A Saturday night surprise: an acceptance of a cnf flash at AQUIFER: THE FLORIDA REVIEW ONLINE. A great magazine and I'm really thrilled. (Also: I just sent it a week ago and expected to wait much longer for a reply.)

Great reading at The Sycamore in The Mission tonight. Steve and I were later than we wanted to be, but we found parking immediately, and seats. I was the first reader and really enjoyed reading "The Woman Who Shot Mussolini." Sasha Vasilyuk (who was the featured reader and invited me to participate) was wonderful as ever, in the final appearance of her US book tour for YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY. (Next: Italy and France.) Olga Zilberbourg read a great story about a minor character in a Russian novel. Caryn Cardello and Monica Nolan were there (Monica came after work and unfortunately was too late to hear me or Olga, but it was great to catch up with her). A fine showing of Leporines from years gone by and the present! Loved the other readers.

First time I've read unpublished work in a reading. I guess I'm gaining confidence.

Excited to be reading in The Racket's series at The Sycamore in the Mission District on July 25 at 7pm. Sasha Vasilyuk is the headlined reader; other subsidiary readers include Lee Kravetz, Yalitza Ferreras, Olga Zilberbourg, Rita Chang-Eppig. Here's the first publicity:

​And I just got an acceptance for Rolling Writers Fall, Jon Sindell's reading and music series in the Outer Sunset. The reading will be on September 8, 3pm. Since it's in his gorgeous garden and there's limited space, it will be by invitation only. His readings are always packed.

I've got my readings picked out for both. One I've read before, two I've never read before, one that hasn't been published (a first for me). Looking forward to them!

A million people I know are doing SmokeLong Summer, and Kim Magowan just told me that my flash "Little Darling" was part of this week's prompt. Which is cool to hear. Patricia Bidar found it for me, and the prompt is from Jasmine Sawers, about "Character Agency in Tragedy: Outside Forces." An interesting context for that story, where a composite of young girls are claiming agency that they didn't have. There are some nice comments from participants, and I love getting new readers.

I haven't gotten into Wigleaf since they published "Little Darlilng" (they've had a flash of mine since last October) and I've never gotten into SmokeLong Quarterly (I very rarely send anything). Two goals for the future, I guess, though flash isn't really my bag these days..

I've barely been to any in-person readings because of COVID, but I went to Babylon Salon to hear my friend Sasha Vasilyuk recently, because it took place on a semi-open patio at The Sycamore in the Mission. Now Sasha will be the featured reader for The Racket at the same place, Thursday, July 25, 7pm, and has invited me to be one of the subsidiary readers. Looking forward to it!

Another heart procedure, a lengthier one, on July 1, but surely I will be recovered three weeks later. Fingers crossed.

A completely unexpected honor: my hybrid piece "(Parenthetical Asides)" (hybrid but more cnf than fiction) made the longlist for the WIGLEAF TOP 50 (VERY SHORT) FICTIONS! Very grateful to Lynn Mundell who solicited work from me for the inaugural issue of her hybrid journal CENTAUR. I don't think I would have sent my strange bird out otherwise, figuring it was too unusual to fly. Part of THE LUNATICS' BALL, as was my previous longlisted flash "The Madwoman on BART." A good sign for my WIP, which I'm steadily revising. It's the third time I've made the Wigleaf longlist, but it's been a long while.

BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS has always come out in November, but everything's different with the new series editor. Today I got a notice that I could preorder this year's. It has a snazzy new cover (after years of identical covers in different colors). The procedure for Notables has become radically less democratic: writers can no longer nominate themselves, in fact you can only be nominated by someone who's already been published in BAE. I'm sure that simplifies the procedure for the editors, and reduces the number of nominations, but it obviously favors writers with connections and perpetuates a certain kind of elite—writers with MFAs and other privileges that many of us don't have. I've had nine Notables and I wonder whether that will be the end of them. I just finished editing "Cross-Stitching" for the book last night. Since it appeared in EPOCH, a very prestigious journal, and they publish lots of extremely well-known essayists, my chances of the magazine nominating "Cross-Stitching" for BAE are reduced. Fingers crossed that it makes a Notable somehow anyway. I really like the essay and haven't published something that substantial since. I'm holding onto my LUNATICS' BALL essays, just working on them for the book. "Cinderella at the Lunatics' Ball" next (similarly substantial, but one I didn't send out). Making slow and steady progress.

