Bi-Monthly By Ryan #35

A twice-monthly newsletter by Ryan Jafar Artes

Author

Ryan Artes
February 25, 2026

My poem “Not Equal to Family (Reduced Down to Me)” was the second most read poem from the Poem of the Week series curated by Split This Rock in 2025! Thank you to everyone who read my poem. Thank you to Split This Rock team for believing in my work, I love y’all fiercely. <3

Dear Comrades,

Hi! Did you miss hearing from me? I missed writing to you, and also I enjoyed my break.

Thank you to those of you who responded to my last email of 2025. I have been sitting with your messages these last two months. I still plan to reply to each of you individually.

I have been taking time away from writing. For me, time away from writing always involves writing. However, I try to do as little as possible for the sake of taking a real and actual break from my various practices and processes.

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You’re going to make mistakes.

A helpful reminder offered to me by Patrice Gopo during “Starting and Sustaining an Author Newsletter.” Patrice’s workshop gave me such helpful advice and tips. Quotes from her workshop are featured throughout this newsletter.

Sustainability is important to me, which is why I took a 3-month break, and I will continue to do so. I initially took off the winter season from writing my newsletter. After last year, I slightly adjusted my break.

Moving forward, I plan for my break to be during Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius seasons. My newsletter, now, will start during Pisces season at the end of February, and run through November, which is National Adoptee Awareness Month.

I will adjust my schedule liberally, and as necessary. The pace of capitalism is relentless. I aim to disrupt such an impossible pace as much as possible with my work, not only in content and form, but also in practice and process.

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People will unsubscribe.

This was such a helpful tidbit to receive during Patrice’s workshop. Hearing this helped me to mentally prepare for such an inevitability. This advice also made me re-consider my own habits of subscribing to (and unsubscribing from) newsletters written by others.

I sent my first newsletter, Bi-Monthly By Ryan #1, on April 24, 2024. I had been thinking about doing so for, quite literally, years. I had no clue where to get started.

At the time, I was also experiencing tremendous impostor syndrome about being a writer. In September 2023, I participated in “Starting and Sustaining an Author Newsletter” with Patrice Gopo. One tip Patrice offered was to be consistent, and she also suggested to try sending a twice-monthly newsletter.

Thus, Bi-Monthly By Ryan came to be. I will return next month with exciting news I have been thinking about for quite some time now, since before starting my newsletter. In the meantime, please consider joining one of my upcoming courses—see below for more information.

Love, Ryan <3

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Start today and a year from now you’ll know a whole lot more than you do today!

For me, getting started was the hardest part. Before starting my newsletter, I did not feel like I had enough to say to send even a monthly newsletter. With hindsight, I can clearly see I could have started my newsletter when I first thought to do so, after I attended the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing conference in June 2021.

Ongoing:

  • Letter Writing as a Spiritual Practice #2 starts on March 22, 2026 at 3pm EST, and meets for 8 Sundays. This course is open to everyone. See my prior two emails for more information, linked here and here.

  • My yet-to-be-named Unnamed Workshop starts on April 1, 2026 at 8-9:30pm EST, and meets for 6 Wednesdays. This course is for Indian adoptees only. See my prior two emails for more information, linked above.

  • Please reach out to me directly to sign up, and with any questions you have for me. I am happy to schedule a call to discuss your participation. Please consider gifting my course to someone else, if you are not interested. <3

Please join me for my second offering of Letter Writing as a Spiritual Practice. If you took this course the first time I offered it, this time will be very different. We will focus on writing anti-war archives, inspired by Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.