2020 was a year spent on Zoom that felt like five years spent on Zoom. There were some big changes. In March, when the shelter-in-place started in California, my creative writing workshop at Cal State East Bay abruptly shifted to online. In June, I retired after thirty years of university teaching. In July, I started a new job as Creative Nonfiction Editor at CRAFT. Now it’s December and I still haven’t moved out of my university office, indeed have barely ventured out of the house, except for curbside pickups at the local library and local bookstore. I’ve read in a number of Zoom events, and attended more Zoom readings and Zoom meetings than I can count. My wonderful bimonthly San Francisco writing group The Leporine Conspiracy has carried on via Skype. 2020 has been markedly less prolific for me, but I’m proud that I accomplished anything at all, and met the new challenges of my writing-in-progress and post-teaching career. Many thanks to the magazines that published my work, to my students at Cal State East Bay for adapting to impossible conditions, and to the Editor in Chief Katelyn Keating and editorial team at CRAFT for making my new work such a pleasure. Awards/Nominations Notable Essay, Best American Essays (“Visitations” in Ghost Proposal) Pushcart Nomination from matchbook (“The Madwoman on BART”) Pushcart Nomination from The Disappointed Housewife (“Two Guys Carrying a Toilet into Taco Bell”) Longlist, “Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions” (“The Lost Umbrella” in Pithead Chapel) Best Small Fictions Nomination from Juked (“Framed”) Essays “On Being Told That Her First Husband,” Fourth Genre (print) “Last Medley,” Atticus Review “Madeline’s Trunk,” Passages North (print) Flash and Micros “Prospero’s Last Party,” Yellow Mama “Often During the Pandemic,” Love in the Time of Covid “Gall,” Trampset “End Times,” Dream Journal “Where Did Sissy Go?,” Menacing Hedge “The Madwoman on BART,” matchbook “Lizzie Halliday,” 100 Lives (Pure Slush Books) (print) “Two Guys Carrying a Toilet into Taco Bell,” The Disappointed Housewife “New Shoes,” 50WS: Fifty Word Stories “Sooner or Later,” Little Fiction/Big Truths “What Remains,” The Bending Genres Anthology (print) “Why Indeed,” Fictive Dream “Johnsy Seen Her Too,” Crack the Spine “Butterfly,” the minnesota review (print) Interview “Interview with Joy Castro,” CRAFT Readings I did readings this year with Rolling Writers in San Francisco (my last in-person reading), and via Zoom with Desert Flash in Arizona, Flash Fiction Forum in San Jose, F Bomb Flash Fiction in Manhattan (twice), and A San Franciscan Racket in San Francisco. I hope we see a lot less of Zoom in 2021 and more of each other. Happy holidays and love to you all. Comments are closed.
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