The Road So Far

This newsletter is a long one, so buckle up!

I find myself beginning my day with questions. Not just the every day questions like “what will I make for breakfast this morning?” or “what do I feel like reading?” but invitations to ponder where I want to go or what I feel creatively pulled to work on each day.

It’s been six months since we embarked on this journey around the country, leaving our established lives and many loved ones and beloved community in Austin to try for something totally new. In that time, we have changed jobs, visited ten states, said goodbye to our beloved Chancho, visited friends and family we haven’t seen in years, and learned quite a bit about RV living and traveling full time.

My one-word theme for this year was Rhythm. I chose this word because as I transitioned my life through several big changes, I wanted to find a new rhythm for how I would spend my days as a full-time writer and teaching artist, and how Ramiro and I would create this new life together. Looking back on this year now, this word still resonates. I learned so much about how to manage and protect my creative time while balancing the release of my next two books (see below for more details), new creative projects and our time exploring each region we visited across the Southeastern and Northeastern US. Ramiro and I had to find a rhythm with one another when packing and unpacking the RV, taking turns taking care of the dogs, running errands, and getting used to living in a much smaller space. It wasn’t always easy, but we have learned a lot about how best to care for one another and express our needs. If living through the beginning of this pandemic taught us anything, it’s how to make home, even a trailer home, a sanctuary.

There have been so many highlights that I’ve detailed in previous newsletter posts, but I wanted to highlight a few. We found new grocery chains and co-ops we loved (looking at you Food Lion) and visited libraries and bookstores big and small where I was able to find hard to find books, zines and artwork, such as the Burdock Book Collective in Birmingham, AL and Brewster Bookstore in coastal Massachusetts. The zines, Little Free Libraries and street art across each place we visited reminded me of how vital these forms of creation are communal expression, and the kind of creative life I hope we can find wherever we settle down next.

To find more photos and videos of our travels, follow me on Instagram or Tiktok!

One tradition that we started was choosing audio books we were both interested in reading for our long interstate drives. One of them was, Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville, and since reading that book, we get excited at seeing all of the tiny rural and huge sprawling historic cemeteries everywhere we go. In Vermont, where we most recently stayed, the RV campground was right next to the cemetary and it was both beautiful, all covered in snow, and haunting.

Each region also provided us with delicious food experiences, from my ranking of shrimp and grits across four states (Louisiana still wins, but Charleston is a close second), to the apple butter and apple cider donuts in Virginia, the cheesesteaks in Philly, all of the lobster rolls I ate in Massachusetts and Maine that I never bothered to take pictures of, to the maple syrup and artisan sheep milk cheeses we have enjoyed in Vermont. Reading Cheese, Sex and Death: A Bible for the Cheese Obsessed by Erika Kubick helped prepare me to pick out some exquisite cheeses!

I have gratitude for our ability to make this first part of our cross-country trip for all the things it has taught us about what we value in our lives and what we want to experience in our futures. Every trail we hiked, every mountain range we passed, every lake, river and beach we visited and swam in, I have been reminded about how important it is to both of us to have daily connections to the natural world and our animal, plant and earth kin around us. Learning the names of trees, plants, fungi, lichen and moss is a wondrous new meeting. The Shenandoah Valley and the beautiful forests of coastal Maine in Acadia National Park stand out as some of the most beautiful places we spent time greeting the trees and moss, traversing quiet trails as autumn turned to winter. These experiences clarified for us what we hope to find in our next forever home.

It’s also been a turbulent year full of fear and loss, particularly living in a country doing all it can to harm its people while funding genocide and displacement in countries particularly in the Global South. We have watched the Trump administration use ICE to terrorize immigrant communities, use policy in attempts to erase Trans people, and make life generally harder for all but the super rich, all while Democrats stand by fecklessly and watch, because these are their legacies too. This has always been our country, but 2025 has taken the mask off of US imperialism and capitalism death machine in some unprecedented ways.

It can be hard to face a country, a society whose leaders are pushing us to accept and become apathetic to mass death all around us. Just last in the last week, I read about newborn babies dying of hypothermia in Gaza because of Israel’s displacement of Palestinians and their continued blockade of aid during a winter storm. In El Fasher, Sudan, the RSF, funded by the United Arab Emirates (and the US), are committing genocide against a besieged Sudanese civilian population, with such brutality that satellite images of their bloodshed can be seen from space. There was a mass shooting at Brown University killing 2 students and injuring eight more. Two Brown students, Mia Tretta and Zoe Weissman, have been in or near mass shootings at their schools before, Mia being injured in the process. We are living through an ongoing pandemic while our RFK Jr and other “public health” officials do all they can to try to limit people’s access to vaccines and funding is cut for ACA tax credits and life saving medical research. We have lost several disabled writers and activists, including Alice Wong and Andrea Gibson. I worry for my loved ones, especially those most vulnerable to systemic violence. Everyone is doing so much with so little. There are days I want to go into the woods and scream.

