Poetry. Fiction. Painting. Drawing. Photography.
A new poem of mine is officially available! “The Necklace” was just published by The Curator Magazine, so I wanted to share it!
Thanks for reading!
-Tiffany
P.S. I have additional exciting news – more of my poetry has been accepted into the SOS Art Cincinnati For a Better World 2022 Anthology. I’ll release more details in the spring closer to the anthology’s publication date.
January was a great month for Ephemeral Elegies! We published 5 poems by some amazing poets:
January 2022
Thanks to these poets for their submissions and thank you, readers, for your support of our emerging poetry community!
-Tiffany
I’m excited to announce that my poem “Believing” is appearing in the Fall 2021 edition of Poetry Quarterly!
This is the third time my work has appeared in Poetry Quarterly, which is a true honor! Thanks to the editors there, especially Glenn Lyvers!
-Tiffany
I hope everyone had a good holiday season! January has felt like both the shortest and longest month ever due to a bad bout of covid. But I’m on the mend now and wanted to share the December roundup from Ephemeral Elegies:
I hope you enjoyed these poems! Thanks for supporting this project and our amazing poets!
-Tiffany
I am super proud and honored to be the Editor-in-Chief of Ephemeral Elegies, a poetry-focused literary journal. It’s been an amazing experience to connect with so many poets from around the globe, so I wanted to make sure I’m sharing more of their work on this site too. So, after each month, I’m going to start posting a roundup of the poems published in case anyone wants to experience some great poetry. Here are the poems that we published in November 2021:
Thanks for reading!
-Tiffany
Well, winter feels well underway here in Ohio. The leaves are fading from their brilliant hues and falling faster and faster. And as the seasons change and the sunlight seems more fleeting, I’m forced to spend more time indoors. This time of reflection seems the perfect chance to focus once again on poetry, so I wanted to share an update regarding my big passion project, the poetry-themed literary journal Ephemeral Elegies.
We are nearing the end of our second year of publication! I want to give a big shout out to our 663 subscribers and nearly 13,000 visitors. I love seeing poets and readers from around the world comment and encourage one another on the posts! Truly, the online poetry community is one the warmest, most inclusive, best places to be and I’m honored for the opportunity to play a small role.
Submissions for 2022 are open! I’m thrilled to finally be caught up on my email, and now I’m ready for some more. So, if you’re a seasoned, emerging, or brand new poet, please hop on over to our Submissions Page and consider sending us something. I especially love supporting new voices.
Ephemeral Elegies is subtitled “The Poetry of Emotion” because we often focus on the raw exploration of trauma and the grittier parts of life. I know the ongoing global pandemic has impacted everyone, and we’d especially love to see new poems about this experience.
Thanks for reading and considering being part of this thriving poetry community!
-Tiffany
I have not done a great job at blogging in 2021. It’s honestly always been a struggle. I thrive more behind the scenes, writing and creating in private. But I still want to update occasionally so that I can stay accountable and build connections with other writers and artists.
Below is an abstract sunset landscape that I recently painted. Painting is a passion of mine, but even though I’ve sold some work and was featured in a gallery last year, it’s also something I’m deeply insecure about. I know art is subjective, and I know that it’s something I love to do, but it’s also something I long to keep hidden from the world out of fear of rejection. So, posting this and the other paintings on my website cause me anxiety, but it feels important to continue trying to share. I’m also excited about participating in another Inktober on Instagram in October, so I’ve been practicing more ink sketches.
This year has been more about poetry than prose. I’ve felt very inspired by nature and have spent a lot of time hiking and reflecting, and these themes have factored into my painting and poetry a lot. While I’m still working on novel #2, a poetry collection may be debuting sooner rather than later. And speaking of poetry, Ephemeral Elegies is still going strong with over 33,000 views in under 2 years. I’ve loved connecting with other poets and providing a platform for new and emerging voices. We’re always looking for new submissions too!
One of the main reasons I’ve been reflecting a lot this year is because I’m turning 30 at the end of this month! This has been an interesting decade filled with lots of highs and lows. I’ve learned and grown; loved and lost; created and reinvented. It was a time of change, and now I’m entering this next chapter of life ready to see what’s going to happen next. But before I get there, I did set a goal for myself of doing something I never thought I’d be able to do: run a half-marathon. I’ve been doing some charity 10Ks to prepare and I’m so ready for my birthday race to benefit Autism Speaks.
I wish I had more exciting things to share, but even small victories during a global pandemic feel more meaningful right now, so hopefully this post wasn’t too boring. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share what you’ve been up to this year in the comments section!
-Tiffany
Winter is finally over! 2021 has been a weird year so far – too much snow, an ongoing pandemic, and a lot of time to pause and reflect on what is important and what is not. I haven’t been blogging/writing/publishing as much during the winter season, which seems apt. It’s an icy time of hibernation for a lot of creatures. But now spring is here and with it comes renewal and the light of hope for better times to come.
So, while I don’t have a lot to share regarding new projects, I thought I’d share some books I’ve read this winter that were the most enjoyable. They’re all mysteries since that’s definitely what I’ve been gravitating towards. All of the descriptions have been taken from Goodreads:
What have you been reading this winter? Has it been a time of slow growth and reflection for you too? Feel free to let me know in the comment section.
