Lesley Wheeler
@lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
Poetry Ed of Shenandoah. Author of Poetry’s Possible Worlds, Unbecoming, The State She’s In, Radioland, & the forthcoming Mycocosmic—poetry, fantasy fiction, CNF, scholarship. She/her. linktr.ee/lesleymwheeler
Pinned
Mycocosmic is 6 months old! If you’ve foraged for it already, THANK YOU. I’d love to see photos of it in the wild. www.tupelopress.org/book/mycocos... 🍄 @tupelopress.bsky.social #poetry #fungi #mushroom
Getting excited about this poetry panel in Charlottesville VA sponsored by the Botanical Garden of the Piedmont, 2/6/26! First 125 to register get a free book! piedmontgarden.org/event/a-poet... with @paulguest1974.bsky.social @haydensaunier.bsky.social Kiki Petrosino & Charlotte Matthews
A Poets' Panel | Guardians of Wonder: Writing What We Must Not Lose - Botanical Garden of the Piedmont
Guardians of Wonder: A provocative discussion of nature, the environment, climate resiliency, and stewarding our earth.
piedmontgarden.org
January 6, 2026 at 4:49 PM
Getting excited about this poetry panel in Charlottesville VA sponsored by the Botanical Garden of the Piedmont, 2/6/26! First 125 to register get a free book! piedmontgarden.org/event/a-poet... with @paulguest1974.bsky.social @haydensaunier.bsky.social Kiki Petrosino & Charlotte Matthews
Part of 2025’s luck for me was being in on a lot of fun conversations. This one on The Mushroom Hour was one of my favorites. 🍄 www.welcometomushroomhour.com/blogs/podcas...
Ep. 197: Mycocosmic - Underworlds, Hope, Poetry & Fungal Intelligence (feat. Lesley Wheeler)
Into the Mycocosmic we shape strands of thoughts and feelings on fear, the underworld, hope and transformation through the discipline of poetry into fungally-inspired narratives and find ourselves op...
www.welcometomushroomhour.com
January 2, 2026 at 9:20 PM
Part of 2025’s luck for me was being in on a lot of fun conversations. This one on The Mushroom Hour was one of my favorites. 🍄 www.welcometomushroomhour.com/blogs/podcas...
Embroidery courtesy of my eldest child and Emily Dickinson. My year in reading, thanks to all the writers, including those whose books are still smoking-hot on my side table. I’ll get there! lesleywheeler.org/2025/12/31/2...
2025 in reading (playing Yesterday)
My eldest child embroidered their way through this hard year, so for Christmas they gave me some of my favorite poetic lines on a little panel of violet cloth. They’re from Dickinson’s …
lesleywheeler.org
December 31, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Embroidery courtesy of my eldest child and Emily Dickinson. My year in reading, thanks to all the writers, including those whose books are still smoking-hot on my side table. I’ll get there! lesleywheeler.org/2025/12/31/2...
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
December 31, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Yes it is—thank you!
Lovely to see @lesleymwheeler.bsky.social’s Mycocosmic on @clmporg.bsky.social Most-Celebrated Books of 2025!
www.clmp.org/news/clmp-me...
www.clmp.org/news/clmp-me...
December 22, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Yes it is—thank you!
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
Hello, at the University of Minnesota, we're hiring a visiting creative nonfiction writer for the next 2-3 years to teach a 1-1 (one grad class, one undergrad class) and potentially sit on some MFA thesis committees. This job will give you time to write you next book: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...
December 19, 2025 at 3:26 PM
Hello, at the University of Minnesota, we're hiring a visiting creative nonfiction writer for the next 2-3 years to teach a 1-1 (one grad class, one undergrad class) and potentially sit on some MFA thesis committees. This job will give you time to write you next book: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
Psst I still want to read your book even if it didn't make any lists. ❤️
December 19, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Psst I still want to read your book even if it didn't make any lists. ❤️
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
The prize of $2000 will be awarded in 2026, with publication by The American Poetry Review in partnership with Copper Canyon Press in the following year. The author will receive a standard book contract, with royalties paid in subsequent years.
For complete guidelines and to submit: loom.ly/JUkTfFM
For complete guidelines and to submit: loom.ly/JUkTfFM
December 1, 2025 at 8:07 PM
The prize of $2000 will be awarded in 2026, with publication by The American Poetry Review in partnership with Copper Canyon Press in the following year. The author will receive a standard book contract, with royalties paid in subsequent years.
