The newest issue of A-MINOR MAGAZINE is out, with my lyric microflash sequence “Five Rivers in Hades.” I love hybrids and lyric prose (magazines like HOTEL AMERIKA, CHEAP POP, THREADCOUNT) and I’ve always loved A-MINOR, which is partial to “surrealist, experimental and quirky writing,” and has published so many writers I admire (just for a start, Meg Tuite, Robert Vaughan, Ethel Rohan, James Claffey, Scott Garson, Christopher Allen, J. Bradley, Jen Knox, Michelle Elvy, Molia Dumbleton, Ross McMeekin, Sam Rasnake). Thrilled to be included among them.
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It’s out! My first flash of the year is online at the #sideshow at FIVE:2:ONE, a refuge for the “weird” and “weirdly fantastic.” Some of my favorite flash writers have appeared in the #sideshow: Jayne Martin, Gay Degani, A.E. Weisgerber, Christopher Allen, J. Bradley, Clio Velentza, Christina Dalcher, Paul Beckman. You should definitely roam their archives. To begin your journey, here’s my surreal through-the-looking-glass flash “After the Rabbit.”

FIVE:2:ONE has a wonderful sparkly .gif that I don't know how to reproduce, so here's the Mad Hatter's tea party.

Hooray! Midway Journal nominated "Zig Zag" for BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2018! I don't see anything like my three flash in this year's anthology, but who knows.

Another great acceptance! My nonfiction flash "Checkmate" was just accepted by Michelle Elvy at BLUE FIFTH REVIEW / BLUE FIVE NOTEBOOK, a very cool zine that's published wonderful flash writers like James Claffery, Kathryn Kulpa, Claire Polders, Tara Isabel Zambrano, Nod Ghosh, Ingrid Jendrzejewski.

BLUE FIFTH REVIEW has been around for seventeen years, a long life for an online zine, and is named for the third blue note, the blue fifth, that Thelonious Monk spent his life looking for on jazz piano.

Here's art by Allen Forrest from their latest issue, "Blues Folks."

One of my very rare poems was included in a wonderful poetry anthology from Grayson Books: FORGOTTEN WOMEN. The book was just named the year's best poetry anthology in an end-of-the-year roundup at the Washington Independent Review of Books. Here's what they said:

Forgotten Women: A Tribute in Poetry, edited by Ginny Lowe Connors, introduction by Marilyn Kallet. Grayson Books. 191 pages.
It’s not so much that the poems are about women unknown or unsung – the book’s beauty is because there’re so many women we simply forget to honor – and these poems do that. There are also women figures not famous, maybe family members, in poems by such notables as Rita Dove and Ted Kooser. This book is a treasure chest of great poems; it just happens to be about women known and unknown. There’s more talent in this book than stars in a jar, multiple voices representing the best of human values – each poem chosen is a well-made thing about a notable female. There’s nothing we can’t do with words, like bringing to life Susan Erickson’s POW Nurses of Bataan or Maria Mazziotti Gillan’s women in the factory ‘where my mother worked;’ or Vivian Shipley’s Radium Girls. The book is divided into sections: Hard Work; Unknown to the World, the World to Someone; In the Shadows of Their Men; Making Herstory; Happy Is How I’ll Look. I learned a lot about these women I should have known. And we love the book’s epigraph, said by Ann Richards: “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

​I loved the premise of the collection, which explores the lives of exemplary writers, artists, musicians, scientists, workers, housewives who have been forgotten. (My poem centered on the women behind the well-known New England Transcendentalists.) There are so many great poets in the anthology! I'm glad to see it get some recognition. 

Black Lawrence Press editors Kit Frick and Diane Goettel nominated two of my flash in THE MISSING GIRL for BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2018, guest edited this year by Aimee Bender. I'm so grateful! 

They also nominated two prose poems, from Jenny Irish's COMMON ANCESTOR and Carol Guess and Daniela Olszewska's HUMAN-GHOST HYBRID PROJECT. I ordered both books a while back and LOVE both of them. I'm fascinated by the prose poem, and wonder at what point what I'm calling lyric flash (some of my favorite flash) crosses the boundary between prose and poem. 

BEST SMALL FICTIONS is only in its third year, but it's well known among flash writers, a really good anthology. I won't hold my breath, but I have my fingers crossed.

I'd forgotten that I'd even entered the Soul-Making Keats Contest, sponsored by American Pen Women, since it was a while ago. It was my first time entering this national contest, coordinated here in the Bay Area. I sent entries in three categories, and today I learned that I won something in all three! In Memoir/Vignette (up to 1500 words) I have a first place essay and an honorable mention. In Creative Nonfiction I have a second place essay and an honorable mention. In Flash Fiction I have a second place flash story. Hooray!

​There are cash prizes for the second and first place wins. And there will be an awards ceremony and reading on Sunday, March 4, 1pm, Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, Civic Center. Looking forward to seeing the poet Kathleen McClung (judge for the sonnet category) and other area writers. The last time I was in Koret Auditorium was when Steve got an American Book Award for his second book, which was very exciting.

In the last couple of weeks I've placed two of my weirder flash: one on Bosch's painting of the crucifixion of a bearded female saint at JELLYFISH REVIEW, and today, my first acceptance of 2018, a surreal Alice in Wonderland flash at the very cool online #sideshow at FIVE:2:ONE. I've gotten some well-meaning advice about revising this particular flash from editors, but I was attached to it just the way it is. I'm glad to find editors that agree. FIVE:2:ONE called it "rad." They've published a lot of writers that I adore, and they specifically call for the "weird" on their submissions page:

"FIVE:2:ONE believes that weird is dangerously close to being the coolest thing in the world! But, you may ask yourself what is weird? How did I get here? Well, the quirky is weird. Visual, concrete, conceptual, language, flarf, found poems, hybrid / cross genre audio poetry is weird and we adore that. Experimental and non narrative fiction is weirdly fantastic and we adore the hell out of that too, collage, surreal and experimental visual arts are weird too (so you get the idea) we like that as well. We also love pop culture references in anything because that’s weird and we like that too. Alright, so we like weird but also want works that explode with emotions. We want essays and manifestos full of life. We aren’t all serious here at F2O; not at all we want to laugh too. Send us your humor pieces, comics and political art . Send us philosophical works, scientific, political works. We want mad science in our stories, poems, art and essays. Show us something that nobody else has done. Basically, send us your most on point and dank af babies."

Always great to find just the right home for a piece.