Film Festival Awards :: New Orleans and Nashville Cityscape Photos Publshed

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JUNE NEWSLETTER

In this issue ::

Three short script film festival awards
Hard Candy publishes New Orleans photograph
Four Feathers Press publishes four love poems in February
Cold River Press publishes four Nashville cityscape photographs
New 5x7 prints for sale
Garden class starts for Summer
April 24th Concussion
New Poem :: The First Time
In Closing …

2026 Rebekah’s Closet Short Film Script Awards

I’m applying to lots of film festivals since last year. I’m looking for festivals for women, mental health, fantasy, and independent films.

So far, the short script is doing really well!

Official Selection, London Vision Film Festival, UK
Official Selection, Alpine International Film Festival, Switzerland
Nomination for best short script, Art Film Spirit Awards, Toronto, Canada

In August, I’ll find out if my feature script version does well with the Paris Independent Film Festival.

I’ll keep applying, and we’ll see what happens.

Stay tuned, and fingers crossed!

Rebekah’s Closet Promo Video ::

Hard Candy Publishes New Orleans Photograph

In March, Hard Candy published this New Orleans photograph in its second full color, hard copy issue. I took the photo on Royal Street a year before Hurricane Katrina devastated the community. Fifi Mahony’s still exists! Several are on my bucket list, haha!

Four Love Poems for February

Four Feathers Press published four of my love poems in February, in their anthology Turtle Island Poetry.

Here is one of the poems they published, written on a night owl evening of mine this past Winter.

~~~

Snow Moon

No sleep ’til midnight.
Your portentous glowing Leo,
Behind rain clouds,
Keeps me awake.
Restless on the edge of falling
Out of time
Through stars.

Brain on fire,
Breathing it out,
Nothing will make it right.

Find your handsome self
Sleeping calmly.
I’m grateful.
I’ll curl into you at the
Unknown hour.

I’m sleepless with underground roots,
Burrowing into our familiar, unknown,
Dark Earthen home.
Mycelium whispers,
“I’ve always been here.”

Scrape for spare change
As if it were food.

Scrape the Snow Moon for meaning,
When I do know some various truths.

Into the mouth of night,
I fall back into your arms,
Cradling silver memories,
Of you and I, awake.

In May, Voices 2026, by Cold River Press published four of my Nashville cityscape photographs. This one, for me, typifies our original, pre-development boom neighborhood’s feeling because of confronting more construction at every turn.

Click here to order this beautiful volume of visual art and poetry.

I’ve had an art booth at few first Fridays at Flipsville, Springwater Suppoer Club a few months this year. It’s a fun community of musicians and artists, and a great way to spend a Friday night. In my booth, I have books, photo and risograph prints, magnets, postcards, and puzzles.

Last month, I invested in getting eight 5x7 prints made. Four are standard C prints of photographs, and four are giclee paintings, two of which have been sold.

Above is one, a giclee of a watercolor of mine from two decades that is still available, from a sketch of a wetland where I used to walk our dog Chipper, in Germantown, Maryland.

If you’d like to see the prints, I can email you to show them to you, or you can visit me, and see them in my home studio and gallery here in Nashville.

amyhoskinsccc@gmail.com
Amyhoskins.com

Summer Garden Class

Last Wednesday morning, our garden class at Harvest Hands Community Development Corporation started for Summer!

In our last class for the Spring semester, we planted seeds in front and back gardens. The garden loves rainwater, and has been blessed since then with lots of it.

We have bell and hot peppers, including Ghost, Habanero, Thai Chili, and Serrano. Large and cherry tomatoes are bursting out, and our seeds are now seedlings! Our yellow squash and zucchini, eggplant, okra, watermelon, sugar pie pumpkin, cucumber, green beans, dill, cilantro, lettuce, potatoes, celery, blueberries, lime tree, strawberries, Benjamin Britten red rose, and pollinator flowers are all thriving. Blessings!

Tomorrow we have a field trip to the Nashville Farmers Market! An anonymous donor is funding our ability to buy oven fired pizzas for lunch, and fresh fruit to eat there, as well as some to bring home to their families.

Last week, we learned about pollination and pollinators, and next week’s lession on Mycelium.

If you would like to help support Harvest Hands’ programming for young people at risk, please consider buying some of their famous freshly roasted coffee, and bath products made with high schoolers on site. For the high schoolers, this is their first job, and program leaders teach about financial literacy as well. The after school runs during the school year, and the summer program is during June and July each year.

harvesthandscdc.com

Concussion

On April 24th, I was letting a friend into our front gate, holding our excitable dog Gracie by the collar. Gracie accidentally threw me head first into the metal gate, as she was excited about my friend, and I couldn’t let go of her collar until it was too late.

I went to the ER at Vanderbilt where they took ct scans, bloodwork, and I was cleared to go, after a lot of glue to seal up the two or so inch cut on the top left of my head.

I’m still healing, and just yesterday was referred to Vanderbilt’s Osher Center for acupuncture and cranial massage therapy.

It has been a reminder of my blessings, and that it could have been so much worse, that the healing is taking some time.

I’m so hopeful to be able to be creative and do more heavy thinking in the coming weeks, because my concussion symptoms have eased.

Please send good thoughts :

New Poem :: The First Time

This is the first long poem I’ve written since November, and the first poem since the concussion. It’s been hard to think, to do, to speak, to write, to listen. It’s all taking time. I wrote this Sunday, after many videos and photographs of the Normandy invasion anniversary over this past weekend.