But one thing that this year has taught me is that the more we boycott and divest from the millionaires and billionaires who believe that our lives are expendable and instead invest our communities, the more we disrupt the status quo, demonstrating that though things seem hopeless some days, we can refuse to accept our disposability and work towards a better, more sustainable future. Communities across the country, including Chicago and Los Angeles, have been actively fighting the abduction of their immigrant community members by ICE as well as the violent and sometimes downright absurd invasion of their cities by the National Guard. Mutual aid organizations are rallying to ensure that as more folks become housing and food insecure that there are resources for those folks who need it most.

When we were in coastal Maine recently, and driving through a very small town, Blue Hill, before we reached the RV park where we were staying, we came across a small protest of about ten people in the middle of the town’s center. They were almost all older white folks protesting in solidarity with Palestine, holding signs with pictures of Palestinian children and calls to end the genocide and occupation. Later, as we drove around the bend towards the park, I saw (but was unable to take a great picture) a wooden sign in front of someone’s home painted like the Palestinian flag with that said Stop the Genocide. It was a reminder that even in the least expected places, people understand that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

I recently listened to an episode of Upstream Podcast, a leftist political and organizing podcast I really love, in conversation with Rob Hopkins, climate organizer and author of How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveler’s Guide to Changing the World, which I have also started reading on Hoopla. It was an incredible conversation, but one thing I took away from it is that we can’t co-create a future we want to be a part of if we can’t imagine it. Hopkins asks us to think about not just what we want to have in the future, but what it will feel like, sound like, look like, etc. One of Hopkins’ projects is called Field Recordings from the Future which is an multimedia project and album he co-created with musician, Mr. Kit, to help activate listeners to engage with a future they can imagine.

This time has also confirmed for me that I envision a future where having time to breathe and imagine in the morning, to cook and bake delicious food, to have time with Ramiro and Tajin, and pursue creative time in many forms, including new crochet and embroidery projects or writing a song with my ukulele, are normal occurrences. It also feels important for us to find opportunities to find creative communities in the future. I envision connecting with other artists and artisans to learn new sustainable skills that help us to provide for ourselves and others. Meeting folks who are milling their own cider, making artisan cheeses and providing sustainable food ways for their communities has helped me envision the kind of community we want to be a part of in the future.

We are spending the holidays and the end of the year in Niagara Falls. As we are in facing some very cold temperatures and have had to do several things to protect and weatherize the RV to make it warm enough and not expend too much energy. Other folks around us have been gracious enough to teach us how to keep warm and protect our home on wheels. Our rhythms are changing too, rising early enough to enjoy the sun before it sets early around 4pm, and resting, enjoying the warmth inside, hot beverages, good wine and local Vermont cheeses while we snuggle on the couch with Tajin and watch movies. I started re-learning to crochet in the hopes of completing a few new projects, including a case for my e-reader, as well as embroidering my green overalls with a mossy forest design. I realized that I have started two new creative projects, a ecohorror/speculative story collection and a collaboration with Ramiro that combines some of his and my photography from this trip with some poems I have written about each place we visit. I look forward to working on these projects further in 2026.

Today is the Winter Solstice, the official beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest day of the year. It signals the darkness before the return of the light, and is a spiritually important time across folklore, religions and cultures. Dealing in metaphors about darkness and light is fraught, and often historically racialized. If I’ve learned anything from Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark by Leigh Ann Henion, it is that darkness is sacred, that “perhaps night is the mother of imagination.” Darkness envelopes us, helping us to better perceive the calls of owls, the light of celestial movement above our heads, making us more able to appreciate sunlight. So light a candle, drink a warm, comforting beverage, journal, sit in the quiet, and think on what you hope that light of a new day will bring.

If you’re interested in becoming a paid subscriber to support the newsletter and my work, I’d love to have you! Just $5 a month will help me continue to offer curated book recommendations, writing prompts, author spotlights, resources and more! You will also receive discounts on future workshops and editing services. It’s hard to be an independent artist, and your monthly support helps make my work more sustainable.

What’s Happening with Leticia?

