Writing/Reading Resources
Dept. of Congrats: June 2023 Community Successes
Every month, we celebrate the writing wins of our community! This month, Grubbies were published, won awards and prizes, secured book deals, and so much more. Our community is closing out June 2023 with forty publications, two awards and prizes, two book deals, and three book publications! Let us celebrate you: submit your good news to GrubStreet’s Department of Congratulations.
Susan Dwyer's essay "Vulnerability" was a semi-finalist for the North American Review's Terry Tempest Williams Creative Nonfiction Prize. She is especially grateful to Ethan Gilsdorf and his wonderful "6 Essays in 6 Weeks" class. Novel Incubator graduate Nancy Crochiere's novel Graceland with Avon/HarperCollins was published May 30. Nancy met her agent, Paige Sisley, atGrubStreet's Muse and the Marketplace Manuscript Mart. She would like to thank Michelle Hoover and all the folks in the Novel Incubator program for helping her succeed in a life-long goal.
Boston Writers of Color member Melissa A Watkins's short story "Knotty Girl" was published in the May/June 2023 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Memoir Generator graduate Jeanette Tran published "Things I Learned from Running on the Treadmill at the Gym While Watching Cable Television" in The Coachella Review. Memoir Incubator graduate Patricia Harney's essay "The Specific Kind of Grief Murder Leaves Behind" was published in Slate. She thanks her MI family and the writers from Dorian Fox's class – Sylvia Baedorf Kassis, Patty Mulcahy, Leah Soumerai, and Caroline Stowell – for their ongoing support.
Instructor Tim Weed's new novel is a finalist for the 2023 Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Tim will be participating in the upcoming climate writing panel at GrubStreet's Center for Creative Writing. He would like to acknowledge his GrubStreet students over the years for sharing their hard-earned wisdom on the novelist's craft. Memoir Incubator graduate Tamara MC published an interview with memoirist Guinevere Turner in Brevity Magazine. Boston Writers of Color member Ivy Alphonse-Crean published an essay reflecting on Mother’s Day as a Black mother for Cognoscenti, which was also picked up by NPR.
Instructor Tracy Hahn-Burkett's essay "This Essay Isn't Your Business" appeared in Pangyrus after she workshopped it in "Your Body, Your Story." She thanks instructors Nora Corrigan and Monica Benevides and her classmates for their thoughtful and sensitive critiques. Memoir Incubator graduate Anri Wheeler's essay about The Little Mermaid, her mother, and the importance of being able to rewrite the narrative was published in LitHub. Essay Incubator instructor Ethan Gilsdorf published his essay “Dear Chatbot, Should I Write About My Dead Mother? A conversation between Ethan Gilsdorf and ChatGPT” in Electric Literature. Essay Incubator student Ellen Braaten's essay "I lost everything in a housefire" was published by WBUR's Cognoscenti. Ellen would like to thank Ethan Gilsdorf and fellow her Essay Incubator students for their support.
John David Ferrer’s recent historical fiction book was included in Mary Carroll Moore’s latest newsletter, now on Substack, in an article explaining the marketing tools he uses for My Beloved Borinquen, a novel about Puerto Rico. Sara Fraser’s short story "Paper Airplanes" is in the Spring issue of Stoneboat Literary Journal. Instructor Karen Day's short story "Prodigies" was a semifinalist in Story Magazine's annual Story Foundation Prize. Jeffrey M. Feingold was interviewed by IndieReader (interview to be published in June), after his second collection of short stories, There Is No Death in Finding Nemo (Impspired Press, 9/3/23), received a starred/IndieReader Approved rating. Kitty Beer's latest short story has been accepted by Constellations Magazine for their next issue.
Julie Brill's essay "A new miniseries has reminded me — again — that the Holocaust was not 'long ago or far away'" was published in Cognoscenti. She's grateful to her Memoir Incubator colleagues Tamara MC, Robert Laubacher, and Patty Mulcahy. Memoir Incubator graduate Jason Prokowiew's essay "My Two Dads," which he wrote for Father's Day and Pride Month, was published in Cognoscenti. Pete Prokesch's short story "Naked and Alive" was published in The William & Mary Review. Instructor Mary Carroll Moore's popular newsletter, Your Weekly Writing Exercise, ongoing every Friday since 2008, moved to Substack this month. Her latest post is "It's All Too Much (Risk, That Is)," which explores personal and writerly "risk quotient" and how too much or too little makes or breaks our work (and life). Brakeyshia Samms's poems “A Personal Journey” and "Instead, Be Water" were selected and published in the poetry anthology Connecting Reality with the Human Heart.
