Dearest Weirdos,

I procrastinate making this post every year, and yet I really enjoy looking back on the year and contemplating what I created. I am a big believer in cataloging your work. Not only because our creative world is so ephemeral and so much online work gets lost in the shuffle, but also because it is a helpful lesson in objectivity. It’s why I usually film most of the art pieces I make—it helps me see the work in a new way.

So here is a list of everything I did in 2024 with my creative life:

Publications by Holly Lyn Walrath in 2024:

• Poem: "You Are Trapped in a Coma”— Horror, prose poem about being trapped in a coma during the apocalypse, a metaphor for how it feels to have lived through the 2024 election. Published in FUMPTRUCK, Written Backwards (Anthology), December 16, 2024

• Poem: “There Is Nothing Wrong with You”—Hopeful, uplifting prose poem, an ode to being yourself and loving yourself. Published in FUMPTRUCK, Written Backwards (Anthology), December 16, 2024

• Poem: “B Movie Babies”—Horror, queer poem about growing up in the 90s. Published in The Texas Media Signal Foundation, June 21, 2024

• Poem: “The Will of the Whisps Mother”—Horror, fantasy, poem from the POV of the mother of the sylphs. Published in Kaleidotrope Spring 2024.

• Poem: “Here Be Dragons” —Queer poem inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in Kaleidotrope Winter 2024.

Works Edited by Holly Lyn Walrath in 2024:

• Short Fiction: Interstellar Flight Press 2024 Flash Fiction Series, with Guest Editor Annika Barranti Klein. 12 new original flash fiction pieces, all of which are linked here.

• Poetry Collection (Chapbook): Necessary Poisons by Andrea Blythe—found poems inspired by Stephen King. Nominated for the HWA Stoker Award Preliminary Ballot.

• Short Story Collection: The Butterfly Disjunct by Stewart C Baker—SFF experimental and strange short stories. Reviewed by Foreword Reviews.

• Poetry Anthology: The Heartbeat of the Universe: Poems from Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact 2012-2022, Edited by Emily Hockaday—Poems from the 10 year history of Asimov/Analog, as selected by poetry editor Emily Hockaday.

• Novella: Small Gods of Calamity by Sam Kyung Yoo—Korean spirit detective from debut author.

• Short Story Collection: Learning to Hate Yourself as a Self-Defense Mechanism by Andrea Kriz—Cross-genre SFF short stories.

• Short Nonfiction: You can find all the essays I edited over at Interstellar Flight Magazine.

  

  Honorable mention: I helped Kate Boyes edit the absolutely manically funny GRUB: A series of satirical poems about the big orange fucker. Highly recommended.

Blog Posts and Articles by Holly Lyn Walrath in 2024

(Note: My archives are only available to paying subscribers. You can upgrade for just $25/year.) In addition to these things, I am still creating erasure poems and visual art over on my Instagram and TikTok, where you can follow along with my creative process. This includes a series of cut-up poems from Project 2025, and my ongoing encyclopedia series.

What I LOVED in 2024: Creative Input

In 2025, I’m really trying to realign my creative inputs. 2024 was a timesuck and a soulsuck in terms of what I took in: Far too much political stress and anxiety that ended up feeling utterly useless. One of my goals for the new year is to spend more time doing what I love and taking in creative inspiration. Here are some of the things that brought me joy last year:

Traveling! Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House

I was really lucky in 2024 to have a ton of fun adventures and travels across the US. One place I visited was Louisa May Alcott’s (author of Little Women) home. One of the things I love about Alcott is how non-traditional she was as a woman living in the 1800s, a time when women didn’t have a lot of options. Alcott became the breadwinner for her family using her writing, sometimes using a pen name to hide her gender. But it’s Little Women for which she is beloved. It was lovely to see where Alcott lived and the many young women who came to pay homage to this early feminist writer. I also enjoyed this trip because I got to bring my mom, who is a big Little Women fan and always read me the book growing up.

Yoga for Writers

One constant in my 2024 life was my renewed yoga practice. I have hypermobile EDS, so resistance training and mindful exercise are super important for me. One challenge is that for hypermobile people, yoga can actually be quite damaging, so I have had to learn how to adapt the practice for my broken body. This summer, I got to visit Baja, Mexico as part of a global health trip with my spouse, who is a physical therapist. I’ve been thinking about writing some about how the awareness mindset of yoga can help writers stay focused. Here’s a simple exercise:

Sit cross-legged or in a chair with your feet on the floor. Focus on bringing your spine straight, as if there is a string attached to your head and someone is pulling on it. Take three deep breaths. Take notice of how you feel in your body and mind. Then spend about five minutes freewriting. It’s okay if you find it hard to focus. The practice of yoga is about noticing the thoughts you have and then letting them go. In the same way, writing is about noticing the thoughts you have and putting them on the page.