Thanks for reading and happy spring,
Tiffany
Good Riddance, 2020! This has been the weirdest year, and I’m sure we’re all happy to put it behind us. Still, while it’s easy to sort of marinate in the awfulness of 2020, I wanted to reflect on some of the better moments too. Here are some good/productive things I can still be proud of from this year:
Suburban Secrets
At least the pandemic gave me enough free time to finish up my debut novel: Suburban Secrets. This mystery has been a project I’ve worked on since grad school, so it was nice to finally see it through.
Other Published Works:
I didn’t submit quite as much as I’d have liked to this year, but I did have a few smaller things published as well:
“The Monster Within” (Dreaming in Fiction – October 2020) [As Aurora Bishop]
“Horoscopes for the Unbalanced Libra” (Ephemeral Elegies – September 2020) [As Aurora Bishop]
“Spare Parts” (Ephemeral Elegies – August 2020) [As Aurora Bishop]
“New Life” (Inwood Indiana – Fallow Ground)
“American Exodus” (SOS Art Cincinnati – For a Better World 2020)
“The World Ablaze” (SOS Art Cincinnati – For a Better World 2020)
“Welcome to 2020” (SOS Art Cincinnati – For a Better World 2020)
“Dancing in the Dark” (Writing in a Woman’s Voice – February 2020)
“The Vanishing Act” (Down in the Dirt Magazine – February 2020)
Artwork:
I wanted to make it a priority to focus on my artwork this year, and while I didn’t do nearly as much as I expected, there were still a few nice moments. I was able to complete Inktober on Instagram. I had a painting purchased as artwork for a mental health journal, and I had two paintings featured in a local art show.
Transitioning to Publisher:
This year also marked the debut of my two literary journals: Ephemeral Elegies and Dreaming in Fiction. It’s been such a great experience meeting and supporting other authors from around the globe. I can’t wait to feature more writing in 2021.
Well, I guess 2020 wasn’t so bad after all. Still, I’m looking forward to a 2021 filled with health, happiness, and (hopefully) new adventures!
What are you most proud of this year? Please, let me know in the comment section so I can celebrate with you!
-Tiffany
What a weird year this has been! I’m sure I’m not the only one who would prefer to never repeat a year such as this one. Thankfully, though, I did have a lot of time to read this year (both new books and some re-reads of favorites!) Here are the best books I read (or re-read) this year:
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Goodreads Description: Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here too. . . but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy—the highest aspiration he can imagine for a Chinatown denizen. Or is it? After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family, and what that means for him, in today’s America.
My Thoughts: This book was the well-deserved winner of the National Book Award this year. It is one of the most unique books I’ve read. Partially in second person and partially written with script-esque dialogue, this is a strange but engrossing reading experience all about the harmful impact of internalizing and externalizing stereotypes.
When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy
Goodreads Description: Seduced by politics and poetry, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife, but what for her is a contract of love is for him a contract of ownership. As he sets about reducing her to his idealised version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back – a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce and courageous When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India
My Thoughts: This one was very difficult to read but I couldn’t put it down. The raw, vulnerable honesty was such a necessary addition to the wider societal conversations about domestic violence.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Goodreads Description: Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias meet Dracula in this Southern-flavored supernatural thriller set in the ’90s about a women’s book club that must protect its suburban community from a mysterious and handsome stranger who turns out to be a blood-sucking fiend.
My Thoughts: This was a really fun book! It is an exciting mystery combined with a lot of interesting character development. I loved the exploration of the female friendships.
Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
Goodreads Description: Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dune fields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.
My Thoughts: This was the best poetry collection I read this year. The poems were exquisite and showed a lot of range when it comes to both theme and emotion. I can’t wait to read more from this poet!
My Friend Anna by Rachel DeLoache Williams
Goodreads Description: Vanity Fair photo editor Rachel DeLoache Williams’s new friend Anna Delvey, a self-proclaimed German heiress, was worldly and ambitious. She was also generous. When Anna proposed an all-expenses-paid trip to Marrakech, Rachel jumped at the chance. But when Anna’s credit cards mysteriously stopped working, the dream vacation quickly took a dark turn. Anna asked Rachel to begin fronting costs—first for flights, then meals and shopping, and, finally, for their $7,500-per-night private villa. Before Rachel knew it, more than $62,000 had been charged to her credit cards. Anna swore she would reimburse Rachel the moment they returned to New York. Back in Manhattan, the repayment never materialized, and a shocking pattern of deception emerged. Rachel learned that Anna had left a trail of deceit—and unpaid bills—wherever she’d been. Mortified, Rachel contacted the district attorney, and in a stunning turn of events, found herself helping to bring down one of the city’s most notorious con artists.
My Thoughts: This was a fascinating memoir about a woman who was conned by someone who she thought was one of her best friends. I remembered hearing about Anna Delvey’s trial a while back, and I really enjoyed learning more about this case. I think two tv shows about this are currently in-development, and I’ll absolutely be watching those too!
Did you have more time to read in 2020? What are your top picks for this year? Be sure to let me know in the comment section!
-Tiffany
Tiffany Renee Harmon 