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Raymond K. Rugg
RK Rugg Sage Rooker Raymond K. Rugg : Academia, Nonfiction RK Rugg : Poetry, Fiction Sage Rooker: Children's, Middle Grade, Young Adult |
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RKR......writes and draws. A Jewish cowboy who grew up breaking horses on the Flathead Reservation, Rugg is a product of the intermountain West, with roots in Montana, Idaho and Nevada. He's been a journalist, a soldier, a logger, a whitewater and backcountry wilderness guide. These days, he practices dark academia in a little New England mill town near the heart of the Bridgewater Triangle. |
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I was incredibly honored to be a presenter for the Disabled Tales Symposium 2025--Disability and Fairy Tales: Keeping the Magic, Confronting the Stigma. Many thanks to Disabled Tales for posting the conference to YouTube, and this is the recording of the first day of the event. My segment begins almost exactly at the two-hour mark, but the entire thing is well worth a watch, including Day II, which you can also find on YouTube by searching for the Disabled Tales postings. December 2, 2023, Boston, Mass.
–Raymond K. Rugg has received a nomination for the prestigious Pushcart Prize, a literary prize that honors the best poetry, short fiction, or essays published in the small presses over the previous year. The nomination is for his poem, "Life and (Erasure Poem)” written under the name RK Rugg and which appeared in a special AI discovery issue of Space and Time Magazine, the oldest continuously published semi-pro magazine for speculative fiction. “I think that erasure poems are wonderful for finding unintended themes or meanings in text,” says Rugg. For this piece, he employed ChatGPT to construct a narrative that included a communication from an AI spaceship pilot, and then ‘erased’ or eliminated words and lines in order to create the poem. "The erasure reveals the essence of humanity in the farewell speech of the Artificial Intelligence, it highlights that which gives our lives both poignancy and meaning. Lacking life, an AI will never fear death. Never fearing death, an AI will never know life." Rugg currently writes and teaches in a New England mill town located at the heart of the infamous Bridgewater Triangle. His poetry has been shortlisted for the Dwarf Star awards and the Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine Readers' Favorites awards. Check out Space and Time Magazine! Cool Pix.
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Timeline2025! SpecPo coming in October 2025! "The Haunted Places" has been accepted for the fall issue of Illumen Magazine. This one was written mostly during my visit to the old--and purportedly haunted-- mansions of the Berkshires. Academic Presentation coming in September 2025! "Love, Atlantean Style: Portrayals of Merfolk Sex, Love and Marriage in Adult Cartoon Series" has been accepted for the 'Sea Changes: The fairytale Gothic of mermaids, selkies, and enchanted hybrids of ocean and river' Open Graves, Open Graves Conference slated for early September at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. Thursday, July 24, 2025-- Massachusetts Bards Poetry Review launch event. "When We Were Young And Summer Was Forever" has been selected for publication in Massachusetts Bards Poetry Anthology 2025. This one is very special to me, part of it drawn from conversations with my father (a member of the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame, thank you very much) when he came out to visit me in New England a few summers back. This is also one of my rare 'non-genre' poems. (By which, I mean that it is not Speculative Poetry. Personally, I still consider it to be a genre poem, the genre being that of 'Americana'...) -In April 2025, I was a participant in a Master's thesis project in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the Social Studies of Outer Space (SSOS), in which disabled people contributed to a speculative design exercise to reimagine space habitats, and in the process, challenge mainstream ideas of who space is for and who gets to go to space. It was a fantastic experience and I will share results of the project as they are available. -Academic Presentation: ‘Carnival Mirrors in the Classroom: Representations of Disability in Fairy Tales’ at the "Disability and Fairy Tales: Keeping the Magic, Confronting the Stigma' International Symposium. February 24. -Panelist, Panel Moderator, and Reader: Arisia 2025 Jan 18 and 19, Hyatt Regency Boston. Arisia was fantastic! Unfortunately, it was also the beginning of a bout of illnesses that my family seems to be particularly susceptible to every winter. (In a household full of teachers, EVERY season is the sickly season!) So I had to skip Boskone for the first time in a number of years. But I had a great time at Arisia on the following panels: Panelist, Writing Believable Younglings, Panelist, Magneto and Kitty Pryde: Jewish Comics Past and Future, Moderator, The Literature of Dreams for Children, and I got to participate as a Reader at the Sunday Evening Readings with some selections from my recent horror poetry collection for young people, The Hummingbirds Have Acquired a Taste for Blood: Poems and Pictures Too Creepy for the Classroom! 