My latest short memoir piece was just published by Six Hens. This nonfiction story was very difficult to write and even more difficult to think of publishing. Called “Boundaries,” it’s about a time when my boundaries were invaded by someone else–and just at that vulnerable season of puberty.
It’s a glorious spring here in Arizona, so I snapped some pix of what I see outside, just to remind me when I’m inside.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
All of these beauties survived the freezes this winter, with a little help from the humans. Hubby and I covered them with old sheets and freeze cloths every time the temperature dipped.
Starting to write again TODAY. Thanks for the motivation last week!!!
If you like the Arizona landscape, I do have a few poems that touch upon that subject in Doll God. Haha, I haven’t plugged my book in awhile!
Mid-September my story, “Small Solace,” was published inCrack the Spine Issue 163. Some of you read it at that time and those of you who commented helped get me an interview with the journal, so thank you!
The interview was published today. You can find it here.
A big heartfelt thanks go to the editor, Kerri Farrell Foley!
You know how I’m always yammering about poetry and memoir? Well, darned if I didn’t get a short story (fiction!) published today in Crack the Spine. Called “Small Solace,” it’s a little bit weird. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please go to one of the magazine’s sites and post a comment of some sort about it. That’s because they use feedback to determine what pieces go into a print issue and which writers they do a Wordsmith interview on (they only choose one author each issue).
Do you read short memoir? I posted a poll a while back asking about the lit mag reading habits of readers. At that time, I mentioned that I was reading short memoir in back issues of lit mags.
But where can we read short memoir online? I thought I’d make it easy and post a link to a few good magazines that are either online or have a solid online presence–and that publish a lot of memoir.
Hippocampus: go to the Memoir tab and it will pull up a variety of memoir stories
River Teeth’s Beautiful Things column: River Teeth is an esteemed print journal with a column of very short (250 words) pieces
Broad Street Magazine: an online magazine of “true stories”–you need a subscription for a lot of it, but they have links to stories, as well
Lunch Ticket: each issue is completely online–plenty of memoir and other genres
Post Road Magazine: This print journal offers an online sampling of stories and poems from each issue.
AGNI Online: This website is a division of the esteemed print journal AGNI.
Come on, everyone: can we name some other magazines that have online memoir stories?
“When a literary magazine dies,” Christie Taylor asked at Poets & Writers, “what happens to the poems, stories, essays, and artwork that have been published in its pages over the years?” Taylor’s piece profiles The Rookery, “a new digital archive that will house previously published content from defunct print and digital magazines—an ever-growing collection of work that would otherwise be lost.” The enterprise, that launched on June 30th, “will host shuttered magazines in as close to their original form as possible.”
Wow! What an incredible project. Have you ever published a story or poem in a lit mag that subsequently went out of business? What happens to your work? Not much. It’s already been published, so most places won’t take it again. Unless you publish it in a book-length collection or chapbook, the life of your work is over. It’s as if you never wrote it, except for that line on your list of publications.
Check it out for yourself here. Here is the explanation of how it will work to keep old work online:
The Rookery
[digital archive for dying magazines launching 7/30/14]
Dear reader,
This note is regarding a new project we have embarked on: a library on our site for digital journals that are in danger of e-death.
It isn’t cheap to maintain a webspace–and it’s depressing watching year after year as the readership dwindles. We at Literary Orphans know personally the incredible work that goes into each issue. We are wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends and suitors–and we are often artists. To sacrifice years devoted to getting exposure for other people, and have it die in the night, doesn’t seem right to us. We at Literary Orphans cannot offer much, but we can offer The Rookery. A place in which we preserve the archives of digital magazines that have been closed to submissions.
If you are a reader that knows of a favorite journal that might lose/has lost it’s archives, click the link below.
