I received some nice news this week. Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, a highly respected online literary journal, chose my personal essay “Lifeguard” as one of the best pieces published by the journal over the previous year. The introduction to…
Summer…sort of
It’s the last week of July, the end of an official heatwave (three days of 90+ degree temperatures in a row), and for me the summer has just begun. I’m down to just two official jobs until I start teaching…
Submitting, submitting
I’m slowly getting back into the swing of things. I am THISCLOSE to finishing my new fiction short story — I’m doing the final line edits. I also submitted my last short story to two more publications this morning. The…
Where Have I Been (Literally and Figuratively)?
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a blog post. There are a few reasons for that. In practical terms, I’ve been busy. After the semester ended in early May, I began interviewing for a new part-time job. It…
Thinking about and writing short stories
College semesters seem, at the same time, to pass quickly and last forever. As I’ve caught up on regular life during spring break this week, I’ve taken stock of the fact that the students in my undergraduate class have read,…
The World of Short Stories
Today I’m rising up after two days of food poisoning to teach a class on the Raymond Carver story “Tell the Women We’re Going.” There has to be a story within a story there somewhere.
Dead Man’s Path
I’ve just started teaching a literature course on “The Short Story,” and short fiction is fast becoming one of my favorite reading choices. Today we read “Dead Man’s Path” by well-known Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The story describes a young,…
A new fiction story during a turbulent time
It’s been difficult to focus on much during this chaotic period in our country’s history. Every day seems to bring divisive and disturbing news. I’ve found myself retreating from the Internet to a certain extent in order to maintain some…
The teaching semester comes to an end
It’s been a while since my last post. I got caught up in the work involved in teaching two creative writing courses at Lasell College during the fall semester. Admittedly, my own writing suffers when I teach (and do the…