I have a micro in SWEET today: "Ode to My Cat, Ten Years Gone." I've always loved SWEET. It's my fourth publication there, and I love the first three. I wrote this one in a Kathy Fish Fast Flash reunion and set it aside for a long time. I wish I had a picture of our cat Bert to post here!

I thought they would list my other SWEET pubs at the bottom of the page, but they didn't (probably because they're so old). Here they are:
"Summer Siren" and "The Fortuneteller's Words"
"Little Colored Pills"
​I remember the acceptance for the first two so vividly: a personal email from Ira Sukrungruang, sent from his phone (new to me at the time!) saying that both were "remarkable." I was so thrilled!

My interview in American Literary Review seems to be inspiring a lot of responses, despite my fears of self-disclosure, or rather probably because of my fears of self-disclosure. I tagged Sarah Fawn Montgomery and Sejal Shah on Facebook because their own self-disclosures meant a lot to me, and they both responded, and were both interested in Ashley's question about self-care (Ashley Balcazar, my interviewer, is also bipolar), which was cool. A speech counselor who has treated my son's stutter for years wrote to me about the schizophrenic brother she'd been ashamed to acknowledge her whole life. If my own confessions open up the discourse around shame and mental illness just a little bit, then it's worth it. I'm going to talk about Grant Faulkner's substack post on "sharing" tonight in his class (he needed a sub), and I was struck by this insight: “By sharing your stories, I suspect that you won’t find shame—you’ll find enlivening connection. People will appreciate your moxie and your generosity. They’ll applaud you for telling their story, the one they can’t tell themselves.”

I had my writing group critique a new very short story in group yesterday, which was a nice change of pace. Working very methodically through revisions of The Lunatics' Ball in Grant's accountability group, though. That's 3+ hours every M and W, often spilling over into the next day, and I'm excited by the progress I'm making. Worried about variations in voice, which I'll try to deal with once I've finished compiling the manuscript of newly revised pieces. I've been working on the academic voice at least.

Just read proofs for my tiny micro "Ode to My Cat," coming out in Sweet in a week. I should do an mp3 recording (optional), but feel very busy right now, and using Garage Band on my Mac for recordings always involves reinventing the wheel somehow (how to turn off the metronome, for starters!).  I think I can record on my iPhone. Maybe I should try that.

A rejection of a reprint for the UK FlashFlood. Depressing, but since what I sent is so old, not super depressing. It's a big party on Flash Fiction Day with new flash posted every few minutes, and it's fun, but I can celebrate work by others this year. I've been part of it a few times, rejected at least once before, maybe twice. Tons of writers are posting their FlashFlood acceptances on twitter right now, a very few have posted their rejections. I think I've had enough self-disclosure for this week.

Dinner with Lynn Mundell recently and now coffee (actually chai latte) at a nearby cafe with Patricia Bidar and Claudia Monpere.  It is nice to connect with other writers in person!

Unfortunately, I'm wary of going to Sasha Vasilyuk's indoor launches (a party and a bookstore dialogue, both in San Francisco), even though I dearly love her, even though I was there as a member of her writing group for the entire writing of her first novel. Your Presence is Mandatory looks like it will be a hit! Still afraid of covid. Maybe more afraid because of my new heart diagnosis.

I'm about to post my American Literary Review interview, despite misgivings about self disclosure. 

addendum:  Within a very short time, there was a response on twitter from someone I don't know, Rebecca Tiger, saying she was going to teach the interview in her writing class. I looked her up, and Rebecca Tiger teaches at Middlebury College, a flash cnf class that sounds very interesting called "Writing the Sociological Imagination": "In this writing course, students will create flash non-fiction that engages with sociology’s core focus: placing the personal in its social context. We will read texts that explore a variety of approaches to creatively explore the interplay of biography and history and focus on the range of craft elements these authors use."

DOUBLEBACK REVIEW from Sundress Publications does reprints of work originally published in magazines that are now defunct. I was thrilled when they accepted "Doorbells," which is out today, I wasn't sure that folks would read a reprint, but it's getting a lot of responses on twitter. Takes me back to a different era, before my mother died, when I was under more stress than I knew. And also a different era of writing, when I wrote naturally in scenes (even when most of the essay takes place in phone calls). Not sure when that changed or how to change back.

​Here's the cover, with art by Kathleen Harris.

Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante just sent a contract, so that must mean that W.W. Norton approved the inclusion of "The Lunatics' Ball" and my accompanying author's note in their textbook THE LAB: EXPERIMENTS IN HYBRID WRITING. Very exciting to know that my work will be in classrooms! Forthcoming spring 2025.

Last fall a graduate student in Jill Talbot's graduate creative writing workshop interviewed me. It's a pretty frank interview, since she's bipolar and was very curious about that aspect of my writing. She did her research, but she was inspired by her initial reading of "Little Colored Pills" in Jill's class. When we did the interview there was no question of publishing it, but now it's come out in AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW. "Come out" is a good way of putting it, since I'm nervous about putting my bipolar mood disorder out there, and my age out there. But that will be true of the book and I need to get used to it. I like Ashley's title, pulled from the interview: "Creative Nonfiction and Poetic License: An Interview with Jacqueline Doyle."

"Little Colored Pills" will be included in Jill Talbot's forthcoming book from Columbia University Press (where I worked, long ago): ESSAY FORM(S). I'm honored.

Here's the cover of THE PAST TEN: AN ANTHOLOGY, edited by Donald Quist, Kali White VanBaale, and Bailey Gaylin Moore:

I'm not sure who'll be included, but there have been some great contributions to the online Past Ten project. Kathy Fish just announced that she'll be in the anthology, and I love her essay.

Will Woolfitt just posted a reading list of what he's teaching in his class at Lee University and "The Madwoman on BART" is included. He's taught it before. I'm so pleased that he's teaching it again.

I'll be on a Zoom panel of CNF editors visiting Hannah Grieco's advanced creative writing class at The Writer's Center later today. I know I should be thinking about what it is that we look for in CNF at CRAFT, but I find the answer difficult so I'm postponing my thoughts, hoping that ad libbing will work.