Yesterday was quite the literary day for my mailbox: The Sun, Fence, and Poets & Writers all arrived at once. Because I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with work and writing lately, this post will be a short and sweet “Guess the Magazine” contest. You know, if you define “contest” as something that has no prize [...]

A friend left me the following voicemail this weekend: “It’s Saturday at 6:09pm. My guess is that you spent all day working on the house because that’s what people with houses house do all day on Saturdays. But I hope that the real answer is that you did something super glamorous and award-winning and literary.” [...]

I spent the bulk of Saturday at the Hudson Library Ohio Author Day & Book Fair. It was my first book fair and, despite the inherent humiliation in these kinds of things, I enjoyed myself. I got to talk shop with other authors, picked up a few books I can’t wait to read (never mind [...]

I’ve mentioned my “writing tub” before — the plastic bin where I keep old story drafts, critiques, notes, rejections, and more. This weekend I decided to finally get organized and clean the thing out to make room for the stories and essays I’ve written in 2011-2012 instead of, say, 2004. Going through that old stuff [...]

This panel included Kathy Pories, senior editor at Algonquin Books; P.J. Mark, literary agent with Janklow & Nesbit; Rob Spillman, Tin House editor; Elisabeth Schmitz, Grove/Atlantic editor; and Mary Gannon, editorial director of Poets & Writers. This was one of the last sessions I attended at AWP, and I was fairly exhausted at the time. [...]

I attended the AWP session “So Many Submissions, So Little Time: Editors’ Strategies for Equitable and Efficient Submissions Management” to get some ideas for a side project I may be working on in the future, but in the end, this discussion just seemed to drive home how difficult it is to get something (particularly fiction) [...]

Since Living Arrangements was published, I’ve been asked some amusing questions that largely revolve around whether or not certain stories are autobiographical. I’d like to clarify some of them here: No, I have never been a competitive figure skater. Or any kind of figure skater. I do like ice skating (though I can count on [...]

I’ve been pretty busy lately (those cookies won’t bake themselves, and those bottles of Christmas ale won’t drink themselves, either), but I’m finally getting around to posting about my latest lit mag publication. Three Coyotes is a rather new — and quite lovely — journal. My story appears in the second issue (Vol. 1.2, Summer/Fall [...]

My Poets & Writers article “Price of Submission: The Evolution of Reading Fees and Their Cost to the Community” has started some conversations regarding literary magazines submissions, funding, fees, and readership. In The Missouri Review‘s blog post, Why Literary Journals Charge Online Submission Fees, Managing Editor Michael Nye suggests that electronic submission fees might be [...]

First, thanks to everyone for all the supportive and positive comments about my book cover. I appreciate it! In other good news, the November/December 2011 issue of Poets & Writers magazine includes my article, “Price of Submission: The Evolution of Reading Fees and Their Cost to the Community.” (Available in print only.) I spoke to [...]