It's a really big honor. I've gotten Notables in the past (this is my sixth) but I didn't have a long essay this year and they don't often feature flash. I've preordered BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2020 from my indie bookseller, as I do every year, but it won't be out until early November.

This morning I got up late after a night of insomnia and found a DM on twitter from Genia Blum in Switzerland saying I was on the list for my short segmented lyric essay "Visitations" in GHOST PROPOSAL. It's 1100 words, somewhat fractured and oblique. I never expected this in a million years. Then I got a DM on twitter a couple of minutes later from Nuala O'Connor in Ireland congratulating me. Then I actually got onto twitter and saw that Paul Crenshaw had noticed my name and J.T. Hill's (as well as his own) on the list, and it was a lovely way to learn about it. There's a partial preview of BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2020 with most of the Notable list on Google Books (in German, because Genia sent it to me), but I should have the book in my hands in a week or two.

​I'm floored.

Of course I have two pubs out in the same week, after weeks of having no publications at all.

It's always exciting to place a story in one of the first places you send it, and MENACING HEDGE is a magazine I've long admired. This short story (just a shade over flash length, which I consider 1000 words and under) uses a child’s pov, which is rare for me, but this is a pretty sinister little girl. Here's “Where Did Sissy Go?”