Some Wee Good News

77º ~ cloud cover & cool breezes ahead of the rain we've been promised


I think it is safe to announce this here, since it's already on Gazing Grain Press' blog.  A chapbook version of manuscript #2, The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths, is the runner-up for Gazing Grain's 2013 feminist chapbook contest.  Cathy Park Hong selected my work, mostly my Midwest fairy tales combined with my handful of saints, as runner-up to Meg Day's, We Can't Read This.  I'm thrilled!

As the runner-up, the chapbook won't be published, but I've been invited to read alongside Meg Day on Sunday, 22 September 2013, in Fairfax, VA, during Fall for the Book!  Wahoo.  I think at least one of the poems will also be produced as a "miniature" through Gazing Grain Press and I'll have an interview on their website.

Many, huge thanks to Cathy Park Hong and all the folks at Gazing Grain.  I confess, the name of the press caught me first (in The Writer's Chronicle or on CRWROPPS), and then their feminist focus held my attention.  I can't wait to meet everyone in September!

As many of you know, in May, I decided to chop up manuscript #2 into three chapbooks.  I sent the fairy tales & saints to GGP because it seemed such a perfect fit and it had a June deadline.  I have held off sending out the chaps anywhere else, because sometime in June, I learned that mss. #2 has one more chance at success, having made it to the final round at a publishing company I'm not allowed to name (so please don't ask in the comments or by email).  If mss. #2 finds a home there I will be delirious b/c it is a press that does all of the things I've been hoping for / asking for in my posts about the state of poetry publishing today, and I adore their mission.  If mss. #2 doesn't find a home there, then I'm ready to overwhelm the chapbook publishers of the world with these three new versions.

Thanks to you all, as well, for reading along and offering up such great support along the way.