I am excited to share that my poetry chapbook, Offerings to the Tumbled Temple, is out now from Purple Ink Press! You can purchase a copy here. Chapbooks like these make great gifts for the holidays! And if you love your local library, you can request that they stock a copy.

My next horror collection, The Remedy is the Disease, will also be out next May, 2026 from Undertaker Books.

Here are some ways that you can help me to promote my book (and other indie poets and writers):

• Buy a copy if you can.
• Share the book with your loved ones.
• If you love your local library or independent bookstore, you can request that they stock a copy.
• Nominate my book(s) for your next book club read!
• If you or anyone you know reviews books, you can request an copy from me to review!
• I am now booking for 2026 events, so if you have a bookstore, community organization or space you would like for me to provide a workshop or reading/event for, comment or reach out via my contact page on my website to plan further!

I am also getting back into freelancing again, so if you have a publication or blog you are seeking writers for, I would love to work with you! Here are two pieces I wrote recently:

1. “10 Books About the Diversity of Disabled Experiences“ with Electric Lit.
2. “Creeping Fungus: works of Sporror” with Reactor Magazine.

2026 Workshops and Events

I am currently planning my readings, workshops and events for 2026 and will announce more details in my January newsletter. One is already on the calendar:

Climb Inside Other Minds: Exploring Persona Poetry with Leticia Urieta, March 28th from 10am-2pm CST with Gemini Ink (in-person). Register today or share with your poetry loving friends!

Get Support for Your Creative Projects!

I offer editing and consulting services to help you with your own creative projects! I have over a decade of experience helping writers of all ages develop their creative voices and their work with a caring and supportive approach. I love helping people learn more about their creative processes to best tell their stories.

I am currently taking on clients ages 16 and up for my services, although if your child would like support honing and publishing their work, I am happy to work with younger clients upon request. Since I write across a variety of genres, I am able to work with folks who are writing poetry, creative nonfiction, short stories, novels and more, with a special place in my heart for horror, speculative fiction and fantasy. If you are working on a comic, that is fantastic. I would love to work with you! Or, please share with other writers you know who might be interested!

What I’m Reading and Watching: 2025 Highlights

This is the 2025 reading bingo card I created and shared at the beginning of January this year. I am already working on my 2026 bingo card, because it’s whimsical and helps me read a lot of variety. Though I’m trying to finish and squeeze in a few more titles before the end of the year and some will inevitably roll over to 2026, these are a few of my favorite reads in each category:

• Speculative fiction or Sci Fi
  • Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (a bookclub book)
  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
  • Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
  • Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
• Fantasy
  • The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst
  • The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 
  • The House of Frank by Kay Sinclaire 
  • Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (book rec from a friend)
  • Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree (Netgalley review copy)
• Poetry Collections
  • Forest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha
  • You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson
  • Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda
  • Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief by Joy Harjo
• Nature books:
  • Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens and Other Marvels of the Dark by Leigh Ann Henion
  • The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl
  • Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings by Myriam Gurba
• Vampire books:
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker (re-read)
  • Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones 
  • Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
• Werewolf books:
  • When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy
  • Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella
• Food Themed Books:
  • Cook Like Your Ancestors: An Illustrated Guide to Intuitive Cooking with Recipes from Around the World by Mariah-Rose Marie
  • Meal by Soleil Ho and Blue Deliquanti 
  • Off Menu by Oliver Gerlach 
  • Praise Song for Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson 
  • Cheese, Sex and Death: A Bible for the Cheese Obsessed by Erika Kubick
• Disability Rep
  • Not Quite a Ghost by Anne Ursu
  • All’s Well by Mona Awad 
  • Against Technoableism by Ashley Shaw
  • Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care and Desire edited by Alice Wong
• Anthologies
  • Dark Spores: Stories We Tell After Midnight
  • Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
• Library or bookstore themed book
  • The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
• Book Published in 2025
  • Witchcraft of Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
  • Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones 
  • Mayra by Nicki Gonzalez 
  • Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle
• Music-themed books (several rolling over into 2026)
  • I Heard There Was a Secret Chord by Daniel J. Levitin
  • Music Is History by Questlove
  • Accordion Eulogies by Noé Álvarez
  • Canto Contigo by Johnny Garza Villa
• Horror Books
  • Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker 
  • Root Rot by Saskia Nislow 
  • House of Rot by Danger Slater
  • What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier #3) by T. Kingfisher
  • You’ve Awoken Her by Ann Davila Cardinal
• YA or Middle-grade book
  • Glimmer of Change by Elle McNicoll
  • The Story of My Anger by Jasminne Mendez
  • What Fell from the Sky by Adrianna Cuevas 
  • Kaya Morgan’s Crowning Achievement by Jill Tew
  • Grin by D.W. Gillespie
  • Scarewaves: Beyond the Grave by Trevor Henderson
• Graphic Novels/Comics
  • Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Leun Yang 
  • Sugar Shack by Lucy Knisley
  • Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp by Rosie Knight
  • Suitor Armaro Vol. 1 by Purpah 
  • Forgive-Me-Not by Mari Costa 
• Surprise pick from the library
  • Praise Song for Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson
  • Reading the Waves by Lydia Yuknavitch
  • Cook Like Your Ancestors: An Illustrated Guide to Intuitive Cooking with Recipes from Around the World by Mariah-Rose Marie
  • Read at Your Own Risk by Remy Lai
• Romance/Love Stories
  • Get a Life Chloe Torres by Crystal Maldonado 
  • Love at First Fright by Nadia El-Fassi 
  • Maya in Multicolor by Swati Teerdhala
  • Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce 
  • Under Loch and Key by Lana Ferguson 
• Review books
  • Glimmer of Change by Elle McNicoll
  • Never Seen the Stars by Kate Korsh
  • Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
  • A Field Guide to Broken Promises by Leah Stecher
• Challenging novels/books
  • All’s Well by Mona Awad 
  • Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
  • Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

