Cate McGowan
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catemcgowan.com
Cate McGowan
@catemcgowan.com
1.7K followers 2.4K following 38 posts
Author of four books; the most recent: the poetry collection, SACRIFICIAL STEEL (Driftwood Press, 2025) & the essay collection, WRITING IS REVISION (Brill, 2024). Also, a story collection & novel.
PhD/MFA. Go Johns Hopkins!
https://linktr.ee/catemcgowan
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catemcgowan.com
Cate McGowan @catemcgowan.com · Jun 17
Today’s the day—my first poetry collection is out in the world with @driftwoodpress.bsky.social.
If you’ve ever wondered what it all means (or doesn’t), I hope these poems meet you there.

I’d be honored if you took a look and grateful if you shared. (Details in the post below.)
#poetry #BookSky
driftwoodpress.bsky.social Driftwood Press @driftwoodpress.bsky.social · Jun 17
OUT TODAY! Swipe to see inside of Sacrificial Steel, available everywhere today! Use the link in our bio this collection that uses art, history, and complex, musical poetic lines and forms to explore the biggest question we have as humans: what does it all mean? #booksky @catemcgowan.com‬
Reposted by Cate McGowan
icefloepress.bsky.social
Counting down the final hours till the gate closes! 11 hours and counting...⌛🎻
It's been a blast. Ty to everyone who has sent work & we are hoping for those last comets to sear across the finishing line. 🔥☄️🏁
send work to : [email protected]
#hybrid #poems #collaboration #video #art #texts
vikkicwrites.bsky.social Vikki C. @vikkicwrites.bsky.social · 1d
We've received some brilliant hybrid work for @icefloepress.bsky.social's PROCESS/MARGINALIA/OTHERWORLDS call.

Note that submissions close Midnight PST, 30 Nov. So if you have a visionary piece that fits & would like us to consider it, please send by the deadline!

share.google/EMbeI2aaJwfX...
November 30, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
driftwoodpress.bsky.social
Driftwood Press is proud to announce the winners of the 2025 Adrift Writing Contests! Matthew Rickart's "Brother Blood" is the winner of our Short Story Contest and Elizabeth J. Coleman's Mega-Galaxies is the winner of our Poetry Chapbook Contest. Congratulations to our winners!
November 30, 2025 at 6:00 PM
catemcgowan.com
New story out today in Occulum Journal! Welcome to Christmas, Florida… on the Fourth of July.
occulum.net/2025/11/29/c...
Christmas (the Town, not the Holiday)
by Cate McGowan I hadn’t been back in twenty years. Even the air in Christmas still smelled like hickory and brake dust, like someone had been burning sweet wood near an auto body shop. I parked ou…
occulum.net
November 30, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
hyperallergic.com
At the Victoria and Albert Museum’s new show on Marie Antoinette, the lack of historical artifact about the late Queen’s true self is compounded by a reluctance to include any sociopolitical background. When focusing on style, who needs to hear about nasty old revolutionary history anyway?
Who Was Marie Antoinette Beneath All That Silk and Spectacle?
History has never really known her as a person, and that isn’t about to change here.
hyperallergic.com
November 30, 2025 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
catacalypto.bsky.social
A story Stoppard told several times, in several places:
"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”
November 29, 2025 at 6:10 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
babssignal.bsky.social
we can all have young FDR Jr. today as a little treat
FDR Jr in a jacket that would solve all my problems. FDR Jr at the crew shack or whatever it's called, at Harvard. He's terribly homely. FDR Jr with his totally normal parents having a picnic of some sort. Jr is in flawless white flannels? IDK. It's nice when families had traditional values and no behavioral issues at all.
November 28, 2025 at 11:57 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
presentcorrect.bsky.social
A guy on the bus just told the lady sitting next to him that he was allergic to her dog.

‘It’s my coat’ she said.
November 28, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
rpg-volley.bsky.social
Read this as you prepare your Thanksgiving feast.

My takeaways:

We are all only temporarily abled.

Simple, common twists of fate can put any one of us in his shoes.

