Anne Marie Wells Writerly Newsletter March 2025
Where I submitted work to this month (so you can too!), writing prompt, upcoming events, and other updates...
Hi Writers,
March is here, and soon the vernal equinox will push us officially into spring. I am hoping with it, we are pushed out of both the literal and metaphorical winter we’ve been experiencing.
Notice anything different?
This year, I’ll be celebrating two years of my monthly newsletter, and y’all have followed me from email to Medium to my website to Substack. THANK YOU for coming with me through this evolution of figuring out what this newsletter is.
Since the newsletter has never been exclusively about poetry—my writing prompts can transcend genre, the calls for submissions I apply to are not exclusively poetry, the workshops I facilitate are not exclusively poetry—I’ve made the switch from Poetry newsletter to Writerly newsletter. All the same great information with a title that won’t make writers of other genres feel unwelcome.
ICYMI: “Audiobook” version of Survived By now available on YouTube
Last month to honor my father on the fifth anniversary of his passing, I read the entirety of my book Survived By cover-to-cover live on YouTube. Not a single person joined for the viewing as I read for over two and a half hours, but that’s okay! This “audiobook” version of Survived By now exists — raw, unedited, and with added commentary. So if you haven’t read my book because you’re more of an audiobook person, or if costs have prohibited you from purchasing a copy, I invite you to listen to it the way you listen to audiobooks or podcasts as you’re commuting to work or while you’re folding laundry or cooking dinner.
Expert Panel on Following One’s Heart
I recently appeared as a special guest on the Do the Thing Podcast with Stacey Lauren. I talked about my journey to Iceland finding people’s happy places and was joined by many other wonderful people with wonderful stories to share including my mentor Laura Carney who wrote My Father’s List about completing her father’s bucket list that she found a decade after he passed; Jeff Truesdale who is a life-long reporter/journalist and who is currently on a quest to travel to all the towns named Nelson after his husband Nelson died suddenly of a heart attack; Mary Latham who created the movement More Good Today and who traveled to all fifty states collecting stories of kindness to honor her late mother; and Shaun Zetlin who helps people heal emotional wounds through physical movement.
One-Year Book Birthday
Happy birthday to my chapbook, Mother, (v), [pronounced Mother comma verb] which won the 2023 Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Contest and was published on March 13, 2024.
Praise for Mother, (v)
Quite literally pregnant with longing and a desire to love, Mother, (v) is both a meditation on and plea for motherhood. It is raw, reflective, and as I read, I found myself reaching for my heart, as the lyrical and elemental poems grew on the page. Wells writes with authentic candor, inviting readers to sit alongside her vulnerability, disappointments, and heartbreaks. In doing so, anyone who reads Mother, (v) will feel seen and held on their motherhood journeys. - Krystle May Statler, author of Prayer for Relief
Writing Prompt
Déja vu is the phenomenon someone experiences when they feel like they have seen, heard, or otherwise already lived something occurring in present time. A lesser-known phenomenon jamais vu is a phenomenon someone experiences when they feel as if they are seeing something they have regularly seen for the first time.
Write about something you’re very familiar with as if you’re seeing it/experiencing it for the first time. If you were a stranger, how would you describe your living space? If you were a foreigner, how would you describe your town? How would you describe your partner, friend, or family member if you had never met them before today. Look at something with new eyes.
Where I submitted work/will submit work (so you can too!)
Small Harbor Marginalia Series (chapbook)
The Joy of Poeting Substitutes
Just to keep it on your radar… I have a few poetry friends filling in for me on The Joy of Poeting in the upcoming months who will be demo-ing the poetic forms that they’ve invented, and Christian Perfas (aka Soul Stuf), a superb spoken word artist, will be demo-ing how to write a spoken word poem.
***Their events are separate on Eventbrite. So if you want to make sure that you are on the list to attend, pop on over to the Eventbrite page and sign up! ***
Alright, that’s all folks!
Love,
Anne Marie
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