Katherine Schmidt

Katie Schmidt is a poet, the Editor in Chief and co-founder of the collaborative poetry journal, Spark to Flame, and runs the queer reading series On Fire.

Publications

• "You're trying to survive in a world not meant for you" (Gone Lawn)
• "The Way I Remember Things Probably Didn't Happen" (HAD)
• "Ghost Baby" (JMWW)
• "In the dark of the ocean" (Anti-Heroin Chic)
• "What are we but mycelium, mud, and mistakes" (Gone Lawn)
• "Guns, Sex, Phones" (Rejection Letters)
• "Above all else" (ballast journal)
• "do you think this pigeon knows that it, too, is an animal?" (HAD)
• "Dust to Dust" (Puerto del Sol), print issue 60.1
• "Hediondilla" (Lost Balloon)
• "Magazine City" (Okay Donkey)
• "Icarus Shouldn't Have Drowned" (Pithead Chapel)
• "Star Diner" (Bending Genres)
• "The field the train runs through" (voidspace)
• "Quantum Entanglement" (Variant Lit)
• "when i think of jason bourne i think of christmas" (JAKE)
• "Time Doesn't Care" (Transients Mag)
• "Resurfacing" (Poetry Lab Shanghai)
• "Note from 2125" (Cutbow Quarterly)*CLOSED
• "Space Potato" (JAKE)
• "That time I gave CPR to my ex's grandpa" (Full House Literary)
• "It's April and" (Roi Fainéant Press)
• "Just you, a crocodile" (Rejection Letters)
• "I hate the word liminal" (Anti-Heroin Chic)
• "the egg" (Bullshit Lit Anthology 2), print, 2023
• "Church in a metro car" (Thimble Literary Magazine)
• "Ache" (3Elements Literary Review)
• "Summer with Dad 2002" (New Note Poetry)

Co-Authored Publications

• "to asking you to look at me like" and "Rebellion is an emotion the same way it's about" co-authored with Nisha Sethi (the engine(idling))
• "At IHOP We Eat The Food of Champions" co-authored with Natalie Wolf (Right Hand Pointing)
• "REPORTE SÍSMICO 25/03/2022 04:23:03" co-authored with Natalie Wolf (I-70 Review), print, 2024
• "To Jessica Schwartz, From Your Designated Demon" co-authored with Natalie Wolf (Roi Fainéant Press)
• "rewind" co-authored with Candice Kelsey (Icebreakers Lit)
• "St. Francis Monastery" co-authored with Natalie Wolf (Unbroken)

Events

• Interview with Natalie Wolf on Poetry Power Hour, KJHK 90.7 FM, October 17, 2026
• UntitledTown, where I emceed the poetry reading (6 featured readers, 5 open mic performers), and moderated the panel, How to Be a Spoken Word Poet with Rosie Rey and Dasha Kelly, September 25-28, Green Bay, WI

Readings

• November 17, 2026 - The Inner Loop reading at Shaw's Tavern, D.C.
• September 28, 2026 - fruitcake reading series at Pink Flamingo, Baltimore
• July 5, 2026 - As part of the 12 hr poetry marathon to raise funds for emergency relief in Venezuela at American Poetry Museum in D.C., hosted by Camilo Montoya of Poema Abierto
• June 13, 2026 - "Unaffiliated" Pride Vendor Market as part of fruitcake crew at the Mobtown Ballroom, Baltimore
• March 7, 2026 - Death to JAKE AWP 2026 Offsite reading at Club Charles, Baltimore
• August 2025 - 804 Lit Salon, Washington, D.C.
• December 8, 2024 - The Potter's House, Washington, D.C. as a guest on nat raum's tour to promote their poetry book, "this book will not save you".

Nominations

• 2024 Best Microfiction thanks to Lost Balloon
• 2025 Best New Poets nomination for "Magazine City" thanks to Okay Donkey
• 2027 Best of the Net for "What are we but mycelium, mud, and mistakes" thanks to Gone Lawn
• 2027 Best Small Fictions for "Ghost Baby" thanks to JMWW

Currently Thinking About

• "Demographics" by Frances Klein in HAD
• How "Platic Prism Void" by Violet Allen is making me feel too much
• "Missed Connectsions with Tall Girls" by Gwen Aube but specifically her performances of those poems
• "CLAYBOY" by Fez Avery
• "You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis" by Kelly Weber
• Volume 5, No. 16: Queer Syntax is Infinite by Laura Sackton
• CJ the X videos and essays
• "American Wedding" by Essex Hemphill (shout out to the Phillips Collection exhibit in August 2025)
• "When People Say We Have Made It Through Worse Before" by Clint Smith
• "The Clown Watches The Clown" by Sara S. Messenger in Apex
• "Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" by Isabel J. Kim in Clarkesworld
• "Sticks" by George Saunders
• "Himalia" by Carrie Vaughn in Clarkesworld
• Collaboration as art as process as meaning-making

The Socials

Twitter: @ktontwitr [not active]; Bluesky: @ktonbsky.bsky.social; Instagram: @ktschmdt