If you are an Editor that can’t afford the webspace to maintain your digital archive, click the link below. THE ROOKERY
How it works is like this–you submit a tip, information on a magazine that has ceased publication and is struggling to keep it’s archives open, and we try and work with the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of that magazine to get the archives loaded to The Rookery,a library hosted here at Literary Orphans. This is NOT just transferring the stories onto LO, this is transferring the entire journal to our webspace. You click on the link to the journal, and bam, you are looking at the journal as you would have on it’s old server. But we want to do more than that. After a careful talk with the EIC of the magazine, we will work to keep the writing within it alive. This may be done in numerous ways–for instance, Literary Orphans Press would love to help the EIC or their deputy design and print a “Best Of Anthology,” to memorialize their writers in print. Or, if you are interested in someone taking up the mantle, we can offer a call-out and help advertise–be the stone that keeps the site in safekeeping until Arthur comes by. Hell, this could mean reprinting pieces of the magazine in LO to draw attention to the archives, so that even though it’s out of publication, readers still get to read the writing. There are literally so many avenues we can go down, but it’s all up to what we work out with the EIC of the magazine.
While we don’t expect to be flooded with submissions, we do need to offer a disclaimer. Transferring the look and feel of a site over to LO takes time, lots of time. The kind of time we all hate to devote weeks to, but do what needs to be done. As a result of this, we cannot accept all applicants, we will need to talk with the EIC to determine if the process is feasible, and that the look and feel of the magazine can be maintained.
In solidarity,
Mike Joyce
Executive Director, Literary Orphans Press
Editor-in-Chief, Literary Orphans Journal
Usually only “somebodies” are interviewed. But The Missouri Review isn’t confined by pedestrian boundaries . Although they are a well-respected and long-running literary magazine, they have a cutting edge attitude. For instance, did you know that they have an audio version of their magazine? This is what they have to say about it:
One of the many innovative ideas we’ve had in recent years was to create an audio version of our magazine. Every issue, our staff, lead by audio editor Kevin McFillen, gets an early uncorrected version of the stories, essays, and poems forthcoming in the next issue. The audio team reads the work and then selects a reader (or “performer”) from the Columbia theater community whose voice best captures the text. They get together in our recording studio, down in the basement of McReynolds Hall (it’s room 54 and, you betcha, we call it Studio 54), and then the audio file is edited for production. Each audio recording is then included in the digital version of The Missouri Review.
Alison Balaskovits, Social Media Editor of The Missouri Review was kind enough to interview me for their blog. I hope you’ll check out the interview (at least to see my new headshot 😉 by the magician Christopher Barr).
After you read it, tell me what you liked best about what you learned about me–or what broke your heart or made you irritated. Insert more smiley faces with winks.
And take a look at TMR’s digital subscription deal, especially if you plan to submit work to them:
The digital edition of our magazine is created by GTxcel. Your subscription is delivered via link to your email address, and then you, as a subscriber, has access to not only read all of the stories, poems, and essays in each issue, but hear them as well. Our art features, in particular, really pop off the screen in the digital version.
One of the best offers we have is our Submit and Subscribe: submit your unpublished work to us and get a one-year subscription to the digital version of The Missouri Review for just $20, which is over fifteen percent lower than the print subscription. It’s a great opportunity to not only send your work to us but also to get a fantastic deal on four issues of our magazine. You can Submit and Subscribe here and, if you’re still not convinced, you can check out a sample of the digital issue.
Most of my friends use some sort of e-book reader. Not all of them, but most. So does my 78-year-old mother. Of course, she also has an iPhone, and I am not yet that advanced.
When I am forced to explain why I don’t have a Kindle, my explanations sound defensive, even lame. I like holding a real book (but hate lugging tote bags full of them). I dislike looking at a screen (but stare at the computer for hours). I have a book collection (which is why I don’t have any shelf space left).
Every so often I start to think it’s time to relent and buy an e-book reader.
In a related subject, I submit my poetry to literary magazines. Increasingly, the magazines are “ezines,” or online versions.
But I love being published in actual magazines. The other day I received my two contributor’s copies from The Antigonish Review. They accepted my poem “Vintage Doll Buggy,” and they even paid me for it. I waved the check under my husband’s nose to prove poetry pays, whereupon he laughed so hard he started choking.
When I pulled the copies out of the envelope and held them in my hands, I knew why I am reluctantly to turn this business over to the virtual world. The heft and weight of the books in my hand proved their existence. They couldn’t be ignored or clicked away. They are a near living artifact of the poems and stories inside. My poem is one of many, and it represents hours of toil and years of living. If the poem isn’t in an actual book or magazine, does it really exist or does it fade out of the mind? Is it “over” too quickly?
I’m going to hold off on getting an e-book reader. I’ll get an iPhone first.
