Writing/Reading Resources
Dept. of Congrats: March 2022 Community Successes
Every month, we celebrate successes of all stripes! Last month, Grubbies were published in literary journals across the country, won awards and prizes, published books, and so much more. Our community closed March 2022 out with 53 publications, five awards and prizes, three book publications, and two residencies! Let us celebrate you: submit your good news to GrubStreet’s Department of Congratulations.
Erica Ferencik's literary thriller Girl in Ice was published by Simon & Schuster on March 1st. Jeffrey Feingold's essay about a maddening appearance before the Supreme Court in Russia, “The Top Tartar,” will be published by Meat for Tea literary magazine on March 12th in their “Russian Caravan” special issue. Novel Incubator Graduate RJ Taylor's short story "It Rises and Falls and Rises Again" was published in the Hugo-nominated Apex Magazine. Her story was also selected as the podcast story of the issue. Jason Prokowiew's piece “500,000 Ukrainians have fled so far. What does it mean to lose your home, your life?” was published in WBUR's Cognoscenti. He thanks his memoir incubator fam, GrubStreet writing groups, and instructors Xujun Eberlein and Alysia Abbott for their support and wisdom.
Pam Wolfson's short story "Dark Passage," inspired by artist Lee Krasner, was published by Woven Tale Press. She would like to thank Ron McLean and the 2019 Short Story Incubator group for their dedicated support and feedback. Kathleen Stone’s first book, They Called Us Girls, is a collection of biographical portraits of women who had professional careers in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. She interviewed them about their ambition when they were in their 80s and 90s. Chelsea Sunday Kline has founded the MA chapter of Women Who Submit, a group that seeks to empower women and nonbinary writers by creating physical and virtual spaces for sharing information, supporting and encouraging submissions to literary journals, and clarifying the submission and publication process. The first monthly meeting will be held virtually on March 20th at 5:00pm (ET).
Instructor Linda K. Wertheimer’s article “New ethnic studies requirements mean more lessons on race in Boston classrooms” was a cover story in The Boston Globe Magazine. The long-term project was supported by an Education Writers Association reporting fellowship and has been featured on an EWA Radio podcast. David Desjardins' short story "The Woods" was published in The Ocotillo Review. He is a regular attendee and volunteer at the Muse and the Marketplace conference. Instructor and Memoir Incubator Graduate Aimee Seiff Christian’s article "I Gave My Child A Smartphone and it's Been The Best Thing For Her" was published in WIRED. She thanks Rachel Zimmerman for her edits. Additionally, Aimee’s essay "The Perfectly Balanced Writers Group" was published in this month's print version of Poets & Writers. She thanks her incredible writers group, the Last Words, for inspiration and editorial feedback.
GrubStreet's Education Director, Dariel Suarez, is presenting his novel The Playwright’s House on a panel titled "What We Call Family" at the Virginia Festival of the Book this month. Brenden Layte's first published poem, "Time to dry out," was published by Door Is a Jar Magazine. Instructor Kayleigh Shoen's story “At the Darling Slaughterhouse” was published by Barrelhouse Online in their "Something's Missing" issue. Viktoria Shulevich's humor piece "Tahoe's Bear Resident, Hank the Tank, Answers Questions at a Press Conference" was published in Robot Butt. Kevin M. McIntosh's personal essay "West Side (Teaching) Story" was published in Kappan, a national journal for educators. Novel Incubator Graduate Pam Loring’s Salty Quill Writers' Retreat for Women is offering a full scholarship for its spring session, May 28th to June 4th. This scholarship is funded in part by a gift in memory of Doris Barton.
Memoir Incubator Graduate Judy Bolton-Fasman’s essay “I'd never worn the Star of David. That changed in 2022” was published in WBUR’s Cognoscenti. Jill McLaughlin's essay "Annotated: A Dean of Students' Email" was published in Pangyrus. She thanks E.B. Bartels and everyone in "6 Weeks, 3 Essays" for all the feedback and editing help. Jeffrey Feingold’s autobiographical flash fiction stories “The New Math,” “The Water Witch,” and “America’s Test Chicken” will be published by The Wise Owl Literary Magazine. “The New Math” will also be featured in their April podcast. Jeffrey's flash story about addiction, “Little Rabbit,” will be published in the international literary review A Too Powerful Word. Caroline Wampole's memoir essay "In Lieu of Flowers" was published in The Carolina Quarterly. At 58, this is her first essay in a print journal, and she thanks all her writing groups and teachers over the years for their encouragement to keep going.
