Whoa... Published? That seemed like a farfetched dream that would take a ridiculous amount of networking and manuscripts upon manuscripts. But now... it's here - the 2016 edition of the Young Writers Anthology. It's sitting on my bed. It has the new book smell. There's a front and back cover that I didn't personally make out of construction paper and crayons! The restless nights of scrawling lines in margins of homework and on my flesh have come to fruition. The book... THE BOOK is sitting on my lap. There's my face... There are my words... There's the biggest step into the literary world I dreamt of so sweetly, like a Gatsby party full of intellectuals and color-tasters.

Thanks to my incredible teacher, mentor, and friend Lori Brack, I was encouraged to send my poetry out into the publishing world of undergraduate publications. After receiving seven, maybe eight..., rejection emails, I was surprisingly encouraged. This is all a part of the process, I would tell myself. You may have been rejected for their publication, but at least they read your work. Your name is out there, and that's the proper first step for you. Yep - making poet friends and sending bits of me out into the abyss of papers that I imagine looks an awful lot like Bartleby's office - that's how I'm going to do it.

Back in September, I was lucky enough to work with Jameson Bayles and be a part of a poetry reading that included Anna Ciummo, Victor Clevenger, and Joan Koromante at The Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas. Thoughts of William S. Burroughs filled my entirety as I stepped foot in the building where my words would be heard by some of the most respectable people in my life. The anthology I was being published in had not come out yet, although it was in the works. Out of the seven poems I was able to read, only three of them would be in the anthology that I was promoting, but it's three more than I had ever had published before. That night changed my life, and I am still trying to wrap my head around it... Without this book, although many facets of my life would be similar, the core of my being would have never changed in necessary ways.

This week, I have a phone interview with Marcia Epstein about the literary wonders in which we are immersed, as well as a little insight into the anthology. The Young Writers Anthology was published by VerbalEyze Press out of Georgia and can be found directly though me, ordered through your local bookstore, found at Barns and Noble, or available on any of these websites:

https://www.amazon.com/Treading-Unique-Paths-Writers-Anthology/dp/1943865965/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/treading-unique-paths-derek-koehl/1125011126?ean=9781943865963

http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Treading-Unique-Paths/Derek-Koehl/9781943865963?id=6776734970122

I shall continue to write and submit and make friends and embrace the poet life, and I will become so much more because of it.