Amy Marques's beautiful art object/anthology DUETS + 1 is here, with flash reprints and excerpts from so many flash writers I know and admire that I can't list them all here.  I was thrilled when Amy solicited work from me and decided on "Doppler Effect," which originally appeared in MIDWAY JOURNAL. Her art is amazing.

Actually a micro-memoir sequence on teachers' pets, which I just revised, so I'm glad it was the most recent version that was accepted. It will come out in DOES IT HAVE POCKETS? sometime early next year. Love the magazine.

It's gray and blustery today, which I normally wouldn't like, but it's a nice change for the Bay Area and for my thirsty garden (what there is of it). Turning out to be a great day, in fact.

The SmokeLong Grand Micro Contest took reprints as well as original work, and I sent in a few on the very last day. They just announced the long list, which includes one of mine! According to their email, that makes it one of the top 41 out of 1170 entries. It's not new, but I'm pleased nevertheless. The micros are still being judged anonymously, so I won't supply the title yet.

What a great Prose Garden reading yesterday! My reading starts at 29:07 on the linked YouTube video, but it's worth listening to the whole reading! There were a lot more people than you can see in this screenshot. So many flash luminaries read: on the top row, Francine Witte to my left, Meg Pokrass, Mary Grimm, and Cheryl Pappas to my right. next row down: Kathryn Silver-Hajo, Kat Gonso, Lynn Mundell, Pamela Painter, Jeff Friedman. And on the far left of the third row, my associate editor at CRAFT, Shara Kronmal. Lots of great flash writers in the audience too.

Back when I was hired as the first CNF editor at CRAFT, they were brainstorming about adding classes to our offerings. I was hoping I might get to teach something, but the parent organization ended up developing an online program for all their magazines with outside teachers. Now something better has landed in my lap. I won't say more about the invitation until it's realized, but it's exciting. Probably more work than I expect, but pretty ideal. (Note: I had a five-out-of-five star horoscope in the newspaper today. )

Pleased to be reading in Meg Pokrass and Francine Witte's PROSE GARDEN reading series on November 16.

​Register here to attend (it's free).

Until a few minutes ago, this was a pretty bad weekend. Pre-election anxiety. Really intense pre-election anxiety. No outcome to the election would surprise me at this point. Then a conflict at work over the kind of issue that really pushes my buttons. Then, when that was resolved, the most colossal technological mistake I've made at work (accepting changes in Google docs that the author hadn't seen yet), requiring quite a bit of labor from the editor-in-chief and another editor to solve. Just when I was ready to write this off as a particularly shitty weekend, I got an acceptance from Francine Witte, the flash editor at SOUTH FLORIDA POETRY JOURNAL, which despite its name actually publishes great flash. I've been thinking that "The Chair" has had a lot of rejections, but in fact it's had four. Really nothing, but I'm very easily discouraged these days.