Category: News

Happy Year of the Tiger!

Posted on by Iris
Red hong bao envelopes with a design of an illustrated tiger holding a customizable sign. Around the tiger are flowers and text saying "Wishing you a stripe-endous new year!" Behind the envelopes is a sheet of paper containing an unfinished envelope (printed but not cut out). A pair of gold scissors sits to the right.

It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything here. But new year, new leaf. And I’ve got a few bits of writing news to share as the Year of the Tiger approaches. (Hard to believe that Lunar New Year is already a little over a week away!)

First, in 2021, I picked up and started submitting again. Over the summer, I got pretty lucky! Counterclock chose three pieces that I’d written during the first year of the pandemic to appear in its thirteenth issue as part of a special themed folio, “Outbreak, Part 2.” You can read them below. (Excitingly, I’ve already got three more pubs forthcoming in 2022—more to come soon.)

Three Poems by Iris A. Law (Counterclock, Issue 13, Outbreak, Pt. 2)

I also started 2022 off by getting new author photos taken! It had been nearly nine years since I shot the selfie that previously appeared on this website (and that I used on my chapbook). I was long overdue for a change. Photographer Elwing Gao shot my new photos right in my neighborhood and did a lovely job — I love how, in the final photo I’ve chosen here (you can see it in the sidebar), she was able to catch some pretty golden-hour light coming through the stand of redwood trees behind the local fire station.

Lastly, I think I’m going to start sharing some freebie printables here on this blog from time to time. I experimented with making my own hong bao (Chinese red envelopes used for Lunar New Year) this year, and they turned out so fun that I couldn’t help but want to share. Click on the link below to download a free printable design that you can use to make your own Year of the Tiger red money pockets.

Year of the Tiger Printable Red Envelope (PDF Digital Download)

Wishing you a healthy and happy 2022—here’s to fresh starts and following through on new intentions!

Two Poems in WILDNESS Issue 17

Posted on by Iris

It’s been a long time since I last touched this blog! This comes as late news, but I’m happy to announce that after an (unintentional) two-year hiatus while my attention was focused on classroom teaching, I’m back to working on my manuscript and submitting again, and at the end of last year, I was fortunate to be featured in my first journal publication since 2016. In December 2018, I was lucky enough to have two poems picked up by wildness, an exquisite and ethereal online lit mag out of the UK’s Platypus Press.

One of the pieces they took, “Book of Hours,” is the (current) titular poem from my still-in-progress full-length manuscript; it’s an elegy for my dad, one of a number that are written after particular psalms.

The other piece, “A Skein of Geese,” comes out of a fun project that I began over the summer. For the past few years, I’ve been working with middle school writers, and I love to assign them poetry exercises that will spark their imaginations and cause them to think about language in new and surprising ways. Last June, as I was returning to my own writing practice after such a long time away, I decided that it only seemed fair to assign myself the same types of prompts I like to give to students. I practiced writing with “synesthetic description.” I tried writing with more attention to smells (that oft-neglected sense). I wrote some poems that dug into my Harry Potter fandom. And I borrowed evocative terms of venery (collective nouns) for animals and used them as titles, imagining the possibilities of what could happen if, for example, a hover of trout could really fly—or, in the case of the poem that wildness took, a skein of geese could really embroider the fabric of the sky.

I’m grateful to Michelle Tudor of wildness for taking a chance on me and my little experiments. And I’m even more thrilled that these, my first published pieces in over two years, appear in the same issue as an interview with my dearest writing friend and LR partner, Mia Ayumi Malhotra. (Whose first collection, Isako Isako, came out last fall and who, as usual, has endless pearls of wisdom to share in the interview!)

If you have a moment this weekend, I’d be grateful if you’d hop over to wildness 17 and give the issue a little love!

Where to Find Me at AWP 2016

Posted on by Iris

Iris's New Business Cards for AWP 2016

I’m off to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ 2016 conference in Los Angeles for the next few days! I just designed some new business cards for myself (pictured above; I got them printed at Moo.com, my favorite place to do short-run printing of this sort), and my bags are just about packed (leaving room, of course, for the huge cache of books I always manage to acquire while there!) Here are a few notes about where to find me and my work this weekend if you’ll be going too:

1. Look for me anywhere Lantern Review is.

My coeditor, Mia, and I recently relaunched our literary magazine and blog, Lantern Review, and we’re planning on hanging out at as many APIA-poetry-related events as we can. At the very least, we’ll be attending the Asian American caucus on Thursday evening and will be selling books for Kundiman at their (and Kaya Press’s) “Literoake” off-site event on Friday night. We don’t have our own bookfair table this year as we have in the past, but Kundiman has very kindly offered to let us put some business cards on their table (1018). As always, I’ve designed our LR cards to double as pocket-sized art, and this year, they contain some of our cover images from past issues in addition to quotes from the blog and the magazine that have to do with light and illumination (since we are LANTERN Review . . . get it?). I’d love it if you stopped by to pick one up, either to share with a friend or take home for yourself. (Also, if you’re interested in finding out more about APIA poetry at AWP this year, I’ve also created a guide for the Lantern Review blog that went up yesterday. Please do click on over to read up on events of interest and to download our free companion to the bookfair.)

