While the MS of ABSENT makes the rounds in New York, I decided to begin working on short stories. My dear workshop friends were tolerant of my rusty steps in this direction, but gradually I have found that the countryside here in Washington County, halfway between Houston and Austin, is hospitable to fiction taking form.
One of the first long ones I finished, I sent out to Glimmer Train for its baptismal rejection. Duly received. So I set it aside and began on a few more. I have around ten in various degrees of completion.
A few months later I revisited the one GT had rejected and gave it a severe pruning. Then one night, about this time, I sent it out to Southwest Review, who were sponsoring a contest for emerging writers. (Some of us spend longer in the birth canal than others...) The award is the David Nathan Meyerson prize and I won it. My story, SILENCES, is to be published in the fall issue of that respected journal. I was so astonished when I received an early alert via email that I actually screamed. My husband thought I'd had some kind of attack. And perhaps it was, an attack of happiness.
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