Teresa K. Miller, poet and essayist

Thank you to everyone who has attended an in-person or online event! Your support is hugely important to me. I also appreciate all of you who have bought a copies of Borderline Fortune (especially from your favorite local independent bookstore!), recommended it to a friend, and shared something about it on social media. If you like what you’ve read, I appreciate reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere.

In the past week, I checked off multiple bucket-list items I never even dared to imagine …

I had the great honor of speaking with host Michael Silverblatt and National Poetry Series judge Carol Muske-Dukes for NPR’s Bookworm. It’s now available online via Los Angeles affiliate KCRW, NPR.org, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Publishers Weekly just ran a generous review of Borderline Fortune:

Full of meditative and sharp lyric moments, these poems are alive with complexity and critique. Acoustically, they enact the swell and crash of water: “the wish/ you’d unwhisper,” “friction/ on the flint.” Thematically, they prod the undercurrents of society and the expectations of American life …. These are valuable, urgent poems of witness.

Read the full review here.

And I published an essay in Literary Hub on being childless as the only child of an only child of an only child, the descendent of a father who valued ancestry above all else, in a world where people feel entitled to weigh in on others’ reproductive choices whenever they feel like it. It’s a good introduction to some of Borderline Fortune’s themes. I dedicate the piece to the multiple childless honorary aunts I was lucky to have growing up. And to all the compatriots enduring invasive questions and unsolicited opinions, I see you. ♥

I have three more live events in 2021:

• I’ll be at Weller Book Works in Salt Lake City this Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. with Abraham Smith, poet laureate of Ogden, Utah.
• The Oregonian recommends my panel at the Portland Book Festival this coming Saturday, Nov. 13, at 1:45 p.m. I’ll be in conversation on home and (intangible) inheritance with Airlie Press author Amelia Díaz Ettinger and Coffee House Books editorial director Erika Stevens. Local booksellers will be on site to sell copies, which we’ll be available to sign after the event. Tickets are $15 if purchased in advance and include entry into the day’s many events as well as a $5 voucher for the vendor fair and admission to the Portland Art Museum. Portland nonprofit Literary Arts organizes the festival and is a wonderful organization to support.
• I’ll also be in virtual conversation with Mills College professor of English and VONA/Voices cofounder Elmaz Abinader, hosted by Marin County’s Book Passage on Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 5:30 p.m. PT.

Stay tuned for a couple more radio appearances and podcasts, as well as my pre-recorded appearance for the Miami Book Fair.

Thanks so much for supporting the book and helping spread the word—it means everything to me.

xo,

TKM