Writing is connection. I don’t care if your chosen medium is poetry, fiction, or an instruction booklet for constructing a bed frame: we write to communicate with someone outside ourselves. We want to universalize our traumas, triumphs, joys, and disappointments. We want to find solace in the communal while celebrating the individual.

When we write, we tacitly call out, “I’m here, and you’re there. But we’re not so different, you and I.” And the more we connect, the more we empathize.

That is all to say: writing is pretty damn cool. I love it. I put words down

(mostly poems lately, but fiction, CNF, you name it), and sometimes an editor will see something in my words that make it worthy of joining that unspoken conversation of connection.

If you’re into YA fiction, my short story “Comfort Food” is available for sale as a back issue at One Teen Story. If you have an Apple iOS device, you can download the One Teen Story app and purchase a digital copy of the “Comfort Food” back issue. You might find a bit of yourself inside.

Lately, though, I’ve taken the deep dive into poetry; the majority of my most recent publications, including my micro-chap Eulogy For a Former Life (2018) and full-length chapbook Sautéing Spinach With My Aunt (2018), are my attempts to to swim around in those lovely waters.

Currently, I’m working on a project that bridges these two loves of mine: a YA novel told entirely in verse. It’s about a teenage boy trying to rebuild connections in his life after a series of personal tragedies conspire to strip them away from him. It’s a project that means a great deal to me, and I hope to find an agent soon who believes in it as much as I do.

Thanks for reading, thanks for connecting.

~Ed