~~~

The First Time

My father was born in 1928.
I was born in 1964.

He was in the Army Corps of Engineers in WWII,
Clearing German land mines ahead of Allied troops.
He would say, Do it right the first time,
And you won’t have to do it again.
To me, thinking of the tenuous delicacy of
Land mine removal,
It meant, You might not get another chance.
Someone might die.

For me, it became a game of sorts,
To act with precision every time,
The first time, with everything I do,
As if we were still at war.
Just in case, and for fun.

It comes naturally now
To do things right the first time
As best I can.
Failure is devastating.
You always raised the bar,
Even when I made straight A’s.

I was in fourth grade, and
He was at the kitchen counter
Going through his medals,
War relics, cleaning them,
The terrifying German Luger
Smooth, terrifying, gray as lead<
Reflecting solemnly on each one.

I approached, young as I was.
I asked gently, Did you ever have to kill anyone?
It was a war, he said, Sure I did.
He winced deeply, a chill,
Coldness, deep down.
He steeled himself away from his flashbacks.

I asked tenderly then, not knowing, young as I was.
Did you ever lose any friends?
Yes, he said, grieving.

Stop asking questions, he said.
He needed space.
I saw tears rolling down his face.
I hadn’t seen him cry since my Grandma J passed
When I was in second grade.

I went to my bedroom and got into the middle of the
Impossibly white chenille bedspread, reflecting on
My father, experiences he had never, ever shared before.

I wrote a poem.
I went back to him and shared it.
He liked it, but was also shaken
At the emotions he had shared with me.
Something about the poem disturbed him,
I don’t remember what he said.

So I went back to my room,
Tore the poem into shreds, and
Threw it into the trash can.

I told him I’d destroyed it, and
He was distraught again,
Apologizing for no reason.

For every single land mine they mapped
Using intercepted German mine diagrams,
He desperately needed
To get it right the first time.
Someone would be
Killed outright, or maimed.

Since then, I try to get it right
The first time,
As if a friend would die.

As if we were still at war.

In closing,

The garden inspires me so much, to get outside where I can, and grow.

The garden right now ::

It surprises, transforms, again and again, blooming at night, in the rain, growing deep underground and with bare reaching branches all Winter.

I read we have an odd term in Nature, as if it were something distant, to be named, apart from us.

May we be blessed to adapt to changes within and around us, keeping with us that eternal flame of Love and Spirit combined, leading us forward, through.

I hope this long read finds you well as can be :)

Please drop me a line if you’d like. I’d love to hear from you!

Thank you for listening!

Love and Blessings,

Amy :)

~~~

amyhoskinsccc@gmail.com
Amyhoskins.com

amyhoskins.com

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JUNE NEWSLETTERIn this issue ::

JUNE NEWSLETTER

In this issue ::