Katie Hafner and Christopher Sorrentino
Dear Writers,
Welcome to the dog days of August—that hot and muggy month that is also an excellent time to write and read. We just finished Christopher Sorrentino’s Now Beacon, Now Sea: A Son’s Memoir, which examines his late parents’ marriage and his troubled relationship with his mother. The story is funny, dark and intimate. On top of trying to understand his parents’ relationship with each other and him, the book traces his development as a writer, father and husband. If you liked Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water, Anne Roiphe’s 1185 Park Avenue and Brian Morton’s Tasha, you will love Sorrentino’s story. It starts and ends with his discovery of his mother’s body.
This month, we’re reading, listening to and loving Katie Hafner’s debut novel, The Boys which received a rave review in the NYT. Look for Katie’s Q&A in our September newsletter. We’re also loving CJ Hauser’s The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Stories. You can read an excerpt from Hauser’s book here.
We wanted to share the news that Karen Satran, a longtime member of the Sweet Lab Community, has passed away. Karen was a funny and fabulous writer and took classes with us for several years. For a while there were three women in the class with similar names: Karen, Maren and Sharon (Sharon published When Covering Up Becomes Trendy in Tablet.) In 1980, Karen published The Scent of Lime Trees in The New Yorker. In our workshop, she was writing another story, one she eventually titled, Nights. After our workshop ended, Karen sent this note:
I'm quite slow to type and send out stories and since I left your class I've sent only one, called Nights[Halloween? 2 kids? a cat?] first to the New Yorker which sent a one paragraph but v.nice rejection and next to the Yale Review. You will no doubt be as surprised as I was that they took it. They have put it in the queue of stories they take and will send proofs etc. This means it'll probably be printed posthumously but I am in good health and when I was finished being amazed--quite some time--I was/am quite pleased. Thanks to one of those classes(which?) for reading it and especially to you, for your reading.
Thank you to all of you for reading. Writers need readers, and vice versa. We’ll return to teaching weekly workshops via Zoom in September and are running a one-day hybrid writing retreat in NYC in November. We hope you’ll join us, live or via Zoom, in the fall. And look for info on retreats we’re planning in 2023.
Looking to support your local independent bookstore? Words Bookstore in Maplewood, NJ, is sponsoring this Q&A on Tuesday, August 9 at 8 p.m. Harlem Shuffle: Virtual Event with Colson Whitehead and Adam Serwer, Live on Zoom.
If you missed your opportunity to book your spot in the Morocco Writers Retreat with us, not to worry—we have great news! We’re offering a One Day Intensive Fall Writing Retreat in NYC with Dr. Judith Rabinor on November 5. See below for details.
For the first time ever, Sweet Lab will be offering a Live/Hybrid Intensive Writing Retreat in the best city in the world—NYC!
Bring a bottle of water, a pen full of ink, a notebook and/or your laptop. In three hours, we’ll analyze one great book, discuss your writing and share crucial storytelling techniques. This intensive writers’ retreat includes line edits and written feedback on submissions of up to 10 pages (2,500 words, double spaced).
CLIENT NEWS:
Randi Mazzella, 3 Signs It’s Time to Stop Being Friends with Someone; It’s Easy Drinking Green With These Insanely Great Recipes; The 6 Benefits of Lemons That May Surprise You (The Girlfriend)
JUICY READS:
Lauren Groff, To Sunland (fiction)
CJ Hauser, The Crane Wife (nonfiction)
SUBMISSIONS OPPORTUNITIES
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.
Dear Damsels: To celebrate the launch of So Long As You Write, a collection celebrating the power of women putting words on the page, we are incredibly excited to announce that our next publishing opportunity is for a collection of work by a single author. We will be considering fiction, non-fiction and/or poetry with the plan to publish the collection in early 2023. Importantly, you don’t need to have a finished manuscript in order to submit – only the opening three short stories or essays, OR 8,000–10,000 words, OR a significant collection of poems plus a synopsis. While there is flexibility here for the right project, our aim is for the final body of work to be book-length (i.e. a minimum of 30,000 words – word count applicable to prose submissions only). We’ll be accepting submissions until Sunday 14 August, and will be in touch with a response by Sunday 18 September.
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.
Writerly Magazine: Looking for submissions under 3,000 words in fiction, narrative nonfiction, memoir, etc.
