My first poetry collection, The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees, is actually out in the world. It’s a very cool feeling and more than a little surreal when you’re officially ineligible for any “50 Under 50” lists of debut writers. I truly was starting to think it’d never happen. Immense thanks to Match Factory Editions and everyone else who helped with the book along the way!

A few local bookstores put it on shelves, too, which was amazing and even more surreal. You spend 50-odd years wandering around bookstores and then see yourself on a shelf? That’s a powerful moment. That and $5 will get you a latte, I suppose, but still, pretty cool. If you’re a Michigander, you can try the Schuler Books in Okemos or West Bloomfield and Road Less Traveled Books in Farmington. Hopefully some others will stock it too, but for now I’m gladly taking what I can get.

The people who’ve read it so far seem to like it, so check it out if you enjoy poetry! Or, honestly, if you don’t. I’d like to think my stuff is accessible to poets and non-poets alike. But, that’s not up to me, eh? Anyway, I hope you dig it. 🙂

The post’s title kind of says it all. The official pre-order link is up now with cover and publication date! My debut poetry collection, The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees, will arrive in actual physical book form on June 24th, and you can pre-order it here if you’re interested in such a thing.

It’s been a long road, and I’m pretty thrilled that this will actually be in the world soon, barring utter economic collapse in the next six weeks, which is, of course, within the realm of possibility, so, there’s that. Anyway, I’ll have a poetry book soon, so, word!

Hello Nobisomaniacs! You didn’t even know you were part of a cult, did you, but here we are.

We probably shouldn’t make jokes about such things in 2025, huh. Anyway, a short bit of news: My previous post from winter explained how I was to have two books coming out in 2025. We are down to one book. I pulled the second book from publication due to mounting disarray at the press that was going to publish it. That book is currently a free agent.

The good news is that The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees is still on schedule to come out as soon as next month with Match Factory Editions! Specific details like cover and publication date will be known soon. We’re getting all ducks in a row first before announcing. More soon.

But if you can’t wait, there is a soft launch pre-order link up and operational. 🙂 https://matchfactoryeditions.com/books/The-Size-of-the-Horizon-or-I-Explained-Everything-to-the-Trees-p727302583

I am a Midwestern farm boy, so, self-deprecating and wary by nature. I’m Generation X to boot but not the racist kind that voted for disassembling America. I’m more the cranky kind lacking in trust for most systems. So, it is with hesitation that I announce, let alone embrace, good news. That said…

After a decade of submitting manuscripts, I have not one but two poetry collections on the way this year. 

The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees, my earliest manuscript, was recently accepted for publication with Match Factory Editions and is slated for spring/summer 2025. 

Later this year, Beginning to Sense will come out on ELJ Editions—it had been delayed but is now back on track to be released in November 2025. 

I do still have the second manuscript* I wrote out on submission at a couple of presses who will probably eventually say no.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*I know this will eventually be the third book, but the way my brain works, I’ll probably always think of them in the order I wrote them. The first manuscript I wrote was on the submission circuit for ten years. (Really only seven, in a sense. The initial attempt was well received but also sent me back to the drawing board for 2-3 years.) I revised it many times since then, but The Size of the Horizon, or, I Explained Everything to the Trees still largely resembles that earliest manuscript.

Beginning to Sense was the third manuscript I wrote, though some of the poems in both books are as many as 20 years old. (I think anything I wrote that’s older than that I buried mercifully in the pasture long ago.) Anyway, the first book has been a finalist a few times so it’s cool to see it finally coming your way in an actual book, as long as we still have actual books and some form of currency or economy with which to obtain or exchange them in a few months.

Sorry for what I’m sure will be an annoyingly large amount of promotion. It’s gonna seem like it all happened quickly, but believe me, it did not. It did not happen quickly at all, and we shall never discuss the total sum the older one accrued in submission fees. 

Thanks for coming along on the ride so far, and thanks in advance for putting up with me as I push the books on you all upon their arrivals!

I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who responded to my poem “To Someday Whisper” that was published last weekend on Stone Circle Review. Most of you are writers yourselves, so you already know the weird solitude of this writing and publishing game. Anyone who bothers with submitting does so because they imagine a reader for their work, so when a piece gets even a few likes or gets reposted once or twice, it’s energizing. Thanks for that!

