Join us April 3rd to celebrate the launch of Miranda Schmidt’s debut novel, Leafskin, with Justine Chan and Callum Angus!
ABOUT LEAFSKIN
A poet and her husband have been trying to make a baby. But while undergoing fertility treatments in the midst of a harrowing wildfire season, Jo reconsiders raising a child in a time of climate crisis. When her artist ex-girlfriend, who has always had an uncanny connection to nature, re-enters her life, Jo struggles to navigate the transformations in her relationships and realities.
Miranda Schmidt's lyrical debut novel blurs the boundaries between poetry and prose, human and nonhuman, reality and magic. A tale of queer love, new motherhood, and ecological interconnectedness, Leafskin interrogates how we create, and what we become, in a time of environmental devastation.
About Miranda Schmidt
Miranda Schmidt’s work circles the folkloric, the familial, queer magic, and the more-than-human world. Their writing has appeared in Triquarterly, Orion, Electric Literature, Catapult, and more. She has studied at the University of Washington MFA Program, Bath Spa University PhD program, the Lambda Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Writers, the Bread Loaf Environmental Conference, and the Tin House Workshop. Miranda has taught creative writing at the Portland Book Festival, the Loft, the University of Washington, and Portland Community College. Their ongoing newsletter and teaching project, Writing Toward Nature, explores methods for bringing the more-than-human more deeply into our writing craft.
About Justine Chan
Justine Chan is a writer, poet, and singer-songwriter from Chicago. Should You Lose All Reason(s) (Chin Music Press, 2023) is her first book. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, KUOW, Moss, Baltimore Review, Beecher’s, Booth, Poetry on Buses, and Midwestern Gothic among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and has worked many seasons as a park ranger with the National Park Service. She currently lives in Seattle.
About Callum Angus
Callum Angus is a trans writer and editor living in Portland, Oregon, where he edits the literary journal smoke and mold, teaches writing workshops online and in-person, and is at work on a novel. He is the author of the story collection A Natural History of Transition, (Metonymy Press) which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction, the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and an Oregon Book Award/Ken Kesey Award in Fiction. His work has appeared in Joyland, Orion, Nat. Brut, and many other venues, and has been anthologized in Kink, a collection edited by Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon. He has received fellowships and residencies from Lambda Literary, Signal Fire Foundation for the Arts, the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, and The Seventh Wave, among others. A former bookseller at Powell's and the independent Odyssey Bookshop, he holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a BA from Mount Holyoke College, In addition to his own independent classes, he has taught writing at Smith College, UMass Amherst, and Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, as well as at the Tin House Winter Workshop. He also spent an enlightening stint working in publicity for Catapult, Counterpoint, and Soft Skull Press.