Steph Kleid Writer

Mville MFA Past, Present, and Future ✨

Had a great night with at !

This one is for the friends I spoke to yesterday who were flooded with hope for the first time in a long time. (It starts off depressing but gets better, I SWEAR). Check it out, 🔗 link in bio to my Substack

Today was a weird day and this is a weird, new Substack post. 🔗 Check it out here: https://open.substack.com/pub/stephkleid/p/is-this-what-its-like-to-live-in?r=50rujd&utm_medium=ios

Latest Substack post is up✨ Been a while, but needed to get this one out. Trigger warnings for diet/diet culture, eating disorders, body image/body image issues, fatphobia. 🔗 Link in bio.

I am honored to get the opportunity to read my work and represent the Manhattanville MFA Program as an alum on Sunday, July 13th at New York City Poetry Festival! I’m honored to read alongside Ren Glaser and Katie Hebert, two current Mville MFA students, my wonderful colleagues, and my even more wonderful friends. The festival is held at Nolan Park on Governors Island and our reading will take place at 12 PM on the Beckett Stage. We hope to see you there! 💚

Writing is typically considered to be a solitary act. When non-writers imagine a “writer” in their head, they tend to think of someone clacking away on a keyboard, sitting in an office in disarray, or wedged into the corner of a café, gazing off into space or else scrawling fiendishly on half-damp napkins. But I find that, always, they picture the writer alone. So, to those who don’t live it, the phrase “writing community” can sound like an oxymoron.

, time and time and time again, proves to me that, actually, the only way to be a writer is to be in community with other writers. To share time and space with each other. To open ourselves up to someone else and say “Look, look at this piece of me.” To say to another, “I see it. I see you.” To care for someone else and their work as you would yourself.

This past week Summer Writers’ Week at was exactly what I needed and while I’m not surprised in the slightest, I am still awed by how beautifully this thing came together.

Thank you to my fellow poets in workshop who brought such wonderful work to the table, who gave such thoughtful feedback, and who accepted constructive criticism with such grace.

Thank you to the agents and editors who came to speak with us all about the industry. Thank you to , , and for sharing your time and work with us all. It was a pleasure and an honor to hear you read and to learn from you. Thank you to for creating an environment for us poets that was kind, honest, and constructive. I am always enamored by the grace with which you deliver feedback, the care you pour into every individual student, and your ability to be so raw on the page.

Thank you, most especially, to , the person behind it all. It is because of you that we have all been so lucky. You are this event’s, this program’s, and this community’s biggest champion. Without you, we wouldn’t have all been able to come together this week, been so welcomed and supported, or found out that, actually, we’re pretty good at bocce.

My poem “Tomorrow & Tonight & Never & Now” has been published in Sugared Water by . I’ll keep it brief and just say that this poem is especially close to my heart and I am beyond honored to get to share it with the world. Check out the link to issue no. 009 of Sugared Water by below to read this one and so many other incredible works that balance the complexities—both the loveliness and the grotesqueness—of what it means it be human.

https://porkbellypress.com/009

Check out my latest post on Substack: “I Contain Multitudes” Link in bio 🔗🩷

I’ve posted my first Substack: “This T-Shirt is Too Big” Check it out! Link in bio 🔗🧡

I am delighted to share that two of my poems—“Jersey Shore” and “Weekday Duplex”—have been published in issue 06 of Creation Magazine. It’s an honor to be included amongst this assemblage of poets, writers, and artists. The works included in this issue, “A Currents Issue,” truly embody the push and pull of life, its riptides and trickles, the energy that thrums just below its surface. My sincerest thanks to the editorial team for choosing not just one but two(!!) of my pieces to exist here. You can read my poems and the rest of Creation Magazine’s Issue 06: A Currents Issue here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/24d4c13f-0ef2-41a9-8c86-0d7b202546cf