Better-known poets will get hundreds of interactions, but for a small timer like me, a couple dozen was pretty cool. Anyway, it’s funny that this was the poem of mine to get a bigger-than-average response (for me, anyway) because it’s also the last one coming out for the foreseeable future. I have only 4-5 batches of poems out on submission (and most are from last year still) and none accepted waiting in queues anywhere. That’s not to say I’m giving up or anything, just that I haven’t written hardly at all in the last year or so, meaning there’s no new Mitch Work™ coming down the pike.

I still write a little, but far less than I was for a long time. There are many factors behind that. Parenthood, work, parenthood, the hecticness of 21st-century life, work, parenthood, and more, like, for example, work & parenthood. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my lack of recent writing is at least partly a response to how my first two manuscripts have garnered positive rejections but no publisher for several years now. (Oddly enough, “To Someday Whisper” was the titular poem of one of my manuscripts for a while before I retitled it.) My third manuscript magically found a publisher almost immediately, which is awesome (and huge shout out to ELJ–forthcoming November 2025!), but still, the last couple years with so many book rejections have me trying to reframe my writer mind back to how it was in the ’90s-early 2010s when I didn’t even think about submitting and wrote for the fun & craft of it. I’ll get there, but it’s taking a minute. (Besides, I have no right to whine because publishing a few dozen poems is more than that ’90s me would’ve imagined possible.)

A special thanks goes to Lee Potts, the editor-in-chief of Stone Circle Review, who saw me post that I had a poem accepted at a journal I was excited about only to have that journal fold before putting together their last issue. Lee asked if I wanted to send this poem his way for a read. I’m grateful he wanted to publish it, and I’m happy to see it in Stone Circle, another great journal I’m excited about.

So, thanks again. It was cool to see that poem spark some reactions, and it was bizarrely well-timed. You all are the best.

I used to do this on Twitter, but I’ll put it here again this year. These mitchnobis.com posts are getting only a few views, so I might not keep up the blog function on the website. That said, it’s kind of useful as a tool for myself to find my links, though, so who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The pattern: I submitted a lot in 2022, some were accepted but held until 2023, and then I submitted much less in 2023. I still lucked out and got pieces in incredible publications, so that’s pretty cool. Things came out early and late with nothing from late spring to early fall.

This year also saw new fiction from me for the first time in two years! Which I found kind of funny because I started with fiction but parenthood’s short chunks of personal time led me to focus more on poetry. C’est la vie, I love them both. (C’est la vie is fancy for whatever.) If I ever have to write an academic piece again, though, I’ll be starting from scratch. My brain doesn’t do that anymore, I don’t think.

Anyway, here are my publications (and other literary activities) from 2023:

POETRY

1. The big news is nothing to read yet, but my poetry collection Beginning to Sense was picked up by ELJ Editions and is slated to publish in November of 2025. I like to joke that I hope we still have books (and a generally functional society) then, but, um, I’m not always sure how much I’m joking. Cool news either way. (And there are still two manuscripts making the rounds, so if the universe wants to be funny and have another book come out before then, that’s an option. Just saying.) On with 2023 poetry publications….
2. Two poems in issue #7 of Paddler Press
3. Two poems in issue #7 of The Under Review (Huzzah for sports literature!)
4. The wonderful Lee Potts started Stone Circle Review and published “They Ask Questions.”
5. My 4th skull: “Life Plays up on You, or, a Gary Payton Ars Poetica, or, Dream Shake the Ghosts” on HAD
6. “To Sparrows” in Bear Review
7. Blue Mountain Review’s May 2023 issue reprinted my poem “Leaves,” originally published in The Night Heron Barks.
8. The amazing Kirsti MacKenzie started Major 7th Magazine and published “‘I Go to Work’ by Kool Moe Dee.”
9. In one of the cooler things to happen with my writing, UCity Review published a set of 12 of my poems here. You essentially get a chapbook at one link.
10. Hey, just heard I have another HAD skull on the way! I’ll edit to add it if it goes up before Jan. 1st.
11. HEY! It published on December 26th, and here it is: “Bourbon in a Santa Mug.”
12. There are poems forthcoming in Louisiana Literature and Pidgeonholes that I think are coming in 2024. If they publish later this month, then pretend I included them here. Time is weird. C’est la vie.

FICTION

1. “How Many Times We Pray” in Psaltery & Lyre: Some loved ones had to flee the ’21 Marshall Fire in Colorado, & it appears I processed my worrying by fictionalizing the evacuation. My brother-in-law really was separate in an RV. I made up the rest. (They got out safely, by the way.)

