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Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect – Now Shipping!

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect
by Koss
Diode Contest Winner and Lambda Literary Lammy Lesbian Poetry Finalist (2025)
Published by Diode Editions
Release date: October 2025
Now shipping!
Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect is a poetic assemblage of a life sown outside the predictability of middle-class, straight America, one where the aftermath of repeated trauma and loss is allayed by unexpected moments of connection, empathy, and love.
Koss pens inventive textual routes through life transits, forging head-on through the debris with unflinching vision and grit in a timbre that shifts from existential dread to dark comedy. Part dirge and part survival story, Dancing Backwards transmutes the rubble of trauma, abandonment, grief, and suicide loss into a queer, hybrid elixir, their lived story worthy of telling.
Blog Posts
Diode Substack Newsletter | Koss Book Update
I haven’t really talked online about what my forthcoming chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, is about, but you can read the book description on Diode Editions’ Substack which also showcases my “Therapist Sez” poem, first published in diode poetry and winner of the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest. Know you can also sign up […]
Sage Cigarettes Magazine | Sketches & Erasures
Honored to have work included in Sage Cigarettes Magazine just before they change their format. Featured are two sketches, one of a tornado and one of a marsh, and a diptych made from two Wuthering Heights erasure/collages, previously published in Permafrost. It’s lovely to see this online as well as in print as they’re sure […]
Querencia Winter 2024 Anthology | Poems
Today is pub day for the Querencia Press Winter 2024 Anthology. I’m honored to have three poems published. They’re important poems to me, “Dead People Don’t Dream Hamburgers,” “Conversions: I Appeared in Your Suicide Dream,” and “Max, Carrie’s Mother, [No Wonder].” These were published (in order) in Eunoia, Spillway, and Anti-Heroin Chic but I’m thrilled […]
Fifth Wheel Press | Secrets in the Garden Anthology
Today is the release day for Secrets in the Garden, an anthology from Fifth Wheel Press. I’m really grateful to Nat Raum for including me. It’s online, but I believe it will be available in print. Fifth Wheel Press is a queer press with a unique publishing model; In addition to their collaborative projects, they […]
Bull Magazine | Micro Fiction by Koss
Pleased to have two micros in Bull Magazine, also known as Bull, Mr. Bull Bull, and Bull Men’s Magazine. Don’t ask me why so many names but it has evolved into something more inclusive than a men’s-only magazine, and they publish some really great fiction.
Permafrost | Winter ’24 Issue
After a very long delay, Permafrost Magazine’s Winter ’24 Issue Has Arrived. Note that this was supposed to be a March ’23 Issue, and I’m not sure how it will be listed on their website. From what I can tell, you need a Submittable account to purchase it from their site. I have two Wuthering […]
Koss 2023 Year-End Publication Update
2023 has been a year of uncertainty, change, and loss, but it ends on a welcome high note as Diode Editions has picked up my long chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, for publication. See more about this in my contest announcement post. The book will be published in 2024, and I’ll post updates as things […]
Diode ’23 Poetry Contest Chapbook Winners
I’m very honored to have my manuscript, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect chosen for publication in Diode’s ’23 Poetry Chapbook Contest. I’m very grateful to Patty, Law, and Zoe for this publication. Diode has been a wonderful supporter of my work, publishing multiple text poems, visual poems, and including me in their anthology, Beyond the Frame. […]
Fiction 2023 by Koss
I see people doing eligibility posts for the fiction award nominations on Twitter. I’m not sure about the etiquette here, but here are my fiction, flash, and microfiction pieces published in ’23. And they could benefit from some more reach. Grateful for the publications, y’all. Thank you for checking these out.
2023 Three-Quarter Year Publishing Update | Koss
It’s been a busy publishing year and since creating a “What’s New” page, I’ve been really lazy about updating the site. I see people are actually looking at my blog, so I should be writing something brilliant for you (thank you for checking it out). Truth is, my Aquarian brain is sometimes visual, sometimes verbal, […]
Best of the Net 2024
I’m blown away to have received five 2024 Best of the Net Nominations from five literary journals this year. I haven’t published much written work, so I was extra pleased that MoonPark Review, a gem of a journal, nominated my “The Short Lives of Wombats” piece for the prose poems category. And Petrichor nominated an […]
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