News! Classes!

Some personal updates (with pictures) and an invitation.

Mar 13, 2025

A Chinese illustration by Zhāng Hóng from 1649. The paper cream-tan, and shows through much of the drawing which is composed of ink lines and pale washes. A grove of banana trees sprout up from the left of the page and arch over the top. Below them are three figures standing on a rock. A bearded scholar in a robe is holding a paintbrush up to a large banana leaf. Is he preparing to inscribe a poem on the leaf, or is he painting the leaf itself into existence? He is accompanied by two assistants, one who holds a small box, and the other who carries a flask and cup on a tray. — Inscribing a Banana Leaf, from the album Figures in Settings, Zhāng Hóng 张宏 / 張宏, 1649, Allen Art Museum.

Dear Friends,

A little personal news and an invitation to join me and the wonderful Marco Wilkinson in an upcoming, year-long writing class.

— Sal

Some Personal News

On March 1st, I was ordained as a Zen priest by Abbot Roshi Shinryu Thomson at the Village Zendo.

I have a freshly shaved head, and a new Dharma name: Kenzen (顕全 Revealed Perfectly).

You see me here next to (from left to right) fellow novice priest Jeff Shugo Jinnō Berman, Abbot Emerita Roshi Enkyo O’Hara, and Abbot Roshi Shinryu Thomson.

Thank you to Enkyo Roshi, Shinryu Roshi, to my teachers, to my sangha, and all who supported me in this journey!

Upcoming Class

The Path of Expression: Writing as Practice

Monthly on Select Sundays March 23 - November 23
1:30 - 4:00 PM Eastern
Online through the Village Zendo

Have you wanted to start a writing practice, but don’t know where to begin? Or perhaps you write regularly, but want to feel freer and more joyful in your work?

I’ll be co-teaching this online class on the practice of writing with Marco Seiryū Wilkinson through the Village Zendo.

The class will meet monthly on Sunday afternoons for eight months starting March 23.

Working with Lynda Barry’s playful graphic writing guide, What it Is, the class will explore fundamental questions of self, memory, and imagination. What is an experience? What is memory? What are thoughts? What is a story made of? The focus will be on writing as meditation, a study of the self complementary to zazen.

We’ll have generous time to write in each session, and the class will be free of critique and evaluation.

Everyone is welcome. No previous writing experience is needed.

Full information here.

Cover of Lynda Barry’s book, What It Is. The entire cover is hand-drawn, collaged, and densely illustrated. In the center are two faces of monkeys connected by a snake. To the sides are fish, birds, flowers, and other creatures. Below the central monkey are the words: “Do you wish you could write?” Other legible text includes: “What is an image?,” “the formless thing which give things form” and “The way in…and out.” The title appears as block letters with silvery dot-decorations against a band of sky blue. Lynda Barry’s name is hand-written in script at the bottom right.

What It Is by Lynda Barry is available from Drawn & Quarterly.

AWP

I’ll be at AWP in Los Angeles March 26-29, tabling with my publishing project, dispersed holdings. If you are there, come say hi! We’ll be at table T1226 (waaayyyy in the back with some other very cool small presses).

#AWP25

A selfie photo of Sal Randolph, a white woman with very short deep blue hair, in front of the dispersed holdings book table at the Printed Matter Los Angeles Art Book Fair in 2023. In the background you can see black and red dispersed holdings books displayed against a sunflower yellow cloth. Other publishers and buyers are talking with one another and perusing available books.

Poems in Vestiges

I’m especially excited to say that a poem sequence of mine, “Ere Err (Letters Between Errancies),” will be published in Black Sun Lit’s journal Vestiges_O7: Catachresis, launching at AWP (or available April 1).

In this issue of Vestiges you will find poems by: Will Alexander, Kimberly Alidio, César Dávila Andrade, Martine Bellen, Stanislav Belsky, Anselm Berrigan, David Buuck, Garrett Caples, Sam Cha, Logan Fry, Lawrence Giffin, Tilghman Alexander Goldsborough, E. Tracy Grinnell, Karen Holman, Elise Houcek, Andrew Joron, Inna Krasnoper, Carlos Lara, Jonathan Larson, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Michael Leong, Douglas A. Martin, olga mikolaivna, Sheila E. Murphy, Ann Pedone, Sal Randolph, Martha Ronk, Jonathan Simkins, Christophe Tarkos, Edwin Torres, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Wendy Xu, John Yau.

Some very good company!

You can pre-order a copy here.

Cover of the literary journal Vestiges_07, Catachresis. The cover is a flat, slightly dulled yellow with a rough-edged, dark, doubled circle, black inside of a charcoal ring, floating in the upper right. The effect is of a black sun in a strangely yellow sky. The title appears on the lower left, along with the words “emotion as an error of equivalence.”

I’d love to hear from you! Let me know what’s up with you, and where you will be in the coming weeks.