2024 September 2024 Academic Article: AI in Service of the Arts in MRA Today 2024, the annual publication of the Massachusetts Reading Association. Fall 2024 SpecPo: The Little Ghost Who Could (SpecPo audio and illustration) at Science Fiction Poetry Association 2024 Halloween Poetry Reading. Fall 2024 Book Release! The Hummingbirds Have Acquired a Taste for Blood: Poems and Pictures Too Creepy for the Classroom Horror poetry for the YA crowd, under my YA pen name, Sage Rooker AND my speculative poetry pen name, RK Rugg. Summer 2024 SpecPo! -Eccentric Orbits: An Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, Volume 5 contains my poem, She's a Survivor. Summer 2024 Book Release! The Adventures of Rae & Danae: Escape from OtherWorld Island YA sci-fi/fantasy under my YA pen name, Sage Rooker. Spring 2024 SpecPo "iRobbie" in Star*Line. Spring 2024 Poetry Workshop! Limericks and Clerihews at the Worcester Library Even in these enlightened times, poetry is often considered to be a highfalutin artform written primarily for the enjoyment of an exclusive audience of highbrows. Light and humorous verse such as limericks and clerihews, however, prove that poetry can survive and thrive among a much wider target market than just the literati. Learn the history of these particularly witty and intriguing forms of verse and try your hand at creating your own laugh-out-loud pieces of poetry. Winter 2024 Personal Appearance: Boskone panel participant, "Roundup of New and Noteworthy Middle-Grade SFF," panel participant "Hiking SFF", panel moderator, "Cover Art," reading from Escape from Otherworld Island. Winter 2024 Personal Appearance: Arisia panel participant, "Roundup of New and Noteworthy Middle-Grade SFF" 2023 Nominated for Pushcart Prize :) December 2, 2023, Boston, Mass. – Raymond K. Rugg has received a nomination for the prestigious Pushcart Prize, a literary prize that honors the best poetry, short fiction, or essays published in the small presses over the previous year. The nomination is for his poem, "Life and (Erasure Poem)” written under the name RK Rugg and which appeared in a special AI discovery issue of Space and Time Magazine, the oldest continuously published semi-pro magazine for speculative fiction. “I think that erasure poems are wonderful for finding unintended themes or meanings in text,” says Rugg. For this piece, he employed ChatGPT to construct a narrative that included a communication from an AI spaceship pilot, and then ‘erased’ or eliminated words and lines in order to create the poem. "The erasure reveals the essence of humanity in the farewell speech of the Artificial Intelligence, it highlights that which gives our lives both poignancy and meaning. Lacking life, an AI will never fear death. Never fearing death, an AI will never know life." Check out Space and Time Magazine October 2023: SpecPo "my electrict lycanthropy" in Illumen Magazine. Fall 2023: SpecPo "Life Is In the Now" in the anthology of science fiction poetry Omni-Verses: Interplanetary Poesies, edited by W.J. Manares and published by Ukiyoto Publishing. Summer 2023: SpecPo "Life and (Erasure Poem)" in the special AI Discovery issue of Space & Time Magazine. Summer 2023: Review of Mother Android, directed by Mattson Tomlin for the magazine Foundation, The International Review of Science Fiction , #145. I'm always pleased to get a piece in Foundation, because it is such a hardcore academic journal. :) Summer 2023: On June 28 in honor of the Online Release Party for Eccentric Orbits, Vol. 4, I read my SpecPo "Other Lights Than Yours," one of four of my poems included in the book. (Click over to the Poetry page for a video of my reading for the Launch Party!) I'm incredibly honored to announce that my poem for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (I Recalled Old Earth Last Night in a Dream) was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Reader Awards. You can read it by clicking directly to the poem, and you can see all the finalists for all categories by clicking to the full list. Thanks to everyone who voted! And check out my poem presentation and some photos of the event by visiting my Asimov's Event page! Summer 2023: SpecPo in the Timber Ghost Press blog, July 15, 2023. Timber Ghost is a Western Horror publisher and this poem, "Selway Bitterroot," is based on my time outfitting and guiding in the wilderness area waaaay back in the Idaho Panhandle. Spring 2023: SpecPo in Eccentric Orbits, An Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry: Volume 4 from Dimensionfold Publishing. I'm very proud to have a number of poems selected for inclusion in the 4th volume of this annual anthology of speculative poetry, edited by Wendy Van Camp, the poet laureate for the city of Anaheim. I have four pieces included in this year's collection, including;
