SE Cain is a Pacific Northwest writer who can talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. She even knows why the sea is boiling hot and whether it’s developmentally possible for pigs to have wings. She’ll explain it all in elaborate detail if you ask her, which we really hope that you don’t.

In an effort to keep things brief, she has taken to writing stoetry — short, dense stories in a poetry format. She tries to save her longer, more Byzantine ramblings for e-mails to herself. If at all possible, we think her efforts to stoet should be encouraged. Nobody needs to read her dissertations on evolutionary biology, genetics, criminology, or any other damn thing. Trust us, we have had the misfortune.