short story contest

Anthology HORIZONS publishes “Pergelation”

The Blue Mesa Review put together a print anthology of previous contributors’ work to display at AWP in Los Angeles this year. They picked ten pieces from 2016 to 2022 and included my essay “Pergelation,” which won the Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest judged by Leslie Jamison in 2018 and went on to be a Best American Essays Notable that year.

“Pergelation” is one of my favorite publications. I worked on it off and on for years, and I kept trying to fictionalize it. Finally, after reading Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, I rewrote “Pergelation” as straight nonfiction, then submitted it to the BMR contest. My hope was that it would be a finalist and she would read it, and I was delighted when it won.

I wish I could have picked up a print copy in person at AWP but I’m happy to have this in my hands now–it’s a beautiful anthology. Thank you to Amy Dotson and the rest of the team for making this book.

Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five

Many thanks to Morgan Talty for choosing my flash fiction story, “Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five,” for the Fractured Lit Anthology 4 Contest. 

The story comes out twice: online today, and in a print anthology which will be published next spring.

It’s always gratifying to be published but it’s especially thrilling to know that one of your writing heroes has read and selected your work. Morgan Talty’s short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, wrecked me so thoroughly, I can remember exactly where I was (in my parents’ house in Maine) when I finished the last story. I can’t wait to read his debut novel, just out with Tin House.

I drafted “Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five” about one year into my first job as a family nurse practitioner. I had awkwardly tried to ask one of my mentors whether or not there was a list of things I should be doing when people shared great traumas with me. I was very new to primary care and was routinely horrified at my own position of authority, and was hoping that medicine, a field which adores algorithms, might have a flowchart for me. My mentor did that thing where you ask for a resource and they reply, what a great idea, why don’t you make one. It was yet another moment of me realizing that medicine was not magic and the guidance I was looking for, if it existed, was not readily available. I also started writing a tongue-in-cheek protocol. The story didn’t grow legs until after I revised it several times over several years, finally leaning into the surreal. Which, on further reflection, is sort of closer to what most medical providers are taught to do: oh, you’re exposed to trauma? Have you tried leaving your body?

Thanks, Fractured Lit. Thanks, Morgan Talty.

Short Story “Troubled Boats” in Prime Number Magazine

My short story “Troubled Boats” has been published in Prime Number Magazine. The story is one of two Editor’s Selections chosen from the finalists for the 2020 Prime Number Magazine Awards.

From the Editors:

The power of attention is both subject and style of “Troubled Boats”: what begins as the tale of a boathouse-slash-rehabilitation center for wayward watercraft becomes an ultimately human story about what it means to be Restless—and restored.

Read the story online here.

Read the announcement here.

Prime Number Magazine is a Press 53 publication, founded by Clifford Garstang and Kevin Morgan Watson in 2010.

Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction Finalist

“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!

2018 Lascaux Prize Short Fiction Contest Results