Category: Publishing News

I’m tickled that “Snappily Ever After” will be in the Improbable Press anthology, Anna Karenina Isn’t Dead, which imagines better endings for women who have been ignored, vilified, or otherwise mistreated in literary works. My piece, “Snappily Ever After,” is a series of limericks about maligned females in fairy tales and classic children’s books. While the submission calls for prose, and these rewrites are technically poems, they can be read as micro-fiction, or very short stories. The anthology will be published in 2023. Learn more at Improbable Press, a London publisher featuring books about “everyone and anyone from whom we don’t hear enough.” Read about my other short fiction in SHORT STORIES.

I’ve been named a finalist in the Black Lawrence Press 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award contest for my story collection Women, Working. See the list of finalists and semi-finalists. About the book: The fourteen stories collected in Women, Working dramatize women’s ongoing fight to balance work and family, intimacy and independence, tradition and progress. Spanning two centuries, the narratives highlight a forward march impeded by social upheaval, physical and psychological assault, and patriarchal resistance. The women — including an 1820 mill worker, a 1911 Triangle fire survivor, a Depression packhorse librarian, a chicken catcher in feminism’s early days, a contemporary trucker — are notably different, yet they share an unsinkable spirit, unflagging determination, and unwavering peer support. Read more about each piece in SHORT STORIES. The winner will be announced in the coming weeks. Wish me luck!

Thanks to the 35th annual Ann Arbor Jewish Book Festival for hosting an event with seven local authors on November 13, 2022, including me reading from One Person’s Loss. The receptive crowd of 60 attendees enjoyed free bagels and presentations on a diverse range of books. Read more about my book in NOVELS.

As Halloween approaches, I’m chilled that my first ghost story, “Famine,” will be published in the CultureCult Magazine haunted house anthology HAUS. In “Famine,” a single mother of Irish descent, worried how she’ll feed her daughter in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse, is visited by the ghosts of two immigrants who lived in her Bronx apartment: one whose daughter died in 1847 during the Irish potato famine and another who came with her daughter in 1970 during The Troubles. Given how I strive to “nail the ending” in my writing, I was especially gratified when the editor wrote, “The last line brought me to tears.” Read more in SHORT STORIES.

Thanks to Booksweet in Ann Arbor for hosting a wonderful event on October 21, 2022 that featured four local authors, including me reading an excerpt from One Person’s Loss. Thanks as well to the audience for their warm reception and thoughtful questions, and to my fellow authors — vegan cookbook writer Vicki Brett-Gach, and poets Jihyun Yun and Frances Kai-Hwa Wang — for their wise and funny words. Read more about my book in NOVELS. Support independent bookstores in your own community. They’re an irreplaceable asset. Why writers write: “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn” (Anne Frank). Why writers read: “Reading brings us unknown friends”(Honoré de Balzac).

The one-a-day micro-fiction journal 50 Give or Take published another of my stories, “Accidentally,” words to ponder for those who ask, “What is she waiting for?” October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, first declared in 1989. Sign up to receive and submit your own ultra-short stories, free, at 5o Give or Take.

I’m happy to announce that 50 Give or Take has published another piece of my micro-fiction, “What’s in There?”. I dedicate this work to all older siblings, although I happen to be a younger sib.

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout is due out on September 20, 2022, the same day that my new book One Person’s Loss will be published. Strout’s previous novel, Oh, William! was released on October 19, 2021, the same day as my last book, The Great Stork Derby! A recent New York Times “What to Read” profile says that the 66-year-old Strout has hit her stride and is on a roll. Ditto the 75-year-old Ann S. Epstein!

My creative nonfiction essay “Riley and Lucille” will appear in the Winter 2022 issue of The Blue Mountain Review, published by The Southern Collective Experience. Written on the eve of surgery to save my right eye, “Riley and Lucille” ponders how my habit of naming ailing body parts is a tool to confront, communicate, laugh about, and adapt to the physical challenges of aging. I’ll post the link when the essay is published. Read more in MEMOIR.