2019 NEA Fellow & Other Updates
The last year and a half has submerged me in personal matters, so here are a few long overdue updates:
I won an NEA fellowship! It was my first time applying; I am learning to ask for things.
MOON: Letters, Maps, Poems was named a “Best Book of 2018” by Publishers Weekly. Still can’t quite believe this one. The book received a starred review: “In this exhilarating exploration, Cheng fashions an alt-epic for the 21st century, upending received ideas about poetic form and constructing from the debris a hybrid guide for an age of diaspora and displacement.”
Finally, a new poem: “Vulnerable Nettle” in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
An astonishing and miraculous review in The Rumpus that includes a letter, a map, and a poem: “Reading Moon was a hypnotic experience… simultaneously immersive and elusive. I’d surface from the pages having lost track of time, sensing the world around me had shifted, subtly, but unable to pinpoint how. How, after all, do you describe the force field of a particular literary project?”
Upcoming readings in Portland (at AWP and offsite) and Iowa City (at Prairie Lights and the Mission Creek Festival)! That is, I shall finally be returning to the town of my first MFA program ten years after I left, and I am extremely anxious.