His high-court-justice head turns slightly left the better to tear off leafy sprigs while drowsy lids observe a man, unused to streaks of sunshine, strip off four tweed objects: Jacket. Vest. Cap and scarf. They nestle in a heap no dignified goat can resist—but where resides the man’s no-refunds castle tour timed-ticket? Why, there, under the goat’s right hoof—can you not see it? Quickly the man gathers: jacket vest cap and scarf, before they too are goat-confiscated. The man observes (with quiet sobs) a pair of silken lips most dignified—slowly shred one paper ticket into innumerable bits and pieces.

Roberta Beary’s

most recent full-length collection, Crazy Bitches: selected haibun, was released by MacQ on 8 March 2025. Her poems, CNF, and microfictions have appeared in The New York Times, Rattle, the Red Moon Anthologies, 100 word story, Atticus Review, Best Small Fictions, Contemporary Haibun Online, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and other publications. Her micro “I Still Dream of You, Ben” is long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2025.

Beary (they/she) is the longtime haibun editor for Modern Haiku and co-author of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), as well as the author of four award-winning poetry collections. Their debut collection of short poems, The Unworn Necklace, won the Snapshot Press Book Award in 2005; was first published in Great Britain by Snapshot Press in 2007 (with a hardcover edition in 2011); and was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award, the first book of haiku to receive such recognition. Their collection of prose poems, Deflection (Accents Publishing, 2015), was named a National Poetry Month Best Pick by Washington Independent Review of Books.

Beary’s most recent collection of haiku, Carousel (Snapshot Press, 2024), was honored with a Touchstone finalist award and with an HSA Merit Book finalist award in the haiku category. Individual writing awards include Bridport Prize for Poetry (2022); Touchstone Awards for Individual Haibun (2022, inaugural year) and 2025); and Kusamakura Grand Prize for Haiku. Beary identifies as gender-fluid and calls Washington, DC (USA) and County Mayo, Ireland home.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Roberta Beary’s Crazy Bitches reviewed by Lew Watts in MacQueen’s Quinterly (aka MacQ), Issue 27 (March 2025)

⚡ Review of Crazy Bitches by Katie Dozier in MacQ-27 (March 2025)

⚡ Haibun: A Writer’s Guide, by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts, and Rich Youmans, reviewed by Ce Rosenow in MacQ-24 (August 2024)

⚡ Guests Kat Lehmann and Roberta Beary on “Experimental Haibun”: Episode 72 of The Poetry Space podcast by Katie Dozier and Timothy Green (2 August 2024)

⚡ New Book: Haibun: A Writer’s Guide by Roberta Beary, Lew Watts and Rich Youmans, an interview in Flash Frontier (July 2023)

⚡ Dealing With Rejection, an essay by Beary in Issue 12 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (March 2022)

⚡ Featured Guest: Roberta Beary on Rattlecast 133 hosted by Tim Green, editor of Rattle poetry journal (YouTube, 28 February 2022)

⚡ Tiny Love Stories in The New York Times (8 January 2019); scroll five stories down the page for Roberta Beary’s “Now It’s All Fresh Fish” and her photograph of lobster traps in Clew Bay, Ireland.