I’m a poet—editor—teacher—publisher—artist—collaborator
I connect people to audiences—ideas—opportunities—each other
New books out in 2025!
After reading William Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem, The Prelude, in her PhD program, poet and publisher MC Hyland became fascinated with the importance of walking with friends in Wordsworth’s poetry—and with the ways that writing for his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, unlocked Wordsworth’s most powerful voice. She set out on a poetic research project, walking and writing with friends and strangers from the banks of the Mississippi river to the streets of Manhattan, Cambridge University, and a fjord in western Norway.
Along the way she walked with writers, family members, visual artists and curators, archivists, and others. After each walk, she wrote a poem for her co-walker or walkers—each poem both a letter and a continuation of the conversation.
This book collects these “walking poems,” written between 2015 and 2018 and originally published in emails and in small handmade books, along with the text of a subsequent writing project and artist’s book, inspired by the poet Bernadette Mayer’s suggestion to keep a notebook of “elaborations on weather.” The “weather poems” in this book record weathers both personal and meteorological, from Brooklyn, New York and Gloucester, MA in the years 2017-2019.
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Release date: October 28, 2025
Walks & Weathers
Publishing Experiments 2015-2019
In the tradition of Montaigne’s Essais and Anne Carson’s Short Talks, MC Hyland’s poem-essays weave together the conceptual and the material, leaving a trace of thought-in-flight. Originating from a moment (pre- and mid-pandemic) when Hyland taught canonical British literature as a contingent university worker, the essays in The Dead and the Living and the Bridge take up the topics of grief, gender, art materials, capitalism, and close reading. “What I loved,” Hyland writes, “was the dead and the living and the bridge my voice sometimes made between the two.” This voice casts spells to summon clarity against institutional failures and personal and global losses, while placing thinking in its proper context: conversation, shared worldbuilding, and a love that touches both the living and the dead.
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Release date: April 1, 2025
The Dead &
The Living &
The Bridge
Work with me.
Manuscript Consultations
I love working with poets and creative nonfiction writers to find the heart of a book project. I work with people at all stages of manuscript development, but I especially like supporting those who are trying to identify and dig deeper into their central themes and approaches.
My approach to critique is informed by the Critical Response Process, which makes significant space for your questions about your work. For that reason, consultations include two meetings: a 20-30 minute initial meeting to talk about your ideas and where to focus in our work together, and, 1-2 weeks later, a 1-hour meeting to discuss the work, after which I’ll send you a detailed reader report.
For chapbook-length, essay, or artist book manuscripts (10-30 pages), my sliding scale rate is $300-450. For book-length manuscripts (45-80 pages of poetry), my sliding scale rate is $500-800. I’m also willing to work on longer book projects—please reach out through my contact form with a note about your needs!
If you’d like to feel out how we might work together, I recommend signing up for an Office Hours meeting (see below), in which we’ll discuss up to five pages of poetry or up to three pages of prose.
Editing, Writing, & Research
Need help with writing or research? I’m happy to support you. Here are some ways I’ve worked with people in the past:
Grant writing and artist residency application support for visual artists
Helping academics tailor their writing for non-specialist publications
Fine-tuning MFA and humanities PhD applications
Shaping cover letters for academic job applications
Refining website text, especially bios and artist statements
Project descriptions for academic monographs and public art projects
Class descriptions and curriculum design for community education courses
Fundraising research and creating an applications calendar for a social impact startup
Researching potential community partners for art and social impact projects
My rates for editing, writing, and research support are $75 an hour. If you’d like to work together, please reach out through my contact form or schedule an initial meeting through my office hours (below).
Teaching
I've worked with students of almost every background and age, from adults preparing to take the GED to K-2 students learning conflict resolution strategies to college English majors taking literature surveys. Mostly I teach classes and workshops in book arts, literature, and creative writing.
College-level courses I've taught include: creative writing workshops from the introductory to the thesis level, British Literature surveys, “Reading as a Writer,” "Copyright, Commerce, and Culture,” ‘Environment and the Novel,” “Major Poets,” and freshman composition.
I regularly teach classes for adult artists and writers on zoom and in person. Upcoming classes include:
Writing Walking (Online and In-Person in St. Paul, MN, October 27-November 12, 2025)
Writing Weather (Online and In-Person in St. Paul, MN, January 12-26, 2026)
For some sample past classes, check the links below!
Creative Publishing Seminar through the Center for Book Arts, 2020-2021
Diary: Process, Attention, Time, Audience with Ashna Ali (through Liminal Lab, 2021)
On Walking: Ambulatory Poetics, Performance, and Philosophy with Emily Skillings (through The School of Making Thinking, 2018)
If you’d like to be kept in the loop about future classes, or to invite me to teach at your institution, please reach out through my contact form.
Upcoming events
October 7, 2025: Rain Taxi 30th Anniversary afterparty with Ceremonial Abyss, Paula Cisewski, Miri Karraker, Halee Kirkwood, and Danika Stegeman (Dutch Bar, NE Minneapolis)
October 10-26, 2025: Two new DoubleCross Press books included in Minnesota Center for Book Arts’ New Editions biennial showcase; I’ll be at the preview party on October 10 (Minneapolis)
October 27, November 3 & 10 (Mondays): Teaching in-person Writing Walking class for Beauty School Editions (St. Paul, MN)
October 29, November 5 & 12 (Wednesdays): Teaching Writing Walking class for Beauty School Editions (online)
November 17-19, 2025: “Life After the MFA” panel, University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL)
January 12, 19, 26 (Mondays): Teaching Writing Weather class for Beauty School Editions (online)
DoubleCross Press
I founded DoubleCross Press in 2008 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as a student in the Book Arts and Creative Writing MFA programs at the University of Alabama. In the past 17 years, the press has moved with me, and I and my co-editors Jeff Peterson (2009-present) and Anna Gurton-Wachter (2014-2023) have made books at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the Center for Book Arts in New York, and Swayspace.
With an eye toward artist book studio practices and spaces, and toward the materials and structures of contemporary and historic hand-bookmaking, DoubleCross Press produces physical manifestations of our writers' language. We publish poetry chapbooks, essays on book arts and book culture, and poetry journals. We plan to sunset the press by the end of 2026 to make room for new projects.
See more in Book Arts