Jenn Bouchard's debut novel, First Course, is a Distinguished Favorite in the Women's Fiction category of the 2022 Independent Press Awards. Sarah Cypher’s story "Abu Hani's Middle Eastern Foods and Gifts" was published by New Ohio Review. Her queer magical realist novel about a Palestinian-American family, The Skin and Its Girl, sold at auction last fall to Ballantine for publication in April 2023. Caroline's Stowell's essay "Why doctors like me are leaving medicine" was published in WBUR's Cognoscenti. She would like to thank her instructor Alysia Abbott for steering her towards this opportunity through the Memoir Incubator. Instructor Kira Rockwell's play oh, to be pure again has been chosen for the 2022 National New Play Development Conference, The Great Plains Theatre Commons.
Jason Prokowiew has been offered a May residency to work on his memoir Raised by Wolves at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Tennessee. He thanks his Memoir Incubator Instructor Alysia Abbott for her support and for introducing him to Sundress. He also thanks Instructor Xujun Eberlein, for her ongoing support, and his incubator fam and GrubStreet writing groups for their wisdom and encouragement. Memoir Incubator Instructor Alysia Abbott published a review of Melissa Febos' book Body Work in the Boston Globe. She would like to thank GrubStreet instructor and friend Lisa Levy for her comments and support.
Jeffrey Feingold’s flash story about addiction, “Little Rabbit,” will be published in A Too Powerful Word. His flash lyric essay about children and divorce, “Grace,” will be published by Hare’s Paw Literary Journal in May. Memoir Incubator Graduate Ann MacDonald's opinion essay "Another Way to Empower Nurses: Listen to Them" was published in STAT. She thanks "Six Weeks, Six Op-Eds" instructor Laura Kiesel and classmates Aime Card and Joana Galarza for making the piece better. Boston Writers of Color Member and Memoir Incubator Graduate Ananda Lowe’s essay about switching gender roles in Latin dance, “She Wants to Lead,” was published by Pangyrus and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Lauren Aguirre’s first book, The Memory Thief and the Secrets Behind How We Remember – A Medical Mystery, was shortlisted for the 2022 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and won the 2021 American Book Fest’s Science Award. The Memory Thief will be released in paperback in August. She found many GrubStreet classes extremely helpful.
Bethany Ericson’s essay “At Times I Didn’t Drown” was a finalist for the Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize and will be published in Fourth Genre. She will read it on March 25th at 6:00pm (EDT) at Buffalo Billiards in Philadelphia at a nonfiction happy hour sponsored by Gum Tree, Fourth Genre, Hippocampus, and River Teeth. Loren Stephens’ debut novel, All Sorrows Can Be Borne, was named a 2021 Great Group Read by the Women’s National Book Association. It is one of the top 20 books selected from 200. Lynne Weiss’ personal essay “There Is No Ping Without a Pong” was published in The Christian Science Monitor. Long ago, she took Ethan Gilsdorf's essay class and has dabbled in essays ever since. Short Story Incubator Graduate Ann Russell's flash fiction story "The Boy Who Invented Me" has been published in Permafrost. She thanks Jane Dykema for her course on flash fiction. Instructor Derek JG Williams’ poem “Blink” was published in Bodega.
Edwin Hill's latest standalone thriller, The Secrets We Share, where the investigation of a brutal murder uncovers links to a homicide detective’s long-buried childhood secrets, will be released on March 29th. Instructor Stephanie K Brownell's story "Genus Antigone" was published in Newfound. They thank instructor Jane Dykema for the prompt and support. Michael Zahniser's short story "The Peculiar Constraints of Peacetime" was published in Dreamforge. He wrote the first version of the story in Stephanie K Brownell's science fiction and fantasy class. Instructor Jeni De La O’s poem "every diaspora poem is about mangos" from her forthcoming collection SOFIAS, which will be released by Knights Library in September 2022, is featured in “Spotlight Detroit: Short Films Featuring Kresge Arts Fellows.” The series airs live on Detroit Public Television (DPTV) Monday, March 21st at 9:00pm (EDT).