• Physical TBR Shelf
  • The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings
  • Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E.M Roy
  • House of Rot by Danger Slater

Best Nonfiction books: Interconnected Histories

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
• The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
• Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green  
• Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville
• Queer as Folklore by Sasha Coward
• Murder Ballads by Katy Horan and Sinéad Gleeson
• Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne
• Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution and Made us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle
• Fat Girls Hiking: An Inclusive Guide to Getting Outdoors at Any Size or Ability by Summer Michaud-Skog

Books About Regions We Visited

• The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda Skenadore (Galveston, TX)
• Pugs and Kisses by Farah Rochon (Louisiana)
• Root Magic by Eden Royce (South Carolina-Gullah Geechee Communities)
• Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens and Other Marvels of the Dark by Leigh Ann Henion (North Carolina)
• My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (Virginia)
• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (re-read) Washington Irving (Sleepy Hollow, NY)
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (re-read) and Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson (Concord, MA)
• Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E.M Roy, Happy Place by Emily Henry and The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
• The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson (Vermont)
• The Saturday Nigh Ghost Club by Craig Davidson (Niagara Falls, NY)

What were some of your favorite reads of 2025?

I also wanted to give a shout out to some of my favorite movies and shows of this year, including the incomparable Sinners (which I discussed in my Vampire newsletter), IT: Welcome to Derry created by Andy and Barbara Muschietti and of course every show on Dropout TV. Like seriously, if you haven’t subscribed, what are you doing with your life?!

Journaling Prompts

Today is the Winter Solstice! Spend some time journaling about something you have accomplished this year, big or small, in any aspect of your life. How has your relationship to your creative self grown or changed? Decouple this activity from any judgement about “productivity” rooted in capitalist structures.

Now, write what you would like to release from this year, especially a judgement or expectation that you put on yourself or your creative life. How can you make room in 2026 for more intuitive, caring expectations for your creative time?

Want some more resources? I really like these suggestions for celebrating the Winter Solstice from Chani Nicholas and as well as these reflections for writers from poet Ariana Brown.

Call to Action: Opportunities for Solidarity and Care

There is so much need in the world, coming from within and without our most immediate communities. Maybe you are already working with mutual aid groups and doing the good work of caring for others. Here are some other ways you might give at this time of the year:

• Coming up on the holidays, there are millions of people in the US who are unsure about access to their SNAP benefits at a time in which many folks are already struggling with inflation and food insecurity. If you are able, take some time to look for food banks, free fridges and other mutual aid initiatives in your area. Setting aside a few items at the grocery store each week or month and donating those, or money can be a helpful way to ensure your neighbors have access to what they need. You can also access those spaces if you find yourself in need!
• The Sameer Project, a grassroots organization of Palestinian volunteers who are working tirelessly to provide meals, baby formula, water and medical supplies to families in Gaza despite the increased Israeli bombardment despite the “ceasefire” and blockade of aid which is supposed to be delivered.
• The Sudan Solidarity Collective work tirelessly to support grassroots initiatives to aid Sudanese people who have been besieged and displaced.

What are other ways you are giving of your time and resources in solidarity with others?

Leticia