"True Names" Essay Named Finalist for Prime Number Magazine Contest

I am thrilled to have been a finalist for Prime Number Magazine's Creative Nonfiction contest for my essay "True Names." Eight finalists were chosen from 56 entries, with the three winners being chosen by author Ned Stuckey-French. (I'm happy to say that my friend and grad school colleague Laurie Easter won third prize.)

I'm still looking for a home (read: publication) for my essay, so I can't share the whole thing here, but I thought I'd give you glimpse of it. (Such a tease, I know.)

This essay is part of my manuscript-in-progress, a collection of linked essays called For All We Learned, The Sea, which explores landscape, belief, and the longing for home and belonging in all its many forms.

Here's the beginning of "True Names":

Etch-a-Sketch, Baja, Echo. The tour guide on the whale watching boat knows these humpbacks by name. She recognizes them by their tail markings, the designs they were born with and the wounds they've sustained since then. She announces each whale as it levers its broad tail out of the water like the dark wings of an enormous seagull. To my eyes, this display is an anonymous flash of rubbery black and white on the sun-dazzled water, but our guide assures us that unique patterns decorate each one, the whale tail equivalent of human fingerprints.

** ** **

I hope you'll be able read the whole essay somewhere in the near future!

"Velocity" published by The Collapsar

I'm pleased to share that my essay "Velocity" has been published by The Collapsar. (Thanks to editors Nate Knapp and James Brubaker for giving this piece a home!)

Here's the opening of the essay. To read the rest, please hop on over to The Collapsar website.

Somewhere west of the Pennsylvania border but east of Columbus, the tree-dense slopes on either side of the highway started to ease themselves down to the ground. It was subtle enough that I didn’t notice it at first, but eventually the mountains shrunk to hills shrunk to fields, the way icebergs of plowed snow in parking lots melt and melt in the spring, until one day there’s nothing but a puddle where once stood a dirty white mound. Out on the highway, maybe an hour from Columbus, the treetop vistas and the cradling valleys gave way to farmland flat as paper.

{Keep reading.}

Epiphany, A Literary Journal (review)

cover image from Epiphany's websiteAs I mentioned in the last post, I've started a new series about literary journals. I'll offer some tips on submitting to journals and review some of the many I have stacked around my house.

Earlier this week I had a guest post over on The Artist's Road, Patrick Ross's blog. Patrick is doing a series of Lit Journal Nuggets, and we'll be linking back and forth every so often so you can get a feel for a variety of journals. (So far he's reviewed AGNI and Fugue.)

If you have questions about journals or would like to see me review a particular publication, please let me know.

Here's the beginning of my review of Ep;phany:

Epiphanies get a bad rap in the world of literature. Writers bemoan how overused and trite this literary device has become. Need a tidy way to tie-up the loose ends of your short story? Give your protagonist an epiphany! Need to impart some existential meaning to bridge the personal-universal gap in your memoir? Epiphany! [Keep reading this review....]

Intro to Literary Journals

Awhile back I mentioned literary journals in my post about alternatives to getting an MFA in writing. I included them in my list of things to seek out and pay attention to.

Literary journals! Read them, subscribe to them, and send your work to them. Volunteer with them. If you don't know much about lit journals (I didn't just a few years ago), check out NewPages.com to get the lay of the land.

What are lit journals? Basically they're periodically published collections of writing, often supported by a university, though not always. Think of them as magazines of well-written prose and poetry, sometimes with photography and art. They may contain essays, short stories, poems, and interviews. You can probably find at least a few of them lurking in the magazine racks of your local mega-bookstore. I've spotted The Paris Review and Granta at mine, but there are hundreds more! (If you have a well-curated local bookstore you may have a better selection available.) Magazines such as The Sun and Orion feel a bit more magaziney than lit-journaly to me, but they are definitely closer to lit journal status than a magazine such as Good Housekeeping. (These aren't judgement calls, just comparisons to help give you an idea of what a lit journal is.)

Lit journals are perhaps the best-kept secret of the publishing world. This is a shame, because it means that the general public has no idea they even exist. If I told my brother that I was published in The Iowa Review, he would probably congratulate me and then (secretly) think, "Iowa? What the hell's in Iowa? What did she write about? Corn and cows? That doesn't sound very impressive." But if I told my friends from grad school I'd been published there, they would probably congratulate me and then (secretly) think, "The Iowa Review! Bitch! I wanna be in The Iowa Review!"

(For the record, I have not [yet] been published in The Iowa Review. And my friends probably wouldn't really call me a bitch.)

The point is this: What is impressive to other writers may be absolutely meaningless to the general public. But then, this is the way in most fields. I'm sure carpenters and chefs have their own personal milestones, the names of which would impress others in their profession while I'd be clueless as to their importance and clout.

Before grad school I really knew almost nothing about literary journals. I had heard of their existence, but I didn't know what a big part of a writer's life they could (probably should) be. I had no idea I'd end up with lists of them to check out and a spreadsheet to track my submissions to them. Long before authors have a book published (and long after, actually), they usually submit their work to lit journals, and if they're persistent and lucky, they get published in one and then another and then another. If you look at a published collection of essays or short stories, you will probably see that the author has acknowledged the journals that first published some of the pieces. Even excerpts of memoirs and novels can be first published in journals.

In an effort to help spread the gospel of literary journals, I'm starting a new series about them here in The Word Cellar. I'll offer some tips on submitting to journals and review some of the many I have stacked around my house.

Tomorrow I'll link to my first review, which I did as a guest post for Patrick over at The Artist's Road. Patrick is doing a series of journal reviews as well, and we'll be linking back and forth every so often so you can get a feel for a variety of journals.

If you have questions about journals or would like to see me review a particular publication, please let me know.