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 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 […]
More good news in the realm of my writing career: this July I’ll be attending the One Story Summer Writers’ Conference in Brooklyn. When I decided I wanted to attend fiction workshops this summer, I wasn’t sure how many programs I’d get accepted to, which ones would work with my family’s schedule, etc., and I would have been […]
