“Writer” is one of the earliest labels I felt comfortable wearing. It gave a purpose to all my noticing, and was an outlet for the thoughts and questions I didn’t feel safe speaking. But also, I learned at a young age that Devin means “poet” in Gaelic and I think I ran with it. Makes for a good story.

I’ve kept at my early interest and have now been a freelance writer and editor for over eleven years, working on everything from publishing articles to editing websites, textbooks, essays and literary fiction. For current clients I’m writing grant applications to fund arts organizations, writing and editing brand copy, and editing newsletters (besides this one.)

In 2017, after three years of writing freelance articles, I founded Kindred Word Studio to work with businesses on their branding and internal copy. Since then, I’ve worked with dozens of artists, entrepreneurs, and writers to develop their ideas, hone their written communication, and empower them to write confidently for their business or project. Clients have called me a “thought translator.”

All along, I kept writing away on harder to sell work. I pitched articles, submitted fiction and poetry, and wrote a bunch of novel queries for a manuscript I completed in 2022. My writing has appeared in PHOENIX, Chlorophyll, BOMB, Orion, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Over the years, my poetry and zines have received awards and grants from the city of Phoenix and The Arizona Commission on the Arts, most recently in 2023 to complete my zine Desert Pookas.

I launched The Good Enough Weekly in January 2023 with a much different concept in mind, but a strong desire to publish regularly after an isolating two years of novel-writing. I’ve written newsletters, for myself and clients, since 2017 but this is the one that’s stuck longer than a year. Recently I rediscovered a newsletter I wrote for a short time that I called The Weeklyish. I remain, quite stubbornly, myself.

This newsletter is about food, politics, and labor – through the lens of a home cook and writer living in Phoenix. At the same time, it’s a project of showing up weekly as a good enough writer. I’d rather write something imperfect than let perfectionism silence me, but it’s been a long road to get there. Essays are the backbone of the newsletter, which I published at a weekly cadence for the first year. In the intervening year and a half, I’ve introduced new series and formats to make more space in my life for other writing.

I also table or volunteer at Phoenix Zine Fest and my art was shown in two local galleries over the last year as part of the group show machinemachine – a new thrill! I lead panels and workshops on indie publishing, creative collaborations, zine-making, and writing about yourself and your project at literary conferences and community events. 

Finally, something brand new is that I co-founded Feminist Food Friends with a group of lovely writers to host online events for food-minded people. Our first event was Sept 29 and more will be announced soon! Paid subscribers to The Good Enough Weekly get in for free (find the code here) and tickets are also available on a sliding scale.

While I’m not my favorite subject to write about, I’m proud of what I’ve been able to do on roughly 5-10 hours of focused work weekly over the last eleven years. I have four young children and childcare remains a shit show, my friends—even with a fantastic husband like the one I snagged! But I’m already signed up and locked in for eleven more years, or however many I’ve got, of writing and editing. And the fact that you, a real person, are here reading my newsletter is the very real, non-proverbial, cherry on top.

Help a writer with tired wrists? As part of moving my newsletter to beehiiv I’m combing through the archives and finding many, many dead links. I’ve already spent 4+ hours on this and I’m turning to you in my hour of need.

Instructions: Subscribe to my newsletter and read through the archive until you find a dead link. Send me an email ([email protected]) with what you found (please share the post title or a link to the post AND the exact link that is dead) and I will upgrade your subscription to paid for 3 months for FREE – so you'll get the full schedule of 4 posts/month rather than just the free essay! 

HINT: The deeper you trek into the archives the more likely you'll find dead links. 

RULES: Email me before Nov 1 in your time zone. One dead link per person. The first person to email me with the dead link wins if more than one person finds the same link.

I’m experimenting with offering a 45-minute call to work on either big picture strategy or editing (or a combo!) and answer questions. The call is $75 – discounted to $50 for paid subscribers (special link here.)

This call is perfect for:

Email me with questions ([email protected]) and if you book a call I’ll be in touch before we talk.

Join the chat for paid subscribers on TOMATO TOMATO, the Discord server started by Alicia Kennedy that’s the place to be for conversations on food, culture, ecology, and more. We begin in The Good Enough Weekly channel at 1pm PST on Wednesdays.