We need a reckoning with policing in America.
My Life As a Homeless Man in America
An extraordinary firsthand account.
www.esquire.com
November 27, 2024 at 1:42 AM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
poorlycatdraw.bsky.social
happy thanksgiving!
poorly drawn turkey cat a photoshopped orange cat that looks like a turkey
November 27, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
presentcorrect.bsky.social
Our annual posting of Snoopy at the 1988 Thanksgiving parade.

lfi-online.de/en/stories/e...

www.instagram.com/p/CIDnpVhAFT...
November 27, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
oregonzoo.bsky.social
Happy Chompsgiving!
November 27, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
bjcolangelo.bsky.social
Mike and Mark in American movie. Mark says “Happy Thanksgiving. What do you have to say for yourself?” Mike says, smiling, “Nothing, really.”
November 27, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
kittymurphymtl.bsky.social
Does this bird not realize he can go elsewhere if he doesn’t like the food???

Jerk!

#birdcam
November 27, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
zohrankmamdani.bsky.social
Happy Thanksgiving from the ice cream aisle.

Thankful for our city.
November 27, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
pronounced-ing.bsky.social
Happy Thanksgiving. A few years ago I baked a pecan pie in a nut-based crust and the local squirrels just about lost their damn minds trying to get into the house.
A kitchen window. There's a squirrel clinging head-down to the window screen (on the outside of the window) actively rattling the screen.
November 27, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
sabinastent.bsky.social
Elliott Erwitt, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. New York City, USA. 1988.
Two young girls sit by a New York window as a giant Snoopy float passes by in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, 1988.
November 27, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
mcsweeneys.net
(With apologies to Tim O'Brien)

"The things they carried were necessary because a faceless monster had come from another dimension and had murdered Barbara Holland. So they carried Realistic TRC-214 supercoms, bear traps, and a baseball bat with nails in it."
The Stranger Things They Carried
Mike carried Eggo waffles for a girl named Eleven. They were not love waffles, but Mike Sheets was hoping, so he carried the box of Eggos down the ...
buff.ly
November 26, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
presentcorrect.bsky.social
Wednesday, a day of the week, derives from Old English 'Wōdnesdæg' & literally means 'slippers at work, replacing duvet with a thicker one'.
November 26, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
parisreview.bsky.social
“My model for prose is poet’s prose.” —Susan Sontag
buff.ly
November 22, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
parisreview.bsky.social
We’re hiring a web/senior editor and an engagement editor.

See more here:
Paris Review - Writers, Quotes, Biography, Interviews, Artists
The Paris Review is a literary magazine featuring original writing, art, and in-depth interviews with famous writers.
buff.ly
November 25, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
jowiph.bsky.social
Chat, is it a good sign when the Atlantic's Thanksgiving take is "cabbage is affordable"?
theatlantic.com The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 5d
Cabbage is affordable, delicious, and astoundingly versatile, @giladedelman.bsky.social writes. The underrated crucifer “is fit for a king”:
The Most Underrated Thanksgiving Vegetable
Embrace cabbage.
bit.ly
November 25, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
offbeatlit.bsky.social
What better time to announce our #Pushcart nominations than Thanksgiving week?!

Drum roll, please ...

thedisappointedhousewife.com/2025/11/24/p...

Congrats to all six nominees. 🥳
Pushcart Prize Nominations 2026
I never know what year to slap on this annual announcement. The Pushcart Prize anthology will come out in 2026, but all the pieces will have been published in 2025. Let’s just be forward-looking an…
thedisappointedhousewife.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
katherinecarroll.bsky.social
Quick take: Book proposals are useful to the author in addition to the acquisitions editor.
They force authors to craft--& then give them a record of--the book’s main argument, chapter-level arguments, overall narrative arc, & target audience. Keep the proposal handy after you send it. #Academicsky
Hand writing in notebook with pen.
November 24, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
leahshaffer.bsky.social
God speed ye taco bell scientists 🌮 🧪
Screen shot of newspaper article. It reads: A Team at Taco Bell has been working for nearly a decade, to invent a taco shell made entirely of cheese....
November 24, 2025 at 10:26 PM
Reposted by Cate McGowan
padresj.bsky.social
I'm old enough to remember when "Black Friday" didn't last 2 weeks.
November 24, 2025 at 10:44 PM