Signed a contract for the PAST TEN anthology, and they will have a launch reading at AWP next spring in LA. Steve and I are planning to go, for the first time in ages.

My heart procedure on Tuesday was apparently a success. No blockages found: They say I have "beautiful arteries"! Next up will be a harder one, the ablation, originally scheduled for May 10, then postponed for this and not rescheduled yet.

I wasn't supposed to type after my procedure (in fact the first day my wrist was in a splint; the entry point for the catheter to my heart on my wrist still hasn't healed). Steve took me on a day trip to the coast to keep me away from the computer. The sun came out later, but the gray day was beautiful too. 

I love Kathy Fish's newsletter the "Art of Flash Fiction." Today's lesson, complete with discussion, prompt, and examples is on "perhapsing" and she used my tiny speculative micromemoir "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" as one of her examples. Thrilled to death. It was nice to wake up to an email from the writer Mikki Aronoff letting me know.

Ashley Balcazar, who interviewed me about my CNF for American Literary Review, just read THE MISSING GIRL and had some nice things to say about it on Facebook: "That one will stick with you long after you finish it." When I thanked her and said it was very different from my CNF, she elaborated: "It was such a chillingly beautiful read. It's definitely different than the creative nonfiction I read, but it still feels very much true to your themes of breaking silences and recovering lost voices. I love the second-person perspective and the way it challenges prevailing narratives about violence against women. And I just started working on a lesson on polyphony for my fall class. I want to introduce my students to 'My Blue Heaven!'"

Struggling with revisions for the chapter on the federal asylum for Native Americans; I've had the separate segments laid out on the dining room table for a few days now. I thought I was stalled, but I've had a few ideas at odd moments, so the problem may be gestating in my unconscious. Yesterday I read over the chapter on serial murderer Lizzie Halliday,  who absolutely obsessed me when I wrote about her. That chapter went through more revisions than any other.

​I'm fascinated by this picture, and this newspaper clip as well. Lizzie was suspected of Jack the Ripper's murders ( and may have fomented that suspicion, while also denying it). And who are these women she claims had been dismembered and thrown into the Hudson? I couldn't find any evidence for them.

​After I spent several hours grappling with a revision of my segmented, braided Lunatics’ Ball essay on the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians yesterday, I ended up printing out eighteen separate segments and laying them out on the dining room table this morning. The revision feels impossible, but of course it’s possible. The braid on Ghost Dancing is out of sync chronologically with the braid on the asylum and two of the inmates. Some readers have been confused not only by the alternating timelines but also by the origin of the Ghost Dancing passages. (Are they my prose? Yes.) With no first-person narrator in this one, I’m not sure how to fix that. The chapter is in the “Dear Doctor” section, and the first seven pages are about the doctor who ran the asylum. I need to get to the two female inmates earlier. It’s another of those fact-laden chapters where I lapse into academic prose. Somehow the problems feel insurmountable.
 
I also read a beautifully written, segmented profile of Clara Schumann on the Electric Literature site yesterday and wondered why I can’t seem to marshal my facts as well.
 
So I was particularly thrilled to see Will Woolfitt post his “Ten Best Essayists” list on twitter, with my name heading the list!
 
Jacqueline Doyle
Joanna Eleftheriou
Kathryn Neurnberger
Naomi Shihab Nye
Alejandra Oliva
Jen Soriano
Jessie van Eerden
Nicole Walker
Mandy-Suzanne Wong
Amy Wright
 
I really needed the encouragement today.

Also a nice push: I've been in Grant Faulkner's "accountability group" for several weeks now. Every Monday and Wednesday from 5-7 pm we meet mostly just to write, with a breakout group for a few minutes at the end. It has me tackling revisions I was very reluctant to approach, like the chapter yesterday. I'm working more methodically, making progress.

More complications with my heart procedure, which requires another heart procedure first, so everything needs to be rescheduled. I'd hoped to have it all completed by this weekend, but that's not happening.