Katrin Schumann’s debut novel, The Forgotten Hours, has been optioned to be developed into a limited series by Sarah Connors, the executive producer of SheSpun Films. Connors has teamed up with Olivia Silver, Sundance Lab writer/director of the Indie film Arcadia, to write the pilot. Ning Sullivan’s short story “Mizugiwa” was published in The Massachusetts Review. The first draft of the story came out of the "6 Weeks, 6 Stories" class. She thanks instructors Denise Sweeney and Dariel Suarez for their guidance and encouragement. Amit Shah’s essay “Divining the Past” was published in Humans of the World. He thanks instructors Samantha Shanley, Daphne Strassman, and Ethan Gilsdorf for being supportive and encouraging. Monica Judge’s essay “Near the Hollows” was published in the Southern Humanities Review. She first crafted this essay in Ethan Gilsdorf's class, where he and her classmates provided invaluable feedback for revision.
Ariel Friedman’s poem "In charge of birds" was published in Pangyrus. She has learned so much from various courses with instructors Sara Danielle Rivera and Lindsey O'Neill. Her poem “Expulsion from the Garden of Eden” was also published in Poetica. She wrote it in a class many years ago with Sara, and it was later edited by Lindsey. Joanne Callum Powers’ one-woman play Miss Delta Township will be performed by her at the Cape Rep Theater (March 31st to April 10th), at the International Dublin Gay Theater Festival (May 2nd to 14th), and the Weston Art and Innovation Center (May 13th to 14th). She thanks Watershed Writers Gail Spector, Suzanne Simmons, Suzanne Moseley and Janet Chwalibog for their support. Lorena Hernández Leonard's piece "What 'Encanto' means to me as a Colombian-American" was published in WBUR's Cognoscenti. She thanks her Memoir Incubator friends as well as instructors Theresa Okokon and Alysia Abbott for the connection.
Instructor Tina Tocco's short story "The Unknown Soldier" will be included in the middle-grade ghost story anthology The Haunted States of America, a joint publishing effort between the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and Henry Holt (Macmillan Publishing Group). Boston Writers of Color Member and Memoir Incubator Graduate Anri Wheeler's essay “I felt kinship with the women killed in Atlanta. And distance” — marking the one-year anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings and continuing to grapple with identity and anti-Asian racism — was published in WBUR’s Cognoscenti. She thanks former GrubStreet classmate Neema Avashia for her feedback. Essay Incubator Graduate Joy von Steiger’s essay “Sexual abuse ruined my life. Then I worked with sex offenders” was published in WBUR’s Cognoscenti. She thanks her Incubuddies in the Essay Incubator and instructor Ethan Gilsdorf for their feedback and amazing support in bringing this essay to publication.
Consultant Douglas Silver's short story "Lovers" was published in descant. Robert Levine's poem "Supermarket Storm" was recently published in Literary Imagination. Memoir Incubator Graduate Linda Katherine Cutting’s essay “Video Games Offered My Son a Haven From Bullying” was published in WIRED. She is grateful to her son, Luke Whited, for being willing to share his story, to her writers' group and Alan Henry for edits, and to Virginia DeLuca (Memoir Incubator ‘20) for recommending Susan Shapiro's online class where she live-pitched her essay to Alan Henry at WIRED. Novel Incubator Graduate Rachel Barenbaum's novel Atomic Anna will be released on April 5th. She will be live at Brookline Booksmith on April 7th launching the novel with help from Desmond Hall and Lara Prescott.
Marissa Gallerani’s piece about the Seekonk River Bridge was published on The Public's Radio. The multidisciplinary piece includes her original photography and is part of an ongoing series about life in Southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. In honor of National Poetry Month, Soledad Caballero did a reading and conversation about her collection I Was a Bell for the Notebooks Collective, co-founded by GrubStreet student Becca Conners. Soledad and Becca met when they took two classes with Rebecca Morgan Frank called “Ten Weeks, Ten Poems.” Dr. Edward A. Iannuccilli’s essay “A Frightening Walk Home,” in addition to many of his other essays, was published in GoLocalProv.
Instructor Sara Rauch's second book, XO, will be released by Autofocus Books on April 5th. Instructor, consultant, and Muse presenter Joy Baglio's short story "Before,” an alternate Cinderella story, was published in The Fairytale Review. Her inverted ghost story about social media and a haunted ring, "They Could Have Been Yours," will be published in The Missouri Review. Jane Marcellus' essay "Kept" was published in Craft.
Keep reading in this series
Dept. of Congrats: February 2022 Community Successes
Dept. of Congrats: April 2022 Community Successes