Updates Winter 2025-26

 The "more to come" my last post hinted at was the publication on December 15, 2025, of my flash fiction "Conflagration Kills Five" in Issue 90 of SmokeLong Quarterly. It was chosen for the 2025 Dark Fantasy/Psychological Thriller submission call and was subsequently nominated by the editors for the Shirley Jackson Award. A huge thank you to editor Christopher Allen for publishing it! I'm very excited to be back in SmokeLong (my story "Bible Camp" was published there in 2011). I did an audio version of the story, and there is also an interview with me about the story by Ashley Jones, who asked me some very interesting questions. An excellent way to ring out the year and welcome the new one!

Updates 2025

A number of exciting creative writing updates for 2025!

My first creative nonfiction piece, "Gin: A Diptych," was published in The Palisades Review in August. Thank you to Editor-in-Chief Mea Cohen for publishing it.

In September, I was honored to present an essay at the Kathryn Davis Symposium at Porter Square Books Boston Edition. Many thanks to Josh Cook for including me along with three other wonderful presenters, Kristen Evans, Maya Sonenberg, and Katherine Hollander. Kelly Link interviewed Kathryn Davis after we presented our essays, and the conversation was delightful. I have never presented an essay on one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite novels, Duplex, while that writer sat in the audience listening. It meant the world to me that she was there to hear it, and that I could speak with her about it afterward. You can read the essay, "Haunted by the Other," and view a recording of the event at the symposium website. What a pleasure not only to meet Davis but also to hang out with fellow dedicated Davis fans! It was a very special night.

The year's not over yet! More to come ...

And next year will bring yet another essay on Shirley Jackson. Stay tuned!

Happy New Year: Updates 2023

 I have been very bad about keeping up this blog. Today, though, a new flash fiction has been published in the journal HAD: "Broken Record." It is my first fiction publication in nearly three years. Many thanks to Aaron Burch for publishing it!

I've also added a few new links on the sidebars: 

• "Broken Record," of course, added to the list of online fiction.
• A link to Kristopher Woofter's edited collection, Shirley Jackson: A Companion, which includes my essay, "Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Secret of the Mother's Desire in The Bird's Nest." The collection was nominated for a 2021 Bram Stoker Award in the category "Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction."
• A link to a recorded panel on Shirley Jackson: A Companion I participated in for the 2021 inaugural symposium, "Reading Shirley Jackson in the 21st Century," organized by Bernice Murphy, Dara Downey, and Janice Deitner of Trinity College Dublin, and featuring editor Kristopher Woofter and fellow contributors Patrycja Antoszek and Emily Banks.

New Updates

 I've added links to recent work published since the last update. Check out the sidebars on the right for the following:

• New articles: one on teaching shell shock and narrative in First World War British fiction and another on literary adaptations of the Grimms' fairy tale "The Juniper Tree" by Peter Straub, Barbara Comyns, and others.
• New fiction online and in print in the journals Lake Effect, Coffin Bell, and Wigleaf.

Forthcoming is an essay in an edited collection on Shirley Jackson coming later this year from Peter Lang. The essay is on the problem of the mother's desire in Jackson's novel The Bird's Nest.

"The Strawberry Festival" in Occulum

My new flash fiction "The Strawberry Festival" is in Issue 2 of Occulum. I love the aesthetic of this journal. Editor Arielle Tipa has gathered a dark constellation of writers around her with these first two issues, and I'm happy to be a small part of it. Here are the first few lines from the story:

It was red through and through. I reached my hand deep in the inner leaves. An ant crawled across my knuckles dragging a broken leg. I tried to help by pulling the leg off, but I broke the ant in half and its two pieces went round and round trying to find each other. Red ones are the sweetest. This one was a little soft in the middle and the sweet was almost rot. I fed a piece to the dead ant.

"Teenage Boy in Polaroids" in New World Writing

My short story, "Teenage Boy in Polaroids," is live at New World Writing. A big thank you to Kim Chinquee for accepting this piece. I'm happy to be in the company of many writers I admire and a lot of excellent work at this magazine.

Here's the opening paragraph:

The teenage boy drove a black Trans Am with an eagle on the hood. He was friends with my babysitter Rita and her friends, and she would invite them over to drink beers and blast David Bowie and T. Rex on my dad’s stereo system. One night the girls raided my parents’ bedroom and dressed me in a wig and a glamorous old gown and painted my face with lipstick and rouge. The teenage boy had long brown hair just like the wig I wore. “Look at us with our lovely locks,” he said, shaking his curls. The girls took Polaroids to show my mom, and the pictures bloomed on the little black squares like oil on rain.

"Science Project" in Atticus Review

Because of summer traveling and, now, the beginning of the semester, I neglected to post that my flash fiction "Science Project" was published in Atticus Review on August 15. Many thanks to Michelle Ross and the team at Atticus. The story began as an exercise written in class during one of the fiction workshops I was teaching a few years ago. (I like to do the exercises I assign along with my students.) I toyed with it a bit. I might even have submitted it to one or two places. But then I put it away, intending to work on it at some later point, and forgot about it. Recently, going back through some old work, I found it and went through it again, sentence by sentence, sharpening the language and strengthening the father-son relationship between the scientist and the boy. It's a satisfying feeling to reclaim and improve old work. I hope you enjoy it.