Why subscribe?

Because you’re a writer.

You enjoy process notes. Commiserating about rejections, celebrating success.

Because you’re a parent of teens or young adults.

Babies are cute. Then they learn to walk, they start preschool. They just keep getting bigger until they’re as big as a float. It’s hard to navigate the parade. It never ends.

Because it’s easier than using a search engine.

Why Everyone the Same Soup?

Kids, cats, work, writing, friends, family—all of those get tossed into the big soup pot that is my life. In my kitchen, at my table, everyone gets served the same soup. Enjoy!

About Cati Porter

Hi. I’m a poet, essayist, editor, mother, and arts administrator based in Inland Southern California, where I live with my family.

I write a little bit of everything on topics I want to learn more about, like writing, or my grandfather’s ceramics work or the historic architecture I love, or myself.

My essays often address tough parenting topics. An essay about talking to my sons about rape appears in Salon. One about teen suicide appears in The Manifest-Station. Another about parenting during the pandemic appears in Shark Reef. Did I mention I have two sons? Oh. Yeah, that's been a major source of inspiration for my writing.

My poems go run the gamut from serious to silly. The Body at a Loss address parenting and cancer and family. My Skies of Small Horses is more playful but also decidedly and darkly domestic. The Body, Like Bread, is about hunger and satiation. I've also written about desire personified as Desire, Modigliani's nudes, and words related to fruit.

A new chapbook of poems, Novel, was published by Bamboo Dart Press in June 2022. It includes poems like "I Will Miss You When I'm Dead" and "Folding Dave."

A full-length manuscript, small mammals, was a finalist for the 2021 Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press and was published in June 2023 by Mayapple Press. FYI, the mammals are mostly human.

Thank you for reading.