I am proud to announce that my story, Clarinet Lessons, was selected by judge Charlotte Watson Sherman as the winner of the 2021 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. The story is now on CALYX’s website and will be coming out in the summer/fall 2022 print edition. I’ve also done an audio recording to accompany […]
I am honored to have been named a VCCA Fellow for 2021! In late October, I will embark on a two-week residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Mt. St. Angelo, Virginia. VCCA hosts writers, visual artists, and composers, providing them with three meals a day plus private studio space to work. I […]
I had my first humor piece with The Belladonna published today. They were great to work with and I am glad this goofy piece found a home with them. Hope you enjoy! https://thebelladonnacomedy.com/notes-app-apologies-from-cancelled-historical-figures-2cb6de26dc0e
It’s been a while since I’ve done any humor writing. For six years, I wrote humorous (I think!) recaps of trash television shows for the now-defunct Previously.TV, but when I started focusing more on short fiction, I put humor writing aside. I missed making fun of the dummies on reality television, but I wasn’t being […]
2020 was a YEAR, wasn’t it? I started off the year with the ambitious goal of reading 70 books. Cute of me, in retrospect. I ended the year having started 71 books, but only finishing 54. Womp-womp. In most years, I would have been disappointed in falling so short of a stated goal, even one […]
At the beginning of 2018, I started tracking my reading using Google Docs, and I haven’t stopped. Tracking my reading has become fun, even addictive, and it’s spurred me to read even more than I already was. And, despite what my husband might tell me when I’m up past my bedtime devouring a book, more […]
Today I found out, rather belatedly, that my short story “Fourteen Meals” was shortlisted for the 2019 Faulkner-Wisdom short story competition. I had received an email from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society back in early September announcing the winners, but I must have clicked on the wrong link/failed to read the fine print, because I […]
More big news around here: we welcomed a new baby, Calla Rowan, on September 17. I maaaay have forgotten to mention here that I was pregnant. Oops. I am chalking this up to Third Child Syndrome, in which the third child gets, if not short shrift, somewhat abbreviated shrift. Calla is only eight days old […]
I am so excited to announce that my story, Host Mother, was named one of five finalists in the 2019 Nelson Algren Awards, hosted by the Chicago Tribune. My story was one of 3,000 entries and went through four rounds of blind judging before being named a finalist. I am very gratified to be chosen. […]
This past weekend, I drove 3 hours southwest from my home in Alexandria to Norwood, Virginia to stay at the beautiful, peaceful Porches writing retreat. The idea of a writing retreat is to step away from all of the day-to-day distractions that prevent you from getting writing done, or from getting deep into your writing. The […]