Hello, All! I hope your corner of the world is pleasant and that you are safe, happy, and engaged in some activity that brings you joy.
I have been busily thinking, scribbling, and submitting things for publication. Some of the things were done by request, and some of the things were unsolicited. But several of the things have made their way into print at this point, so I figured a little round up and share of what I’ve been up to would be a good idea, for those interested in reading things I’ve written.
True to form, the things span across multiple genres and styles. In the academic area, I’ve published a review of Francis Leneghan’s The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf, out now in Apardjon Journal for Scandanavian Studies: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/current-issue-1934.php
Together with my co-editor, the marvelous Kristen Bovaird-Abbo, I assembled a collection of essays entitled Food and Feast in Premodern Outlaw Tales, which came out in April from Routledge’s Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture series: https://www.routledge.com/Food-and-Feast-in-Premodern-Outlaw-Tales/Elmes-Bovaird-Abbo/p/book/9780367224905 . The volume comprises eleven chapters and an introduction, and covers material ranging from Beowulf to John Fletcher’s Beggar’s Bush. My essay in this book is about outlaw feasts in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and As You Like It. If you like scholarship on food and feasts, and/or Shakespearean comedy, and/or identity construction, you might enjoy reading it. If you are teaching a course on Medieval/Early Modern literature and want to theme it around food. feasts, and/or outlaws, this would be a great supplemental title for your class. And if you are writing a scholarly or critical book on any subject related to outlaws, I definitely recommend pitching it to this series, the series editors, Alex Kaufmann and Lesley Coote, were wonderful to work with.
If you are more interested in my creative work, I have poems currently out in Thimble Literary Magazine 3.4: https://www.thimblelitmag.com/2021/02/18/trust-issues/ and in Gyroscope Review 21.3: https://www.gyroscopereview.com/2021/07/the-summer-21-3-issue/ . These are two poems I really loved when I wrote them, and I find I still really love them when I re-read them. I hope you enjoy them as well! I also highly recommend these magazines to other poets. Both were wonderful publishing experiences with smooth and responsive editing.
I have several other things in various states of being: a short story and a poem currently in press, several book reviews in the pipeline, several critical and teaching essays in press, and I’ll share those as they come out. Meanwhile, I am also bubbling away with the Dr. Watson short story collection, a couple of stand-alone stories, a number of poems that may grow up to be a chapbook or two, and of course the book projects.
After the survival mindset that like so many others I adopted to get through the past 1.5 years where pretty much everything was centered around staying healthy, keeping my family healthy, and getting my students safely through the difficult academic year, I am finding joy in thinking, scribbling, and sharing things again. I hope you are also enjoying what you are doing!
Melissa Ridley Elmes 