publishing

2nd Place in Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship!

pen parentis typewriter.pngY’all, I won 2nd place in the Pen Parentis Writing Fellowship! Plus they wrote the most flattering description about my story, 2021, on their blog. I am floating.

It’s organizations like Pen Parentis that keep hope alive in us writerparents, even during these dark and exhausting times. Not only do they provide this fellowship every year, but they also host monthly literary salons, weekly accountability meet-ups, and multiple other community-building events, all centered around inspiring, motivating, and celebrating parents who just want to keep writing but have so much standing between them and their words. Learn more about their work, history, and future events by visiting their website at penparentis.org and/or following them on Instagram: @PenParentis and Twitter: @PenParentis.

And speaking of events, stay tuned for details on a special Zoom salon this fall in which I’ll be reading my prize-winning story!

Mama Dog, my Horror Story, Published in Tiny Town Times!

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I’m thrilled to announce that my horror story, “Mama Dog,” has been published in the Tiny Town Times, a great little paper produced by Tanline Printing out of Tucson, Arizona, featuring interviews, poetry, art, jokes, and all kinds of other goodies. Check it out here – my story is on pages 20 – 22.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope you’re enjoying the skeletons, pumpkins, and warty gourds as much as we are.

Not feeling the spirit just yet? Give a listen to Jonathan Toubin’s Haunted Hop Halloween Mix; it’s a blast and will get those spooky vibes flowin’.

Happy 2019 + New Publication in Gateways, an Anthology!
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I’m thrilled to share that a revised version of my essay, Our Mothers Have a Way of Shifting the Universe, has been published in Gateways, an anthology of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from alumni of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. Click here to order your copy!

As I reflect on 2018, I can honestly say that I am ending this year in happiness. The first half of it (and pretty much all of 2017!) was hard and painful, but things have balanced themselves now, and I feel that my family is finally emerging from our period of darkness. And despite all the crazy challenges this year brought me, it also brought more creative publications than any year before, and this makes me ecstatic.

Of course I’m grateful to every editor who has seen something in my words and deemed them worth publishing, but I am even more grateful to all of you who read what I write and encourage me to keep going. Part of my creative process is motivated by an impulse within me – a need to express, to tell my truth, to attempt to answer to some greater calling – but a huge part of it also comes from the joy of communicating with y’all. Knowing that you make the choice to sit with my words, to think about and even respond to them, is such a gift. THANK YOU.

I’m eager to see what 2019 throws at me, and I sincerely hope you stick around for the stories. Happy New Year to all!

Dancing with Relapse – New Publication!

“While anorexia was familiar, intoxicating, even empowering, it was also a terrifying hell I thought I’d escaped from.”

After spending a decade in therapy working to finally put my eating disorder behind me, why have I spent the past five years writing a novel about a teenage artist who develops anorexia?

My latest essay, “Dancing with Relapse,” published today on The Women Who Get Shit Done, reflects on recovery, relapse, and the risks and rewards of fictionalizing my past demons in YA novel Bone Girl. Check it out!