2. Pick up a copy of the new issue of Exit 7 in the bookfair.

I have four poems in the new issue of Exit 7, a beautiful literary journal run out of a two-year college in Paducah, KY. The first year that LR had a table in the bookfair (2011, which was incidentally also my first year living in KY), the conference placed our table right next to Exit 7‘s, and I got to meet Britton and Amelia, the fantastic couple that edits and runs the magazine. Earlier this year, Exit 7 was kind enough to accept some of my work for their current issue, and they will be selling copies in the bookfair at table 412. Please do stop by and consider purchasing a copy of the issue to read my poems (several of which are set in Lexington!) and to support the amazing editorial work that Amelia and Britton do. (Amelia also has a new book out this spring from Sarabande, The Spoons in the Grass Are There to Dig a Moat. I recommend picking up a copy of it at Sarabande’s table, 513.)

3. Visit the Kundiman table and buy a copy of Periodicity to support their work.

I’m donating several copies of my chapbook, Periodicity, to Kundiman to be sold (along with other fellows’ books and chaps) as part of a fundraiser to support their work. Kundiman is an amazing literary nonprofit that supports Asian American writers through retreats, mentorship, and community, and as a Kundiman fellow, I’ve grown so much and have benefited so deeply from their work. They have a very special place in my heart, and I’m so honored to have the opportunity to give back to them even in this small way. If you have some extra cash during the conference, please do consider stopping by their bookfair table (1018) or dropping in at one of their events where they will be selling books to help support by buying a copy of Periodicity or any of the scores of other amazing titles by other Kundiman fellows that will be available.

* * *

I’m off now to take care of some last minute things before jetting off to LA, but if you’ll be at AWP this weekend, please come find me and say “hello”!

p.s. Curious about Moo.com and want to try it out yourself? Here’s a referral link that will let both you and me save a little money on our next orders (you’ll save 10% on your first order, and I get some store credit to spend).

Happy Lunar New Year! (On Blogging and New Beginnings)

Posted on by Iris

Happy Lunar New Year 2016!

I begin again with the smallest numbers.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Burning the Old Year”

Hello, there, internet! It’s been a while.

I’m Iris. You might remember me from here, or maybe (reaching really far back) even here. I’m a writer, an editor, a lover of books and words; a feminist, an Asian American—a woman of color who writes and for whom faith, poetry, and the pursuit of social justice are inextricably intertwined. I also like to make things: literary “interventions” and art; food and music; drawings and crafts; simple hand-lettering and typography.

It’s been a few years since I last made a habit of keeping a blog, but today is the first day of the lunar new year, a time of sweeping away the dust from the corners and starting afresh. 2015 (the year of the sheep) was a year rife with change for me. I got married; I moved in with my new husband; he got a job across the country from our beloved adopted hometown in Kentucky. Fast forward to December, and we found ourselves road tripping across ten states, through flooding rains and icy mountain peaks, across endless swaths of open prairie and the dusty Nevada desert, to find ourselves here, in California: this old-new state where he grew up, where we went to school, where we first met, where we fell in love, where last summer, we returned to say our vows before the altar of his family’s home church. For me, it’s more than just a return to a familiar place—to shy winter rains, the wet surprise of February citrus dropping to the sidewalk at one’s feet. I’m coming home to the place where I first found my legs as a writer; the place where I discovered Asian American studies and read my first book of poetry by an Asian American poet; and where my first, rudimentary sense of insight into what it means to be a person of color living and writing in America first began to take shape and grow.

But there are new things, too. The streets are more crowded. The water crisis is more urgent. The rent’s even more hair-raising than it ever was before. I am transitioning out of the wonderful job (at a small university press) that I held back in Kentucky and am looking ahead with hope and much hard work as I figure out what’s next for me in my career.

In a way, it seems like a fitting time to return to blogging. I’ve been all over the map, and it’s as good a time as any to come home. I don’t know what this next year will look like, or the exact direction that this blog will eventually take. You might see a little bit of everything: writing updates; snapshots from my daily life; recipes; a sprinkling of DIY projects; thoughts on poetry, language, the business of publishing. Whatever the case may be, I do know that I have lots of ideas for the creative and literary content that I plan to share here, and it’s my intention to push myself in more new directions, creatively and professionally, than I ever have before. So I begin again—with a small breath, a word, a sentence, a first blog post for a brand new year.

Happy year of the monkey. Here’s to blogging and to beginning afresh.

—Iris