It’s been quite a week over here for yours, truly. I’m in the middle of a super-productive residency at VCCA, my story “Clarinet Lessons” won the 2021 Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing, I turned thirty-nine, and another one of my stories, “The Hall of Human Origins,” was Highly Commended for the 2021 Bridport Prize. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Hello, popping in from my typical hibernation to share a little bit of encouraging writing news. I was recently named one of two finalists in the James Knudsen Prize for Fiction (Bayou Magazine). Little near-victories like this keep me going as I continue to submit my short fiction and hope, fervently, to be published again. […]
I just got back from the One Story summer conference in Brooklyn and, despite being sick as a dog, I had a great week. I feel so lucky to have been able to do two wonderful (and very different) writing conferences this summer. Kenyon, as I blogged about, was emotionally and physically draining, but I […]
I spent the last week (Saturday-Saturday) at the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop in Gambier, Ohio and boy, was it a week. The week held so much good: inspiration, knowledge, friendship, solitude. But the week was also tough. I cried every day, for a variety of reasons: I missed Al and my kids (and I found being […]
