I'm writing 30/30 for literary citizenship!

I need some summer fire to light up my soul, some inspiration to come through with a purpose. I'm challenging myself to step into July with a blank page and an open heart. Would you like to step into this space with me, and see my early drafts come to the surface? I'm writing 30 poems in 30 days in the month of July to help Tupelo Press continue to put gorgeous poetry into the world. Your support gives me vital foundations and energy, as I write for thirty days this month. I will share my spark, my words, my daily calls to the page with YOU, on this thirty day journey in July.

If I can raise $16.67 each day for 30 days, that's 500 bucks. It's not for me, it is for Tupelo Press, and it is my public exercise in building community and literary citizenship. Thirty pledges of $16.67. Thirty friends of poetry. Who's in?

Tupelo Press provides the canvas; I bring my words, accompanied by a cohort of fine poets, writing thirty poems in thirty days, all ours to edit and submit as we wish. 30/30 poems have been taken by over 200 journals and lit mags, and featured in over 40 published chapbooks, all so Tupelo Press can keep publishing exquisite and diverse voices that might never be heard otherwise.

Every dollar gives me confidence to write more, and helps the press place more poems in gorgeous books. Help me to help this distinguished press. Give today!

More about me:

Kai Coggin is the author of MINING FOR STARDUST (FlowerSong Press 2021), INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants Publications 2014), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, Entropy, SWWIM, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, , Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Cutthroat, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.