POETRY
Read "The Jukebox Never has the Songs I Want" in South 85
Read "The Heritage of Leon Clovis Grimes" in South 85
"Marie Antoinette Opens a Pastry Shop in Paris"
available in Joys of the Table: an anthology of culinary verse. Read now at Jama's Alphabet Soup or find it in Last to Leave
"Behind Walls" in NeWorld Review
"Swimming Too Deep" in Houston Poetry Fest 2015 anthology
Read "The Heritage of Leon Clovis Grimes" in South 85
"Marie Antoinette Opens a Pastry Shop in Paris"
available in Joys of the Table: an anthology of culinary verse. Read now at Jama's Alphabet Soup or find it in Last to Leave
"Behind Walls" in NeWorld Review
"Swimming Too Deep" in Houston Poetry Fest 2015 anthology
Finding Fruit Among Thorns is available here!
"Finding Fruit Among Thorns, is an exploration of the meanings of home, a place she finds in Texas and upstate New York and in family and love. These are beautiful, heartfelt American poems imbued with the colors of rural Texas landscape. This book is so alive. I love it!" Maria Mazziotti Gillan, winner of the American Book Award "Grimes performs a sort of miraculous poetic sleight-of-hand, and we, as readers, can only gasp as she whisks the cloak away from our world, finding that the mundane has somehow morphed into the incantatory." Matthew Gavin Frank, author of Preparing the Ghost and The Mad Feast "Christie Grimes knows where to find the cheapest beer in San Marcos, how to shoot, and how to break your heart. In Finding Fruit Among Thorns, she sings an America where girls take their dance moves to the softball field and keep a rifle under the bed. She writes, 'I know there are dark doorways / that open to light, a hug, a smile. / There are also places that stay dark.' But this poet also knows how to find the sweetness" Rita Mae Reese, author of The Book of Hulga 
Chapbook Last to Leave available now! Click here! “I think of bars filled with smoke, missed bank shots and broken darts, free beer from the end of the bar, a drunk friend you might see later, someone you might never see again.” -from “Last to Leave” “In Last to Leave, Christie Grimes two-steps through the heat and seasoning of Texas and embraces rural northern New York in poems that sweat and chuckle, question and speak of resolve. These poems are familiar with salsa and barrooms, classrooms, and warm kitchens. These are rites of passage painted in language lush with flavor and craft. “ - Georgia A. Popoff Author of Psalter: The Agnostic’s Book of Common Curiosities |
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BOOKS
(seeking representation)
(seeking representation)
T-Day
When disaster strikes the Texas Gulf Coast, doomsday-obsessed survivalist Ted Jensen’s worst fears come true—all his preparations aren’t enough to keep his family safe. Separated from their bunker, Ted and his teenage children must make life and death decisions, choose between family and friends, as they try to save other towns from the same fate as their own. Told from multiple points of view, T-Day explores the question of what must be lost in order to survive.
Complete at 77,500 words, T-DAY combines an upmarket family drama with an eco-thriller reminiscent of Station Eleven.
When disaster strikes the Texas Gulf Coast, doomsday-obsessed survivalist Ted Jensen’s worst fears come true—all his preparations aren’t enough to keep his family safe. Separated from their bunker, Ted and his teenage children must make life and death decisions, choose between family and friends, as they try to save other towns from the same fate as their own. Told from multiple points of view, T-Day explores the question of what must be lost in order to survive.
Complete at 77,500 words, T-DAY combines an upmarket family drama with an eco-thriller reminiscent of Station Eleven.
Consuming the Body
The twelve stories in Consuming the Body all respond to some physical challenge, ailment, or reaction. The collection is an immersion in the physical, both in desire and fear of these sensations against the backdrop of dark humor. Characters on the fringe—a blue- tattooed lady, a sword swallower, a hypochondriac priest, a widower with vitiligio who must live in the dark—surround those who fight to appear ordinary when their lives are anything but. Their struggles reveal the need for human connection, the fear of being alone, and the depths to which we will go to find someone who can recognize our humanity, even if it’s imagined.
This collection was a finalist for the Permafrost First Book Award for Fiction. Some of the stories included have also been a finalist in the St. Lawrence Book Award competition and one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A review in New Pages referred to one story as “fiction that is quirky in a natural way, without working too hard for its odd-ness.”
The twelve stories in Consuming the Body all respond to some physical challenge, ailment, or reaction. The collection is an immersion in the physical, both in desire and fear of these sensations against the backdrop of dark humor. Characters on the fringe—a blue- tattooed lady, a sword swallower, a hypochondriac priest, a widower with vitiligio who must live in the dark—surround those who fight to appear ordinary when their lives are anything but. Their struggles reveal the need for human connection, the fear of being alone, and the depths to which we will go to find someone who can recognize our humanity, even if it’s imagined.
This collection was a finalist for the Permafrost First Book Award for Fiction. Some of the stories included have also been a finalist in the St. Lawrence Book Award competition and one was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A review in New Pages referred to one story as “fiction that is quirky in a natural way, without working too hard for its odd-ness.”
STORIES
Read "Consuming the Body" published on page 59 in Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts Issue 17
Read "Sugar Maple" published in Fiddleblack 17
Nominated for the StorySouth Million Writers Award
Read "The Window" and find a writing exercise by Michael Noll based on the story here
(look for the July 2, 2015 entry): http://readtowritestories.com/
You can also read an interview where I discuss what it's like to have a story published 10 years after drafting it.
"Consuming the Body," Sugar Maple," and "The Window" are all stories from the collection Consuming the Body.
Read "Sugar Maple" published in Fiddleblack 17
Nominated for the StorySouth Million Writers Award
Read "The Window" and find a writing exercise by Michael Noll based on the story here
(look for the July 2, 2015 entry): http://readtowritestories.com/
You can also read an interview where I discuss what it's like to have a story published 10 years after drafting it.
"Consuming the Body," Sugar Maple," and "The Window" are all stories from the collection Consuming the Body.
Find Christie's stories in previous publications of the following journals:
"The Safety of Burrows" Paterson Literary Review, Summer 2015
"The Window" 2 Bridges Review, Winter 2015
“The Swallower” Permafrost
“A Love Story” Harpur Palate
“The Ending Matters” Passages North
"The Safety of Burrows" Paterson Literary Review, Summer 2015
"The Window" 2 Bridges Review, Winter 2015
“The Swallower” Permafrost
“A Love Story” Harpur Palate
“The Ending Matters” Passages North