NONFICTION

1. “Buckets,” an essay in How to Write a Novel, ed. by Aaron Burch, available from Autofocus Books

WNS & NAWP

1. Seasons 6 and 7 of Wednesday Night Sessions went up on KickstART Farmington’s YouTube page, so please check out the 10 great writers included there.* I might not be a great host (most of these are recorded when I’m in frazzled parent mode), but the guests are all amazing. It’s always an incredible experience getting to talk with them.
2. *Jared Beloff, Patrick Nevins, Sandra Newman, Diane Seuss, Ralph Jenkins, Jane Zwart, Andrew Collard, Ajanae Dawkins, Peter Markus, and Tommye Blount
3. NAWP! For years, I made jokes about not being able to get to the AWP writers conference and said I was at “Not at AWP (NAWP)” instead. Then my friend Jared Beloff joined in, but he’s smart and said let’s make it a real thing, so we did and co-founded NAWP. Huge shout-out to Jared for having the brains and big ideas to do cool things. Here is the Twitter and here is the Bluesky for NAWP. Also, here is the Instagram for it, but I do not understand Instagram. Anyway, we held monthly online readings for most of 2023, and in 2024 we’re looking to keep that going but also make things a bit more concrete with a website and more (and maybe this?). Stay tuned & get NAWPy.

Last, I give a thousand thanks to all editors who enjoyed my work and put it out there and to any of you who read any or all of it. You’re amazing. I received a great, random email through my website earlier this year, so I know there’s at least one of you reading. Thanks!

Hi all,

A rock smacked our car yesterday while we cruised down M-5, so as I kill time waiting for a new windshield installation, you get a Mitch publications update that you didn’t ask for. So it goes.

I didn’t submit as much work in 2023 as I have the last few years, but I got lucky and still had some fantastic acceptances and publications (and plenty of rejections, too). My work seems to have this weird tendency to, no matter when it was sent out or accepted, all come out at the same time. This just happened again, so there’s a late-2023 blast of new work from me. 

Shout-out to Kirsti MacKenzie for starting Major 7th, a great new lit mag focused on the impact songs have on us. The whole magazine is like a writing prompt for me, so in one of my quicker idea-to-publication turnarounds ever, here is “‘I Go to Work‘ by Kool Moe Dee.” 

After a two-year pause, I have a new piece of fiction out. (I was talking with someone recently about how I started out with fiction, but parenthood and the short chunks of personal time it allows drove me more toward poetry.) “How Many Times We Pray” published recently on Psaltery & Lyre, and a huge thanks to the editors for taking this short story. It’s one that means a lot to me, and the handful of you who know the backstory may recognize it. I took the basic premise of what happened to some family who are near and dear to me and turned it into a short story. My brother-in-law was indeed solo in an RV while their family evacuated, but the rest is fictional. Writing it probably helped me process my worrying about loved ones. Literature will do that for you, huh. Also, shout-out to dogs. 

Last and far from least, UCity Review is now publishing short folios to put the focus on poets’ breadth of work instead of just a couple poems. So, here are a dozen (yep, 12!) poems from me that just published there today. Big thanks to the UCity Review crew and to the amazing list of fellow poets in the issue. 

I’ll probably do a full year-in-review post later this month too, but if not, or either way, thanks as always for reading any of this!

~Mitch

In case you’re not familiar with HAD, it’s a whole thing, and they say when you get a piece accepted and published there, you’ve “earned a skull.” I have a few skulls now, and this one went up there earlier this year. Fair warning: It contains salty language and relatively obscure basketball references, but as the great prophet Popeye said, I yam what I yam.

This one was actually written first but accepted and published second because submitting creative work for publication is an odd process. (Not the editors’ fault, to be clear.) Bear Review is incredible, and I can’t believe I have a piece in it. https://www.bearreview.com/mitchell-nobis

Hey, as a teacher now in summer break, I’m seeing all the things I fell behind on during the academic calendar year, which includes updating this blog with recent publications. Here’s one that published on Stone Circle Review, a gorgeous literary magazine recently (or recently-ish? Time is elusive.) started by Lee Potts. Sometime last year, I had a moment when I remembered how my brother and I used to shoot BB guns at birds. A couple poems came out of it, and this is one of them: “They Ask Questions,” from Stone Circle Review.