Spring 2023: SpecPo in a Utopia Science Fiction (April/May 2023). This publication holds a special place in my heart as they were my first paid market, and this is my third poem to find a home here. 'The Ancients We Are Told Made Great: Erasure poem from Isaac Newton's 'Preface to the Principia,' May 8 1686" is, I think, a good fit with the publication's mission to print optimistic SF. https://www.utopiasciencefiction.com/ Spring 2023: SpecPo in a mainstream literary publication (which is always a fun accomplishment!), my short piece "Birdwatching During the Pandemic" appears in Tiny Wren Lit (Issue #4, Unthemed) which went live online in late April 2023 and is free to read at https://www.tinywrenlit.com/issue-4 SpecNonFic: I returned to the Midwest in March 2023 (at least virtually) for the Midwest Popular Culture Association's 2nd annual Virtual Graduate Student Mini Conference, where I presented during Saturday's TIPS panel...Teaching Ideas for Popular Culture Studies, revisiting my paper on "Teaching The Hobbit at the Middle-School Level in a Post-Jacksonian World." 2022 SpecPo in SFPA's Eye to the Telescope On Sending a Mission to Explore the Outer System appears in the Quests issue of the Science Fiction Poetry Association's publication, Eye to the Telescope. SpecFic: Finally getting back to some prose on the website of Wyngraf: The Magazine of Cozy Fantasy. My flash piece "Glorin the Dwarf" was published by this absolutely charming and unique site in October. SpecPo in SFPA's Eye to the Telescope Duty appears in the Veterans of Future Wars issue of the Science Fiction Poetry Association's publication, Eye to the Telescope. SpecNonFic: Presentation at the Northeast Popular Culture Association, "Teaching The Hobbit at the Middle-School Level" presented at the NEPCA 2022 Conference as a part of the Tolkien track for this year's gathering. Dwarf Stars Nomination! SpecPo: My poem Ten Squared originally published in the Summer 2021 issue of Illumen, was nominated for the SFPA's Dwarf Star award for poetry of 10 lines or fewer and appeared in the print anthology. SpecPo in Asimov's Magazine of Science Fiction, May/June 2022 Vol. 46 Nos. 5 & 6. I couldn't be more pleased to have I Recalled Old Earth Last Night in a Dream appear in one of my favorite SF magazines. (Editorial notes for this one included the line, "I can't resist the charm of this pantoum," and you'd better believe that I'm on Cloud Nine about that.) SpecPo in Eccentric Orbits, An Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry: Volume 3 from Dimensionfold Publishing. I'm delighted to have work included in this next volume of speculative poetry, edited by Wendy Van Camp. I have four pieces in Volume 3, including :
2021 SpecNonFic: Review of Lost in Transmission: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy by Desirina Boskovich in SFRA Review Vol. 51, No. 3 (Summer 2021), an open access journal published four times a year by the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. SpecPo: The official launch of the poetry anthology New Tales of the Round Table includes my Camelot- A Villanelle SpecPo in Illumen Magazine , a quarterly digest of SF&F poetry... Ten Squared is a poem crafted from ten lines of ten syllables each. SpecNonFic: Review of Can You Sign My Tentacle? by Brandon O'Brien, on NetGalley SpecNonFic: Presentation at the Popular Culture Association 2021 National Conference: "A Sense of Place: Portrayals of the Reservation in Contemporary Native American Speculative Fiction" SpecPo: The April/May 2021 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine includes my SpecPo, Prodigal SpecPo: -Eccentric Orbits: An Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry, Volume 2 contains my poem, In An Ivory Tower. It is a form known as a Prime 53 Poem and I'm delighted that it found a home in this beautiful book from Dimensionfold Publishing. SpecNonFic: Presentation at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association annual conference on "A Sense of Place: Portrayals of the Reservation in Native American Speculative Fiction" SpecPo: The Beasts Are Gods (SpecPo text and audio) in January 2021 issue of Abyss & Apex magazine 2020 SpecPo: Northern Rockies (SpecPo graphic) in November 2020 issue of Snakeskin poetry webzine. SpecPo: Tapestry (SpecPo) in October/November 2020 issue of Utopia Science Fiction magazine. Served as a juror for the 2020 Diverse Writers and Diverse Worlds Grants program sponsored by the Speculative Literature Foundation. SpecNonFic-October 30, 2020: Presentation at the 5th annual Vampire Academic Conference on "Blood Brothers: Comic-book Influences on Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot" SpecNonFic: October 24, 2020: Presentation at the New England Popular Culture Association annual conference on "Kid Stuff: The Younging Down of Adult SF Literature" SpecPo: They Say at this Time of Year (SpecPo audio) at Science Fiction Poetry Association 2020 Halloween Poetry Reading SpecNonFic: Review of Figures Unseen by Steve Rasnic Tem. This review was commissioned by one of the speculative fiction academic publications, but it didn't ever run, and I was delighted to be able to place it with my friend Jennie Ivins at FantasyFaction. 2019 SpecNonFic: Presentaton of Putting the "I" in "SciFi": First-Person POV in SF Novels, 1953-2019 at the Northeast Popular Culture Association Annual Conference, 2019 SpecNonFic: Review of Becoming Superman by J. Michael Straczynski for the magazine Foundation, The International Review of Science Fiction 2016 SpecFic: Editor, Life on the Rez: Science Fiction and Fantasy Inspired by Life on America's Indian Reservations (includes my short story "Member of the Tribe") 2015 SpecFic: Contributor, Stories from the World of Tomorrow: The Way the Future Was (includes my short story "A Deep Breath of Tomorrow") 2014 SpecFic: Contributor, Reunions: An Anthology of Heartfelt Short Stories (includes my short story "Christina and Theresa and Cassandra") 2013 SpecNonFic: Book: Sales and Science Fiction. Handbook of sales advice and lessons gleaned from the genre of science fiction. |