illustration

Hobart Magazine's Baseball Issue!

I am so excited to share new artwork with you all… and my first piece of creative nonfiction too!

Hobart Magazine editor-in-chief Aaron Burch was amazing to work with on all three art pieces commissioned for the annual baseball-focused issue, as well as on my essay about the ‘89 World Series and falling in love with the magic of baseball as a kid in the Bay Area that was also featured in the issue.

You can read the essay here, and read the poems and stories I got to pick out by clicking on the image of the art I created for each piece.

New Art and A Story in the July Issue of The Future Fire

a woman in blue looks through a mirror, but her reflected image is a wolf, not herself.

(Adapted from two posts originally published on my Patreon.)

I have new art pieces that are up with a brand new story of mine. The illustrations and my latest story, "Stitched", is in the July issue of The Future Fire. You can read it at the link, or as an ebook available on their site. 

Thanks to Djibril al-Ayad for publishing this story, and for commissioning two pieces of art to accompany it. I'll be doing a post this week about the art, but for now, I hope you all enjoy this story!

art of a woman drawn in a fairy tale style, her red cloak blowing in the wind

About the Art:

They commissioned two pieces from me. The image you see here is a personal one. One of my favorite illustrators is an artist named Trina Schart Hyman. I used to hunt for her books when I was a kid. I didn't know why I gravitated towards her books, but something about the style enchanted me. Her images are the bottom right two, mine is on the top and the bottom left. 

When I do commissions for artwork for an author or poet for website design, I often ask my clients to send me artwork that inspires them and then we choose a direction together for the artwork. I wanted to do something similar for myself: do one piece in my style (which is below) and the other as an homage to an influence of mine. 


Illustrations and Short Story in Hypertext Magazine

My commissioned illustration to accompany my short story, “A List of Everyone in the World”

My commissioned illustration to accompany my short story, “A List of Everyone in the World”

A few months ago, I got some wonderful news. A short story I had submitted to Hypertext Magazine, “A List of Everyone in the World”, was accepted for publication in their Fall 2020 issue. The editors also nominated my story for the Best American Short Stories 2020 anthology.

I was so excited by this. I love this story of a misanthropic girl swept off her feet by a person and having to challenge her own fears of opening up in order to give her heart a chance to grow. And as happy as I was that it found a home with Hypertext, I was completely blown away that the editors gave it the anthology nomination.

You can read it here.

But another opportunity popped up from this interaction with Hypertext beyond the literary. When I was communicating with the editors on the final copy of the story, I offered to draw something to accompany my story. I figured, why not? I sent the editors my art portfolio. The worst they could say was no.

Christine Maul Rice, the editor-in-chief of Hypertext Magazine got back to me a week later. She asked if I could do more than an illustration for my story; she asked if I could create a new illustrated masthead for their site and draw a custom spot illustration for each piece in their December 2020 issue.

Chris and I worked closely over the last two months on the masthead and she gave me prompts on every piece featured in the magazine with the exception of my own story. I had so much fun working on these pieces and I’m incredibly proud that my story is appearing both online and in print with Hypertext with this art, and I was so excited to create art for the other amazing writers in this issue.

Below is a collection of the images, but I encourage you to go to Hypertext and read all the fantastic stories and essays that these were created to accompany.