Naomi Bindman's essay "Love's Imprint" was selected as the winner of Dogwood Journal's 2023 Creative Nonfiction award. Alex Thayer's novel Because I'm Everything will be published by Aladdin/Simon & Schuster. She thanks instructors Mark Kyungsoo Bias, Steven Beeber, Meghan Lamb, Walter Smelt, and Holly Thompson. Instructor Marcella Haddad's two poems have been published as online exclusives through Snarl. Viktoria Shulevich's humor piece "Adobe Acrobat Pro Really Really Wants You to E-Sign Something During Your Seven-Day Free Trial" was published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Memoir and Essay Incubator graduate L. Button’s essay "Momo’s Deadline" was just accepted by Longreads. Button gives deep thanks to Ethan Gilsdorf and her entire Incubator class for their wise insights and support.
C.M. Green's short story "Deep Space" was published in Barren Magazine. Alexandra Grabbe's review of Courtney Sender's debut short story collection, In Other Lifetimes All I've Lost Comes Back to Me, was published in Barrelhouse.
Instructor A.J. Rodriguez was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and will be in residence at their New Hampshire-based campus in September where he will complete his debut short story collection. Karen Samuelson's novel Weaving Dreams In Oaxaca was published on Mother's Day.
Instructor Daphne Kalotay's essay about Daphne du Maurier's story “Monte Verità” was published in Public Books. Diane Forman's Father's Day essay about her 35-year email correspondence with her dad was published in Insider.
Karen Harris is delighted to write personal essays and share insights from the classroom on a regular basis on a Substack publication called "Wising Up Together," dedicated to teaching, literature, and teenagers. She would like to thank instructors Ethan Gilsdorf and E.B Bartels. Pete Prokesch's flash fiction story "Set in Stone" was published in Flash Frog.
Boston Writers of Color member and Memoir Incubator alum Lorena Hernández Leonard was named a Finalist for the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. She's grateful to her MI friends for all of their support. Instructor A.J. Rodriguez's short story "Aguas" was selected by Jonathan Escoffery as the winner of the 2023 Kinder/Crump Award for Fiction on behalf of Pleiades Magazine. "Aguas" will be published in the Fall 2023 issue of Pleiades. Oona Metz's opinion piece "Domestic Abuse Isn't Always Physical in Nature" was published in CommonWealth Magazine. She wrote the first draft of it in her "6 Weeks, 6 Essays" class. Boston Writers of Color member Andrew Zubiri's flash essay "College Townie" was published in Fourth River's Tributaries. Essay Incubator alum Linda Button’s Tiny Love Story, “a rare chance,” appeared in the New York Times. She thanks her fellow essay incubees (and her daughter). Constance Garcia-Barrio was chosen as the Tulip Adkins Scholarship winner for the Cuttyhunk Island Writers' Residency in September.
Pete Prokesch's short story "Sugar Daddy" was published in Evergreen Review. He thanks Jane Dykema and members of the Flash Fiction Intensive for feedback on the piece. Amy Salinger's biography picture book William Entenmann: A Baker's Baker will be published by Mascot Kids. Catherine Elcik's short story "We Own the Jetty" won second place in the Pangyrus Spring 2023 Fiction Contest and was published on June 23, 2023. She wrote about this story's long road to publication on HIBOU, her Substack dedicated to writers in the murky middles of their careers. Marcia Yudkin's humorous essay "I Call It Running" was published in Next Avenue. Boston Writers of Color member Margo Gabriel was selected to participate in The Break Fellowship, sponsored by The European Union and Next Generation. Memoir Incubator graduate Marie F. Cahalane's essay "What Stephen King Taught My Husband About Writing" was published in Brevity's Nonfiction Blog.
Boston Writers of Color member Melissa A Watkins's short story "Eat" is in the June issue of Fantasy Magazine. She thanks Peter Medeiros for his class "The New Weird," which helped inspire the shape of this story. Essay Incubator instructor Ethan Gilsdorf (with co-author Ezra Haber Glenn) played D&D with ChatGPT and wrote a story about it for Wired Magazine: "ChatGPT’s Storytelling Chops Are No Match for Dungeons & Dragons." Jesse Liberty's latest flash fiction piece, "The Camera," was published in Flash Fiction Magazine. Jesse wants to thank the instructors at Grub with a special thank you to Katie Bannon. Boston Writers of Color member Jennifer Julien Gaskin published her first book, The Exit: Living with Urban Joy. NmaHassan Muhammad’s short story "A Strange Thing We Saw" has been accepted for publication in the 2023 Mukana Press Anthology of African Writing. He wishes to thank GrubStreet and his instructors as well as classmates for their contribution in the lifetime writing skills he acquired during the classes at GrubStreet.
Keep reading in this series
Dept. of Congrats: May 2023 Community Successes
Eve Bridburg’s 2023 Women’s National Book Association Award Speech