Still Emo After All These Tears

This fall I got to go see a Dashboard Confessional concert, which was a blast. I’ve seen them about three times live, but this one was extra fun because the opener was Boys Like Girls, who gives a killer live performance. You can take the emo off the radio, but you can’t take the emo out of the emo kid.

For Zinefest Houston in the fall, I did a zine series of self-portraits in my Kamala shirt. I called it “Before the Election”. I stumbled upon this pic I took at the Barbie Cafe in Houston and thought that both of these pictures represent how I felt before the election. Here’s the poem that went with that zine:

Before the Election

We were relearning what hope means
how it feels on the tongue
the way it rolls through our lips
with a soft pop at the end

like the sound of a silenced gun,
we had so little shock left in us to give
and so little memory of possibility—
could it be?
We asked ourselves
questions in the gray hours
in silent places no one could see
as if we didn’t know the answer was coming
as if we still believed in answers.

The Ghost With the Most . . . D?

I really loved the 2024 Beetlejuice sequel. It was nostalgic but not too much fan service, introduced the world to a new set of fans, and was satisfyingly spooky. Here’s an article I wrote about goth girls and the enduring sexuality of dead old guys:

I Will Not Accept a Life I Do Not Deserve

MaXXXine, the final to the X Trilogy by Ti West, was one of my favorite horror films of the year. I’ve been tongue-in-cheek using Maxine’s motto this year to get me through the BS. While I won’t be crushing any men with cars, I’m certainly planning on giving less fucks. (There is a great review of this trilogy over at Interstellar Flight Mag by Patrick Barb.)

@holly__lyn

Today, I went for a solo hike. I encountered a man who had two big dogs. One of them lunged at another woman and her dog, who had put hims... See more

I Walk Alone in the Woods

I taught my nature poetry workshop this year, and it really had me reflecting on the gender dynamics of being in the natural world. Most of my students were women, and a common thread was how they felt afraid to be alone, or else felt like they couldn’t take up space in nature, like they weren’t allowed to be there. I’m thinking this might be part of a future nature poetry book that highlights how gender can impact our experience of the natural world.

Seeing the World Through Film

I’ve been exploring photography this year using my Dad’s old 1959 Ambi Silette. This is from my series “Strip Malls” where I take photos of local strip mall businesses Houston in low-light conditions. I use Amber T800 film, which is a color low-light film. I ask for the film to be processed "with borders," - which shows the imperfect edges of the negative. It gets scanned by my local film shop. I then add the text using Photoshop.

I have no clue what the blue streaks are from - probably from my inept re-rolling of the film, as I'm notoriously destructive. No clue where the strange blue lights come from in this one, but I love the Stranger Things vibes it gives this liminal shot. I love how this shows how surreal the city can be at night. Places that are teeming with life during the day become eerily silent and abandoned. There's something charming to me about these local strip malls that are really the heart of neighborhoods.

Robin Hobb and Retro Fiction

I’m trying to revisit books that are considered iconic in SFF but that I haven’t read yet. One series I adored was Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy. I absolutely fell in love with the dynamic between Fitz and the Fool. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure about this series when I first started reading it, but it completely won me over. I also really love how Hobb creates a cozy atmosphere in the books while still keeping the reader hooked.

Hades: Putting the Gay in Gaming

I’m a bit late to this game, but since it’s my current end-of-2024, beginning-of-2025 obsession, I thought I’d share about it. I’m obsessed with Hades, which I play on the Switch. One of the things I love about the game is the utter gayness of it all. The game mostly coasts by on its amazing game art and character concepts, taking all of the Greek pantheon and reimagining it. The game mechanics are pretty basic on the surface: You play as Hades trying to make your way out of Hell and back to the human world, slowly leveling up as you retry a set of somewhat variable encounters. However, as you play, the game evolves with you, making the grinding aspect really enjoyable. I’m loving it.

These are just a few things that I loved in 2024. Here’s to surviving another year in the hellscape. See you on the other side of 2025, besties.

Want to support my writing and this newsletter? Upgrade for just $2.50/month or $25/year.

Get Your Team Booked on 3.8 Million Podcasts Automatically

It's 2025. Want to finally be a regular podcast guest in your industry? PodPitch will make it happen. Even the beehiiv team uses it!

The best way to advertise isn't Meta or Google – it's appearing on podcasts your customers love.

PodPitch.com automates thousands of weekly emails for you, pitching your team as ideal guests.

Big brands like Feastables use PodPitch.com instead of expensive PR agencies.

Get your FREE personalized demo!