebook Marketplace!! I have visions of a new desk and a sofa bed situation and so many floating shelves. Also, I closet purged for the first time in years, felt very good.
Flowers in my apartment currently: Everything is kind of half decayed at this point but something about it is still sort of aesthetic. Buying new flowers is not at the top of my financial priority list right now so I’m going to let these last as long as possible (did you know a rock hit my windshield this week, let’s not talk about what that replacement cost me)
Titles of poems written in the last month: Suraj ya Chanda
Recent & Upcoming Whatnots
in the aftermath Virtual Book Launch
Sunday, March 29th | 6:00pm ESTI will be reading poems from my newest chapbook out with Fifth Wheel Press! There will also be poetry from my beloveds: Dallas Atlas, Kay E. Bancroft, and Mercedes Rodriguez. Join us :)
Register for the National Marrow Donor Program here.
A friend of mine has a child who needs a bone marrow transplant soon and there are currently no matches in the registry for them at this time. If you are able, register! I did! They’ll send a swab kit. It is easy, it could save someone’s life.
Logistics
Diaries of a Lover Girl will (usually) go out on the 15th of every month! Occasional updates may be released regarding workshop openings as necessary. Any major schedule changes will be communicated. If you want to support me (for book contest fees, general writing life upkeep) by becoming a paid subscriber, I will send you a hundred virtual hugs (and also bonus content soon). <3