For complete guidelines and to submit: loom.ly/JUkTfFM
For complete guidelines and to submit: loom.ly/JUkTfFM
The new issue of Shenandoah is amazing. Tran Tran was our Poetry Editorial Fellow and selected an amazing portfolio of multilingual poetry! www.shenandoahliterary.org
Shenandoah
Shenandoah has been publishing great writing for 75 years. Located at Washington and Lee University, the magazine is part of the English Department and is a tool used to teach students the art and cra...
www.shenandoahliterary.org
December 18, 2025 at 7:27 PM
The new issue of Shenandoah is amazing. Tran Tran was our Poetry Editorial Fellow and selected an amazing portfolio of multilingual poetry! www.shenandoahliterary.org
I need an alternative to the phrase “going down the rabbit hole” but “descending into the coils of the Great Pink Sea Snail” doesn’t have the right ring lesleywheeler.org/2025/12/18/t...
The Great Pink Sea Snail rides on
During my ridiculously lucky 3-night residency in Miami last week–praise to SWWIM and the Betsy Writer’s Room!–I worked on a multipart poem I started in October. The sequence begi…
lesleywheeler.org
December 18, 2025 at 5:16 PM
I need an alternative to the phrase “going down the rabbit hole” but “descending into the coils of the Great Pink Sea Snail” doesn’t have the right ring lesleywheeler.org/2025/12/18/t...
In conversation with Jane Satterfield about stone bothering, concept albums, maledictions, and trying to keep up the lyric heat while writing poems from research. Thank you @newversereview.bsky.social ! open.substack.com/pub/newverse...
Poetic Ecologies: A Conversation Between Jane Satterfield and Lesley Wheeler
Satterfield and Wheeler discuss fungi, the Brontës, poetic form, and much else!
open.substack.com
December 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM
In conversation with Jane Satterfield about stone bothering, concept albums, maledictions, and trying to keep up the lyric heat while writing poems from research. Thank you @newversereview.bsky.social ! open.substack.com/pub/newverse...
Today I’m in pleasant struggle with a poem about snails. Tonight I sing for my supper!
Join us Thursday, December 11 at 7pm (EST) for a reading & conversation with Lesley Wheeler & Haya Pomrenze at The Betsy Hotel’s B Bar. This event will be live-streamed on our Instagram & Facebook pages.
Join us in person or from wherever you are.
XO
SWWIM Team
@lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
Join us in person or from wherever you are.
XO
SWWIM Team
@lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
December 11, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Today I’m in pleasant struggle with a poem about snails. Tonight I sing for my supper!
Philip Pullman in The Rose Field: “A system isn’t complete until there’s a hole in it” #portals #fantasyfiction
December 8, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Philip Pullman in The Rose Field: “A system isn’t complete until there’s a hole in it” #portals #fantasyfiction
My review of Rosa Castellano’s striking #poetry collection, All is the Telling, is now up. Thanks to @whaleroadreview.bsky.social for welcoming it! www.whaleroadreview.com/rosa-castell... @diodeeditions.bsky.social
Skin from Sky
All Is the Telling by Rosa CastellanoDiode Editions, 2025 People who find out you’ve published a poetry collection sometimes ask, “What’s it about?” Poetry’s complexity makes the question har…
www.whaleroadreview.com
December 7, 2025 at 6:41 PM
My review of Rosa Castellano’s striking #poetry collection, All is the Telling, is now up. Thanks to @whaleroadreview.bsky.social for welcoming it! www.whaleroadreview.com/rosa-castell... @diodeeditions.bsky.social
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
Happy 10-year anniversary of Whale Road Review! Thank you to all who have contributed and to the peer reviewers who have spent countless hours reading and shaping this journal with me. Here’s another fantastic winter issue that we’re excited to share!
www.whaleroadreview.com/issue-41
www.whaleroadreview.com/issue-41
December 6, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Happy 10-year anniversary of Whale Road Review! Thank you to all who have contributed and to the peer reviewers who have spent countless hours reading and shaping this journal with me. Here’s another fantastic winter issue that we’re excited to share!
www.whaleroadreview.com/issue-41
www.whaleroadreview.com/issue-41
The stars are definitely aligning for me this month. Big inner stuff, too lesleywheeler.org/2025/12/04/s...
Stars, luck, and revelations
“The Instagram astrologers says big positive changes are coming for me this week!” I yelled from my reading chair to my spouse at his laptop, although the cats seemed interested, too. H…
lesleywheeler.org
December 4, 2025 at 11:05 PM
The stars are definitely aligning for me this month. Big inner stuff, too lesleywheeler.org/2025/12/04/s...
