Erased

A couple years ago--my first year teaching here at Knox--I received a story from a student in my Beginning Fiction class that kind of blew me away. Students have done this since then, of course--blown me away with stories--but this may have been the first time it happened.

Not long after that, I received an email from the student letting me know that her story--the one she'd turned in to me in class--had been accepted for publication at Fantasy Magazine.

Now, after a little bit of a wait, it is available online.

You can check it out here.

And if you're someone who may be deterred by the fact that the story's been published in a magazine devoted to fantasy--this is very much a fantastical story, more akin to Aimee Bender than anything else. I really think you should go and read it. Elena's an exceptionally talented writer, and I'm thrilled to see her publish her first story.

Amy Hempel...

in a cool, two-minute video, can be found here.

Rail City

My story "Rail City" is keeping excellent company in the latest issue of 5_Trope.

You can view the full table of contents here.

And my story, a kind of ode to the trains in Galesburg, can be found here.

Ellisville

This morning, J.C. and I drove to Ellisville for the Sassafras Festival. We ate ham and beans and drank sassafras tea and took a few photos. Here are a couple of them:

Key West

J.C. and I went to Key West back in December, and I've been slow to upload the photos. Here are a few:


Hemingway's writing spot.


A pier, from the booze cruise.


Me, on the booze cruise.

Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction

Matt Bell says everything you need to know about Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction in the post* you will find yourself at if you click anywhere on this text. Go ahead. Do it.

And as a side note, Mr. Bell has been updating his blog quite frequently lately. Whenever I feel like I'm on top of things in the literary world, I check Matt's blog when he's updating and quickly realize I know nothing. But he always sends me in the right (and some very cool) direction.

*He mentions my name in the post, but ignore that; it's not the reason I'm sending you over his way. For reals.

Brevity

This is the third week of spring term, and I'm teaching Beginning Nonfiction for the first time. Prepping for the course, I was fairly stressed out. New preps always require more work, of course, but there was something so daunting to me about teaching a class called "Beginning Nonfiction." The possibilities seemed practically endless, and I wanted to cover as many topics in our ten-week term as I could. Eventually, I narrowed what we would cover down and so far am happy with how things are going.

Last week, I used two different packets consisting of pieces of creative nonfiction and craft essays from the always fantastic Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

Included were the following excellent essays:

"Nine Days" by Suzanne LeFetra

&

"The Sloth" by Jill Christman

as well as the following craft essays, which I also loved:

"On Miniatures" by Lia Purpura

&

"Nonfiction is Translation" by Brian Goedde

The Sun

Exciting, amazing, wonderful, (etc.) news: My story "Especially Roosevelt" appears in the April 2008 issue of The Sun Magazine.

The story isn't excerpted online, but you can check me out in the table of contents here.

This issue, like pretty much every issue of The Sun, has a lot to offer, so I encourage you all, if you're so inclined, to seek it out.