Many thanks to the HEREKEKE Artist Residency in Lama, NM, where I have been for the last few weeks. This was my first artist residency and it broke me open in totally unexpected ways. I hope to one day be able to provide the kind of support and welcome to other artists that I have received here.
Thanks to the internet, I found out that my essay “Pergelation” made the Best American Essays 2019 Notable list.
“Pergelation” won the Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest judged by Leslie Jamison last fall, and I’m glad that it’s getting some love and has been included on this list. This is my first time getting a “Best American” mention.
I was lucky enough to attend two writing workshops last month: the Tin House Summer Workshops in Oregon, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee.
Tin House Summer Workshop – Short Fiction Team van den Berg
Sewanee Writers’ Conference – Livesey/Kenan Workshop
It was a lot to go to both workshops in one month, but it was the best kind of a lot, and I’m grateful for both of these opportunities. Thank you to my partner and my coworkers for supporting me in taking the time, and thank you to all of the wonderful writers I met.
I have a short essay published in the Table Talk section of Threepenny Review, Issue 158. You can purchase a copy online here.
A year ago I found a published collection of Threepenny‘s Table Talk essays and read them cover to cover. It’s such an honor to have my own Table Talk essay published now by such an amazing literary magazine.
My short essay – “We are your doctors, and this is the aftermath of idealism” – is about burnout and my frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system. It is a story of working in primary care, but it is not the story of working in primary care.
Wendy Lesser sent me a card and I danced in the post office with fangirl happiness:
My essay “On Culture Shock” has been published in LOST Magazine, Issue 6.
“On Culture Shock” is an essay I wrote during my first week back home after a year spent in Madrid as an undergraduate student in 2006. The photos accompanying the essay were also taken by me.
LOST is a Shanghai-based, multinational, bilingual magazine. This is the first time my writing has ever been translated.
“Bargains,” a short story that won the Pacifica Literary Review’s 2018 Fiction Contest, has been chosen as a Finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction.
The story will be (re)published in The Lascaux Prize 2019 anthology later this year.
I’m so grateful to all of the editors, readers, and judges at both PLR and The Lascaux Review for supporting my writing.
Congrats to all of the other Lascaux Prize finalists, and especially to the winners!
I’m thrilled that my short story “Do No Harm,” published by Monkeybicycle, has been selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019.
It’s such an honor to be part of this amazing list of stories.
The anthology will be published in the fall.
My story “Understanding Book Use and Its Impact on You” has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine.
I drafted this story during a slow shift at an urgent care, in which I alternated between reading the clinic’s drug treatment pamphlets and compulsively checking the hold queue on my online public library account between patients.
You should know that I screen BAST-10 positive.
You can read the story online here.
Here’s my annual list of the books I’ve been reading. If you’ve read any of these and want to chat about them, please email me! Likewise, if there are books you think I should read, let me know. Sometimes I write short reviews over on my Goodreads page.
This year I’ve put ** next to my absolute favorites.
Selected 2018 Reading (by genre, then alphabetical by author/editor last name)
Fiction:
Nonfiction Books/Essays:
Single-author short story Collections:
Lit Mags:
Poetry:
Zines/Chapbooks
Visual Art & Graphic Novels
My essay “Pergelation” won the Blue Mesa Review’s 2018 Nonfiction contest, judged by Leslie Jamison.
You can now read “Pergelation” and a lot of other great writing in Issue 38 of the Blue Mesa Review. Download the entire issue (it’s beautiful!) and read it here.
Margaret Adams 