Photo by Audrey Fretz on Unsplash
This month marks the ten-year anniversary of my first published piece, “Flight.” I will never, ever forget when Literary Mama accepted that story—I was over the moon. It was the writerly breakthrough I needed and kicked off a ten-year streak of publishing my fiction and essays in some truly wonderful magazines.
A decade is a long time, and although many of the magazines I’ve appeared in are still going strong (including Literary Mama!), several have folded. In the last year alone I’ve taken down seven links that led to defunct websites.
The good news is my stories belong to me, and there’s more than one way to make them available to you. One of my goals for 2022 was to add audio of me reading these orphaned pieces on my website. And then I thought, well, why not video too? So here they are!
I started with the four prose poems I lost when Mothers Always Write shut down a few months ago. Next, I hope to tackle the short stories that disappeared with YA Review Net, including the award-winning “The Lost Girls” and the Pushcart Prize nominated “We Never Get to Talk Anymore.”
If you’re looking for something new, the final video features an unpublished essay called “Enchanted.”
Thanks for reading/listening/watching!
Thanks for sharing these pieces that would otherwise have been lost to the ether of digital death. Your reading style is natural and full of ease. No hemming or hawing or overly chipper tone. Good pacing. Clear diction without sounding like you’re trying to be precise. I’m jealous! I feel so self-conscious on camera and it shows. And your concern about reading fiction is totally on the money. Length is a big factor, yes, but it’s dialog that’s the horror…trying to animate the characters’ words without sounding like I’m reading to a toddler and “doing all the voices.” LOL. However, flash fiction might be easier. Length isn’t an issue and the number of voices to differentiate is also limited. Anyway, great job!