Michelle Friedman’s Modern Love piece
We’re thrilled to share that longtime student Michelle Friedman published this beautiful piece, A Last Act of Intimate Kindness, in the Modern Love column of The New York Times on August 21. The essay is an excerpt from her memoir.
We have a great Q&A with veteran journalist and debut novelist, Katie Hafner, below. Katie’s novel, The Boys received a rave review from Weike Wang. The book provides fabulous insights into dating and marriage to a psychologist, childrearing in Philadelphia, and fancy bike trips to Italy. Like so many great stories, the plot hinges on a fantastic twist. Katie writes for The New York Times, is the author of the memoir Mother Daughter Me and hosts the podcast, Lost Women of Science.
We’ve been preparing for our writing Moroccan writing retreat by reading Youssef Fadel’s A Rare Blue Bird Flies With Me and Mohamed Choukri’s For Bread Alone,. We were dazzled by the writing in Jennifer Egan’s novel The Candy House and loved CJ Hauser’s deliciously intimate memoir in essays, The Crane Wife.
If you signed up for any of our retreats, what are you looking forward to? If you’re still thinking about joining our NYC retreat, what’s stopping you? Let us know here.
Client News:
Michelle Friedman, A Last Act of Intimate Kindness (The New York Times)
Ilene Goldman, Caution: Memories in the Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear (HerStry)
Adele Aron Greenspun’s essay, The Uses of Sorrow, is forthcoming in Snapdragon Journal’s September issue
Randi Mazzella, Saying Goodbye to My Last Kid as He Heads Off to College (The Girlfriend)
Leslie Dannin Rosenthal’s essay, Snack Cake, is forthcoming from Grande Dame Literary on September 7
Laura Weiss’s short story, Glossary of a Down and Out City, was a semi finalist in Smokelong Quarterly’s Summer Fiction Contest.
Juicy Reads:
Ian McEwan, A Duet (fiction)
Clare Sestanovich. You Tell Me (fiction)
Submit Your Work:
Bellevue Literary Review: Fiction: Seeks character-driven fiction with original voices and strong settings. We do not publish genre fiction (romance, sci-fi, horror). Our word max is 5,000, though most of our stories tend to be in the range of 2,000-4,000 words. Nonfiction: We are looking for essays that reach beyond the standard ‘illness narrative’ to develop a topic in an engaging and original manner. Incorporate anecdotes that feel alive, and dazzle us with thoughtful and creative analysis that allows these anecdotes to serve a larger purpose. 5,000 words max.
Dillydoun Review: Short Story Prize: Deadline October 3. Looking for 1,000-5,000 words. All genres, themes, and fiction categories.
Guernica: Looking for journalism/reportage, essays, memoir, criticism, and argument of 2,500 words or more.
Kenyon Review: Our general submission period opens on September 1 and closes on September 30, 2022. In 2023, our magazine will feature two themed issues, one focused on WOMEN’S HEALTH and one on FOOD. We invite work that broadly considers these two themes. We consider previously unpublished: short fiction and essays (up to 7,500 words), flash fiction and essays (up to 3 pieces, up to 1,000 words each; please format and submit as a single document). excerpts (up to 30 pages double-spaced) from larger works. Payment for accepted work is made upon publication. Authors retain their copyright and will receive a contract upon acceptance.
Memoir Monday/First Person Singular: Completed personal essays of 1500 to 2500 words. The pay rate is $200. To submit, email pitch2sari@gmail.com.
Nonbinary Review: NonBinary Review's theme for its March 2023 issue will be "Food." Maximum 3,000 words, double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman, deadline January 31. Food touches every single person on the planet, and can be one of the most fraught relationship a person can have. We're not looking for recipes, or stories in which food is incidental. We want to read about how food joins people, divides people, shapes those with too much and those with not enough. Who grows food? Who hauls it around? Who cooks it? How is working professionally with food different than cooking at home? There are so many aspects of this necessity of life, and we want to hear them - especially the unexpected, the complicated, the life-changing. NonBinary Review pays 1¢ per word."
