all i can say about The Lonely Letters is:

1) it originally wasn't a "project" but letters i wrote but wouldn't send to a boy (the first three letters written, which aren't even in the jawn because privacy lol)

2) i began writing mostly to work out ideas about love and loneliness.

3) when i began to more in earnest think about it as a collection of ideas (and not to that one boy), it was gonna be titled "moth's powder"

4) at least half of the letters that were in that initial group are not in this project at all, though they were touchtone reference points for this writing

5) i wouldn't have begun painting AT ALL if it wasn't for my dear friend sending me a video of a 3yo abstract painter in 2011

6) i stopped writing in what was then "moth's powder" around about 2014. i didn't pick it up again until 2016, mostly because the first book had just come out and i didn't want to read from it for book talks. i was being lazy and decided to read edited versions of the letters.

7) four of the "moth's powder" letters are in the first book

8) it wasn't until late december 2016, after i'd started writing letters again that fall, that i decided to maybe publish the jawn. maybe. possibly. still was unsure.

9) i ain't begin painting until fall 2017 when i moved to virginia. i was rereading letters about a painting process and the little girl that i'd written in 2011. decided to try it since i had space and time. that's what began my artistic practice. it's all surreal and new to me.

10) the book being published this month is literally only by chance. it's eerie and strange how loneliness and isolation are such big concepts in the book and are being experienced collectively at this very specific moment in time.

11) i hope blackqueer practice can be generative, not as identity, but as a method of relation.