proofs from passages north

Page proofs from PASSAGES NORTH (print journal coming out next spring) arrived in this morning's e-mail. My essay "Madeline's Trunk" went through some revisions after it was accepted, and the CNF editor left midway through the revisions (I didn't know he'd accepted the first round). It looks like they used the first round and not the second round of revisions. I think it was mostly the end that I changed in the second round, and I was really torn about what to do with it. I'll have to read it carefully today and make a decision. If I go with the second round, I think it just means cutting some sentences, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Really excited to see flash by Dina L. Relles and Matthew Volmer in the PASSAGES NORTH table of contents for the upcoming issue and also a collaborative essay by Jill Talbot and Meghan McClure. I love all of their work, and taught some of Dina Relles' and Jill Talbot's flash in my class this semester.

PASSAGES NORTH is a top magazine (I'm thrilled to have this LUNATICS' BALL essay accepted there) and does a lot of flash (both online and in their print issues) and hybrids as well as straight creative nonfiction. The current issue includes flash by Sean Lovelace and Jad Josey, and an essay by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher (whom I also teach). They do great covers.

Jill Talbot also offered me a very useful critique of "On Being Told Her First Husband" when I submitted it to AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW. The critique inspired me to pare down the level of detail, segment the essay, and sit on it for a year before final edits. I'm sure it wouldn't have been accepted at FOURTH GENRE without those changes. It was very generous of her. (She also knew my work, which was gratifying.)

"Move On Up" is getting tons of praise on Twitter and Facebook. I'm really bowled over. I posted it late last night, so the first responses were from England (and Hungary, my good friend Doris). Lots more pouring in today. I have a lot of flash that's come out all at once. (And "Johnsy Seen Her Too," "Butterfly," "Octopus Dreams," and "The Lost Umbrella" in the next few weeks.) My friend Kathryn Kulpa just solicited me for longer CNF or fiction for the next issue of CLEAVER and I realized that I don't have anything that length. In fact I have hardly anything left that I'm sending out. I've been working hard on revisions for the The LUNATICS' BALL lobotomy piece and might send that somewhere. The other profiles that I'm finishing don't feel like stand-alones, so I'm thinking I'll reserve them for the collection. I think I would have worried once about having nothing in the submissions pipeline, but it actually feels kind of freeing. Submissions are very time-consuming, with lots of disappointments along the way.

The writer and critic Jane Ciabatarri just wrote to me that she will nominate me for a Pushcart for fiction, I will hear from the Pushcart people and be invited to choose several of my pieces to nominate. I've never been nominated for a Pushcart by a former Pushcart contributor before; my nominations have all come from magazines. Elizabeth McKenzie nominated Steve a year or two ago, but it was for a specific essay (in WACCAMAW). I sort of wish it was creative nonfiction, as this year I think that's been better than my fiction. But I'm excited and interested to hear how the process works.

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