Delighted to have “2023.26,” “2023.27,” and “2023.28” from my ongoing sonnet sequence in the third issue of Magazine1.
Poetry
Fall Semester 2024: Syllabi

I was so busy this fall semester that I forgot to post syllabi for my classes! Here they are. I’m particularly proud of the work my students did in my department’s senior seminar for this year: ENGL 470 Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar.
ENGL 213 Introduction to Creative Writing
“2023.32” in Cleaver
Thanks so much to Cleaver for publishing another sonnet from my ongoing sequence, “2023.32,” in their forty-eighth issue.
Reading at CANO’s Writers Salon

I recently published a book, 2013–2017: Sonnets (LJMcD Communications, 2024), the first in an ongoing sonnet sequence. I have written the next book in the sequence, 2018–2024: Sonnets, and I’ve started the third, 2024–20XX: Sonnets, and I will be reading poems from these two most recent projects at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO)’s Writers Salon at the Wilber Mansion on 11 Ford Ave. I promise a poem about the election (writing it right now).
“2023.21,” “2023.22/24,” and “2023.25” in Broken Lens Journal
Thanks so much to Broken Lens Journal for publishing some new sonnets in their ninth issue: “2023.21,” “2023.22/24,” and “2023.25.”
If you’re in Oneonta and want to hear some more poems from the manuscript these come from, stop by CANO’s Writers Salon on November 21.
Hartwick College Press Release about My New Book
Hartwick College has put out a press release, “Routine, Rejection All Part of the Process, Says Poet,” about my new book, 2013 – 2017: Sonnets.
Book Launch for 2013–2017: Sonnets and Other Fall Readings
In support of my new book, 2013–2017: Sonnets, I will be giving three readings this fall in and around Oneonta, NY.
On Thursday, August 29, 2024 at 7:00 p.m., in collaboration with the Green Toad Bookstore, there will be a book launch for 2013–2017: Sonnets at Roots Public Social Club.
On Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 7:00 p.m., I will be reading more poems from 2013–2017: Sonnets, along with poems from its (already completed) sequel 2018–2024: Sonnets, at Hartwick College for the 2024–25 Visiting Writers Series.
And on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 7:30 p.m., I will be reading a range of poems, including a variety of my newest work (including from Postrock), at the Writers Salon at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta (CANO).
2013–2017: Sonnets
Now available! 2013–2017: Sonnets, my third book of poetry and the first volume of my American Sonnet sequence, has been published by LJMcD Communications. It can be ordered through Amazon.
2013–2017: Sonnets is the first volume in Bradley J. Fest’s ongoing sequence of American sonnets, a project concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Continuing the program of poetic assemblage explored in his first two books, these poems were composed consecutively as emergent temporal snapshots documenting certain experiences of what it was like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017. Over the past decade, this ongoing experimental sonnet sequence has become: a complex encounter with time and its twenty-first-century rhythms; a document of artistic maturation; a personal archive of occasions, moments, days; a continually refreshed confrontation with the global computational hyperarchive; a discography of popular music; an extended reflection on contemporary literature, art, and culture; an increasingly multiplex meditation on the sonnet; an historical record of the troubling national situation in the United States; and a work of mourning for a world disappearing into climate emergency. The second volume, currently in progress, begins in 2018.
Eternal thanks to Lachlan J. McDougall for bringing 2013–2017 into the world and to Taylor Baldwin for the cover image.

“2023.29–30,” “2024.01–02,” “2024.03,” “2024.05–06,” and “2024.08–09” in Does It Have Pockets?
I have five brand-new multisonnets, “2023.29–30,” “2024.01–02,” “2024.03,” “2024.05–06,” and “2024.08–09,” in Does It Have Pockets? I’m thrilled to have these all together in a great July issue.
The 2023–24 Visiting Writers Series at Hartwick College
This year, Hartwick College and the Department of Literature, Media, and Writing will present four readings in the 2023–24 Visiting Writers Series. Readings take place at 7:00 in the Eaton Lounge, Bresee Hall at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.
Novelist and essayist Shena McAuliffe will read on Wednesday, October 11, 2023 from her new book of short stories, We Are a Teeming Wilderness: Stories (Press 53, 2023).
Poet and emeritus Hartwick professor Robert Bensen will read from his new book, What Lightning Spoke: New and Selected Poems (Bright Hill, 2023), on Wednesday, November 8, 20223.
Yumei Kitasei will read from her new novel, The Deep Sky (Flatiron Books, 2023), on Monday, March 4, 2024.
And poet essayist Joshua Zelesnick will read from his forthcoming poetry collection, Insert Coin (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2025), on Thursday, April 11, 2024.
For more information, visit the Visiting Writers Series webpage.
