Category Archives: Uncategorized

Animal: A Beast Of A Literary Magazine has been kind enough to nominate “Of Course, Of Course,” the short story about Mr. Ed that I placed with them earlier this year, for Sundress Publications‘ Best Of The Net 2015 competition and online anthology.

The mission of the annual Best Of The Net competition is “to promote the diverse and growing collection of voices who are publishing their work online, a venue that continues to see less respect from such yearly anthologies as the Pushcart and Best American series. This anthology serves to bring greater respect to an innovative and continually expanding medium in the same medium in which it is published.”

It’s a huge surprise and thrill to be nominated!

Read “Of Course, Of Course” here, and keep your fingers crossed…

For the second time, one of my stories has been named a finalist for the annual fiction prize at Salamander: A Magazine for Fiction, Poetry, and Memoirs.

The judge for this contest was Andre Dubus III, who in addition to being the author of six books, has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, and a 2012 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

“Based On A True Story” is as yet unpublished. I was last a finalist for this contest in 2011 for “The Mammoth Horse Waits.”

The Cossack Review, which published my story “Lady, The Mind-Reading Mare” earlier this year, was kind enough to interview me for their blog, The Volga.

Read the interview, as well as an excerpt from the story, by clicking here.

“Shooting A Mule,” my story about a military experiment involving instantaneous photography and a mule, originally appeared in Redivider. It’s now going to be anthologized in Ashland Creek Press‘s second edition of Among Animals: The Lives of Animals and Humans in Contemporary Short Fiction.

The first edition of this anthology, published in 2014 and shown above, was praised by Animal Studies Journal as “rewarding reading–alternately moving, intriguing, inspiring and harrowing.”

“Lady, The Mind-Reading Mare,” my exploration of the paranormal happenings in a backyard barn circa 1927, has been published in Issue #4 of The Cossack Review.

Here’s a link to the beginning of the story, with additional links at the bottom to buy a .pdf or hard copy of the issue.

“Lady, The Mind-Reading Mare,” my short story about the Virginia horse who was verified psychic by the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory in the 1920s, has been accepted by The Cossack Review!

Lady and her typewriter/xylophone!

As the winner of the 2014 Midwest Short Fiction Award at The Laurel Review, I’ll be heading up to Maryville, MO to give a reading of “Fred W. Loring and His Mule, ‘Evil Merodach,’ 48 Hours Before Death” at Northwest Missouri State University on March 19th at 7 p.m.

My new story about Mr. Ed, “Of Course, Of Course,” is now available to read online as part of the March 2015 issue of Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine.

My story “Fred W. Loring and His Mule, ‘Evil Merodach,’ 48 Hours Before Death,” which chronicles the short but illustrious life of obscure 19th century Bostonian poet Frederick Wadsworth Loring (depicted below), has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Midwest Short Fiction Prize, held annually by The Laurel Review.

The man and mule of the hour.

The prize includes publication in the upcoming issue of The Laurel Review (early 2015), an invited reading at Northwest Missouri State University sometime this spring, and a $500 honorarium.

I think Loring (and Evil Merodach) would be proud.

I’m pleased to announce that along with the incredible Monica Hand, I’ll be reading at Columbia, Missouri’s own Yellow Dog Bookshop at 7:30 p.m. on October 14, 2014 as part of THE NEXT WEATHER reading series.

If you’re reading this, you already know about me, so here’s what you need to know about Monica:

Monica A. Hand is a poet and book artist currently living in Columbia, MO, where she is pursuing her doctorate in poetry at the University of Missouri. Her poems have appeared in Black Renaissance Noir, Drunken Boat, African-American Poetry for the 21st Century, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade, and elsewhere. She earned a combined MFA from The Drew University MFA Program in Poetry and Translation and is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti. Her book of poems about/to Nina Simone, Me and Nina, was published by Alice James Books in 2012.

Hope to see you there.