So excited! Thank you, @swwim.bsky.social and The Betsy Writer’s Room! #poetry #womenpoets #miamipoetry
Join us Thursday, December 11 at 7pm (EST) for a reading & conversation with Lesley Wheeler & Haya Pomrenze at The Betsy Hotel’s B Bar. This event will be live-streamed on our Instagram & Facebook pages.
Join us in person or from wherever you are.
XO
SWWIM Team
@lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
Join us in person or from wherever you are.
XO
SWWIM Team
@lesleymwheeler.bsky.social
December 4, 2025 at 11:03 PM
So excited! Thank you, @swwim.bsky.social and The Betsy Writer’s Room! #poetry #womenpoets #miamipoetry
I know these lists only show a fraction of the great new books out there—but how lovely for Mycocosmic to be on one! I just followed the article’s Bookshop.org link to order books in small press solidarity! lithub.com/100-notable-... @literaryhub.bsky.social
December 3, 2025 at 7:22 PM
I know these lists only show a fraction of the great new books out there—but how lovely for Mycocosmic to be on one! I just followed the article’s Bookshop.org link to order books in small press solidarity! lithub.com/100-notable-... @literaryhub.bsky.social
Thank you for shining a little light on Mycocosmic @angelacv.bsky.social —I just spotted the article & I’m so surprised & delighted! 🍄 ❤️🍾
Notable books 2025 is live on LitHub! #100smallpress
100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025
The idea of 100 Notable Small Press Books was born November 2024, after The New York Times’s annual 100 Notable Books list featured eighty-two books from the Big Five publishing houses (Pengu…
w7r4.engage.squarespace-mail.com
December 3, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Thank you for shining a little light on Mycocosmic @angelacv.bsky.social —I just spotted the article & I’m so surprised & delighted! 🍄 ❤️🍾
“Why do you say / I’m dying when I am reading?” by @catemarvin.bsky.social —the November issue of Poetry was particularly kick-ass. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi... @poetryfoundation.bsky.social
The Death of the Humanities
Why do you say I’m dying when I am reading, holding the hand of an author I know like a lover though they died years before I was born?
www.poetryfoundation.org
November 30, 2025 at 5:55 PM
“Why do you say / I’m dying when I am reading?” by @catemarvin.bsky.social —the November issue of Poetry was particularly kick-ass. www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi... @poetryfoundation.bsky.social
@ktcndn.bsky.social Wow, Katie—this poem blows me away www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
The Holy Sacrament of Repression
I am a girlchild who is told I should use the beads to busy my hands. Too busy saving other worms from every shallow driveway pool, the jewelry of God seething on a dented bumper. With age, I notice t...
www.poetryfoundation.org
November 30, 2025 at 5:27 PM
@ktcndn.bsky.social Wow, Katie—this poem blows me away www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.
I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.
November 25, 2025 at 11:07 PM
I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
Thanks to the @poetryfoundation.bsky.social for giving this piece about my friend Marty Silano, a wonderful poet who passed away a few months ago, a home. We miss you, Marty. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/172...
September 22, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Thanks to the @poetryfoundation.bsky.social for giving this piece about my friend Marty Silano, a wonderful poet who passed away a few months ago, a home. We miss you, Marty. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/172...
Reposted by Lesley Wheeler
On the blog this week: A Week of Poetry Friends And Readings, Horror Poetry, Halloween/Samhain, and Some Real Life Scares: webbish6.com/a-week-of-po... #poets #readings #halloween #horrorpoetry
October 27, 2025 at 8:42 PM
On the blog this week: A Week of Poetry Friends And Readings, Horror Poetry, Halloween/Samhain, and Some Real Life Scares: webbish6.com/a-week-of-po... #poets #readings #halloween #horrorpoetry
Thanks to Storyknife for their gift this week—a residency in April!—and @webbish6.bsky.social for photographing Mycocosmic among shrooms! Otherwise this week I’m thinking about rejections—being on both sides of the blade. lesleywheeler.org/2025/11/16/t...
The knife
At one of the many events I attended this fall, a magazine editor, reflecting on downsides of a generally rewarding job, sighed and said something like “so many bad poems.” What’s…
lesleywheeler.org
November 16, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Thanks to Storyknife for their gift this week—a residency in April!—and @webbish6.bsky.social for photographing Mycocosmic among shrooms! Otherwise this week I’m thinking about rejections—being on both sides of the blade. lesleywheeler.org/2025/11/16/t...