some year-end thank yous

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The year started inauspiciously, with my first case of COVID (requiring quarantine in Scotland) and then an emergency root canal in January. It could only improve after that. 
 
I’m proud to have been awarded another Notable Essay listing in Best American Essays this year, for my essay “Cutting Edge,” published in Permafrost. I’m particularly pleased that a hybrid essay written for my WIP The Lunatics’ Ball was chosen for this honor.
 
I made good progress on The Lunatics’ Ball (despite often feeling I was at a standstill). Both of the longform essays that I published this year are part of the collection, both in dream publications. In addition to other flash, I also published two flash from The Lunatics’ Ball in wonderful journals with particular interest in hybrids.
 
Deep thanks to the following journals for publishing my work in 2023:
 
Creative Nonfiction:
EPOCH
Pinch
 
Longform Fiction:
Five South
Bulb Culture Collective
 
Flash Fiction, Flash Nonfiction, Hybrids
Ellipsis Zine
Centaur (nominated for Best of the Net) 
Midway Journal
jmww
Fictive Dream
FlashFlood Journal
 
Deep thanks also to the editors of these anthologies and craft books for publishing (and/or discussing) my work in 2023:
 
Awakenings, edited by Diane Gottlieb (ELJ Editions)
The Art of Brevity by Grant Faulkner (University of New Mexico Press)

​I read twice in the Rolling Writers reading series in San Francisco, now relocated from the Rolling Café to Jon Sindell’s beautiful garden in the Outer Sunset, and also in the FBomb NY Flash Fiction Series (relocated from the KGB Bar in Manhattan to Zoom) and the new online series Prose Garden, curated by Francine Witte and Meg Pokrass. 
 
A number of writers have taught my works in their classes this year. I enjoyed my Zoom visit to Kathryn Kulpa’s Cleaver workshop on flash collections. I also enjoyed being interviewed by a student in Jill Talbot’s graduate seminar “B(l)ending Genre: Fiction and Nonfiction” at the University of North Texas.
 
I was privileged to interview Sarah Fawn Montgomery for CRAFT. I published craft essays on Adrienne Rich (in Adrienne Koesters’ series) and on Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” (in the Scratch Classics series). 
 
It was such a joy to work as the Creative Nonfiction Section Editor for CRAFT. I’m always sorry that we have to turn down so many excellent submissions, but I’m very proud of the wonderful longform creative nonfiction and flash nonfiction that we published in 2023. I’m also very gratified that we earned another Notable Essay listing (this one for Beth Kephart’s stellar essay “Thieves”). We have only been publishing creative nonfiction for three years, and “Thieves” is our fourth Notable Essay.
 
I want to thank all of the editors who have believed in my work this year; the fellow writers who have encouraged me in my writing groups and on social media; the Editor-in-Chief and my editorial assistants and freelance readers at CRAFT; and the writers who have trusted CRAFT with their work. I appreciate all of you beyond words.
 
Wishing you a healthy, happy, productive new year.
 
 
 
[Photo of manual typewriter with thank you typed in multiple languages by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash]