CONTRIBUTORS
BREE BARTON has published short fiction in The Iowa Review, Mid-American Review, and Roxane Gay’s PANK. Her nonfiction has appeared in USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney’s, and her face has appeared in a couple of web series you’ve probably never seen. Her debut novel, Heart of Thorns, is forthcoming from Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins in 2018. She’s also an editor, ghostwriter, dance teacher, improviser, and (she hopes) a decent human being. You can visit her online at www.breebarton.com.
RUDRI BHATT PATEL is a lawyer turned writer and editor. Prior to attending law school, she graduated with an MA in English and an emphasis in creative writing. She is cofounder and co-editor of The Sunlight Press and on staff at Literary Mama. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Brain, Child, ESPN, Role Reboot, Mothers Always Write, The First Day, Parent.co, Raising Arizona Kids, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a memoir on grief, the Hindu culture, and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. She lives in Arizona with her family. You can visit her online at www.beingrudri.com.
APRIL BRADLEY is from Goodlettsville, Tennessee, and lives with her family on the Connecticut shoreline near New Haven. Her writing has appeared in Blue Fifth Review, Flash Frontier, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Narratively, NANO Fiction, and Thrice Fiction, among others. She has a Master’s in Ethics from Yale University and studied philosophy and theology as a post-graduate scholar at Cambridge University. Her fiction has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. She is the associate editor for Bartleby Snopes and the founder and editor of Women Who Flash Their Lit. She also is a resident writing coach at Writers Helping Writers. Find her stumbling through digital space at www.aprilbradley.net.
CHELSEY CLAMMER is the author of BodyHome and winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Manuscript Award for her essay collection, Circadian. She has been published in The Rumpus, Hobart, McSweeney’s, and Black Warrior Review, among others. She is the essays editor for The Nervous Breakdown and a volunteer reader for Creative Nonfiction. She teaches creative writing online with WOW! Women on Writing and received her MFA from The Rainier Writing Workshop. You can visit her online at www.chelseyclammer.com.
DR. TRISH DOLASINSKI, ED.D. is a freelance writer and editor. She also instructs doctoral candidates at Grand Canyon University in Arizona. An educator for more than thirty years, she has taught elementary and middle-school students, as well as graduate students at two major universities. Trish is currently in the final revision stages of her first novel. She lives in Scottsdale, AZ, with her husband and enjoys her eight grandchildren. You can visit her online at www.trishdolasinskiwrites.com.
KATHY FISH teaches flash fiction for the Mile High MFA program at Regis University in Denver. She has published four collections of short fiction: a chapbook in the Rose Metal Press collective, A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women (2008), Wild Life (Matter Press, 2011), Together We Can Bury It (The Lit Pub, 2012), and Rift, co-authored with Robert Vaughan (Unknown Press, 2015). Her story, “A Room With Many Small Beds,” was chosen by Stuart Dybek for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2016 (Queen’s Ferry Press). You can visit her online at www.kathy-fish.com.
LISA FUGARD is the author of the award-winning novel Skinner’s Drift and 21 Days to Awaken the Writer Within. She has written frequently for the New York Times travel section. Her short story “Night Calls” is anthologized in a school textbook published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and she loves the e-mails she gets from ninth graders asking about her story’s symbolism. She lives in southern California where she writes and mentors those interested in learning more about a writer’s craft. You can visit her online at www.lisafugard.com.
STUART HORWITZ is a ghostwriter, independent editor, and founder of Book Architecture (www.bookarchitecture.com), a firm of independent editors whose clients have reached the best-seller list in both fiction and nonfiction and have appeared on Oprah, the TODAY Show, The Tonight Show, and in the most prestigious journals in their respective fields. He is the author of three books on writing: Blueprint Your Bestseller: Organize and Revise Any Manuscript With the Book Architecture Method, which was named one of 2013’s best books about writing by The Writer; Book Architecture: How to Plot and Outline Without Using a Formula (2015), which became an Amazon bestseller; and Finish Your Book in Three Drafts: How to Write a Book, Revise a Book, and Complete a Book While You Still Love It (2016).
ALICE KALTMAN is the author of the story collection Staggerwing (Tortoise Books) and the forthcoming novel Wavehouse (Fitzroy Books 2018). Her work has also appeared in numerous journals including Hobart, Whiskeypaper, Storychord, and Joyland, and in the anthologies The Pleasure You Suffer and On Montauk: A Literary Celebration. She lives, writes, and surfs in Brooklyn and Montauk, New York. You can visit her online at www.alicekaltman.com.
JENNIFER KIRCHER CARR is a writer living in western New York. Her fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, including Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Storyscape Literary Journal, North American Review, and The Nebraska Review, which awarded her the Fiction Prize. Her nonfiction has been published in Poets & Writers, Ploughshares blog, and Edible Finger Lakes, among others. She is co-curator at WordTango, an online community for writers. Her works in progress include a novel and a collection of linked stories. You can visit her online at www.jenniferkirchercarr.com.
BRIANNE M. KOHL’s short stories have appeared in several publications, including The Masters Review, The Stoneslide Corrective, Literary Mama, The Bohemyth, Coup d’Etat, and Menda City Review. She has published several tips articles and interviews at The Review Review. To see all of her publications and awards, visit her at www.briannekohl.com. Follow her at twitter.com/BrianneKohl.
DR. MICHELLE LEE is an English professor at Daytona State College. She has edited various academic and literary journals, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has published across genres. You can find her most recent work in the anthology All We Can Hold by Sage Hill Press and with Hypertrophic Literary, as well as online with Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and Spry Literary Journal. You can email her at [email protected].
SUSAN LERNER is a student in Butler’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She reads for Booth: A Journal, which also published her interview with Jonathan Franzen. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Believer Logger, Front Porch Journal, Atticus Review, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. Susan’s essay “Only A Memory” was a finalist for the Crab Orchard Review’s 2016 Rafael Torch Literary Nonfiction Award. Susan lives in Indianapolis.
JEANNE LYET GASSMAN’s debut novel, Blood of a Stone (Tuscany Press), received a 2015 Independent Publisher Book Award (bronze) in the national category of religious fiction and was a finalist for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the 2015 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award. Her short work has been nominated for Queen’s Ferry Press’s Best Small Fictions series and the Pushcart Prize. Additional awards include fellowships from Ragdale and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Jeanne’s short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Hippocampus Magazine, Altarwork, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Literary Mama, Red Savina Review, Switchback, Barrelhouse, and The Museum of Americana, among many others. Her short story, “Sweet Dirty Love,” is included in the anthology Debris & Detritus: The Lesser Greek Gods Running Amok. You can visit her online at www.jeannelyetgassman.com.
JOLENE MCILWAIN is a part-time lecturer at Chatham and Duquesne Universities, focusing on literary theory and creative and argumentative writing. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice selected finalist in Glimmer Train’s contests. Her work appears in Prairie Schooner (online), River Teeth (online), The Fourth River, JOCCA’s www.flashfiction.net, Prime Number Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of an artist grant from the Greater Pittsb
urgh Arts Council and is currently working on a collection of short fiction and a novel set in the hills of western Pennsylvania’s Appalachian plateau. She is an associate flash fiction editor at jmww.
DR. RALPH MONDAY is a professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN, and has published hundreds of poems in more than one-hundred journals. A chapbook, All American Girl and Other Poems, was published in July 2014. A book, Empty Houses and American Renditions, was published in May 2015 by Aldrich Press. A Kindle chapbook, Narcissus the Sorcerer, was published in June 2015 by Odin Hill Press. An e-book, Bergman’s Island & Other Poems, was published by Poetry Repairs in March 2017, and a humanities text is scheduled for publication by Kendall Hunt in 2018. You can visit him online at www.ralphmonday.com.
DENISE HOWARD LONG’s short fiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, The Tishman Review, The Evansville Review, and elsewhere. Denise lives in Nebraska with her husband and two young sons. You can visit her online at www.denisehlong.com.
LYNN O’ROURKE HAYES is a writer, photographer, and passionate traveler. Her adventures have taken her to more than one-hundred countries on six continents, across deserts, down rivers, over mountains, under the sea, through jungles, and to fourty-eight of our fifty states. She writes a syndicated column for the Dallas Morning News’s site and shares stories on her site www.familytravel.com. When not traveling, she splits her time between Scottsdale, AZ, and Whitefish, MT. You can visit her online at www.lynnorourkehayes.com.
ELIZABETH PETTIE is co-founder of the online writing community WordTango, which hosts writing classes, a networking group, and online writing events for busy writers such as herself. She finds time for her own writing after dark and during her daughter’s naps. She has a passion for children’s literature but is currently following the write-what-you-know advice and is at work on a novel for adults about a frazzled mom of two small girls who’s house is coated in a layer of crushed bunny crackers and Cheerios. You can visit her online at www.elizabethpettie.com.
SUSAN POHLMAN is the author of Halfway to Each Other: How a Year in Italy Brought Our Family Home. She won the Relationships category and was the runner-up in the Memoirs category in the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her essays have been published in a variety of print and online publications, including The Washington Times, Guideposts, Homelife, Good Housekeeping (online), Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, The Review Review, and The Mid. She teaches creative writing in small-group settings, speaks at conferences, and hosts an annual writing retreat in Santa Fe, NM. You can visit her online at www.susanpohlman.com.
MICHAEL SCHMELTZER was born in Yokosuka, Japan, and eventually moved to the United States. He is the author of Elegy/Elk River (Floating Bridge Press, 2015), winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and Blood Song (Two Sylvias Press, 2016), which was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. A debut nonfiction book, A Single Throat Opens (a lyric exploration of addiction written collaboratively with Meghan McClure), is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. You can visit him online at www.michaelschmeltzer.com.
SAVANNAH THORNE graduated from the University of Iowa, where she studied in the Writers’ Workshop under many of poetry’s great voices. She also holds cum laude Master’s degrees from DePaul University in Chicago and Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. Her poetry has appeared in more than thirty literary journals. Her fiction is represented by the Linda Chester Literary Agency. You can visit her online at www.savvyedit.com.
BECKY TUCH is the founding editor of The Review Review, a website that has been listed for the past six years in Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers. Becky’s fiction has won awards from Moment, Glimmer Train, The Briar Cliff Review, and elsewhere. Other writing has appeared in Salon, Virginia Quarterly Review (online), Salt Hill, Cleaver, Graze, Hobart, Eclipse, Folio, Night Train, and more. She has received literature fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and the Somerville Arts Council. Currently, she lives in Pittsburgh. You can visit her online at www.beckytuch.com.
HILLARY UMLAND comes from a long line of writers and artists. She is a writer living and working in Nebraska. You can find Hillary’s work in Unbroken and Sick Lit Magazine.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Windy Lynn Harris is a prolific writer, a trusted mentor, and a frequent speaker at literary events. Her short stories and personal essays have been published in literary, trade, and women’s magazines across the United States and Canada in places like The Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, and Literary Mama, among many other journals. She is the founder of Market Coaching for Creative Writers, a program that teaches writers how to get their essays and short stories published in magazines, and she works as a developmental-editor-for-hire, specifically for short creative prose. Windy also teaches the craft of writing online and in person. Visit her website for publishing information and writing inspiration: www.windylynnharris.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I relied on a large tribe of family and friends for support during the year this book was written. I had a neck injury, months of physical therapy, spinal surgery, and a recovery period among the drafts of this project. I’d like to thank my husband, Darin, for his enormous contribution to my well-being. There were many days when I was unable to write (or open the refrigerator), but Darin never once worried that I wouldn’t finish this book. He didn’t let me worry about it either. Thank you, D, for always believing I’d find a way back to the page. Thank you also to my son Jason and my daughter Tierney for their humor and support through the ups and downs of my progress and for lifting all the heavy stuff for me.
A huge thank you to Stuart Horwitz at Book Architecture, who was part of this project from the beginning. Stuart urged me to put my idea down on paper and helped me organize it into a book proposal worth sending out to the world. He was my first beta-reader and a crucial editor along the way. I’m grateful to have you by my side!
Thank you to Rachel Randall at Writer’s Digest Books for seeing potential in this material, helping me refine what I could offer writers, and championing this project to print. Thank you also to my literary agent, Julia Kenny, who understands how important this book is to me and ushered it to the finish line. To my terrific and talented editor Cris Freese: Thank you for using that very sharp red pen of yours and for wrangling the organization of this material into a cohesive book. I picture you in the jungle with a machete, but that’s probably not how you dress for work at all.
A special thanks goes to Diane Amento Owens for supporting this project way back when we were presenting workshops together at Barnes & Noble. Thank you for believing in me all those years ago and nudging me toward my goal as the years marched on. To my Storytelling Boot Camp partner and dear friend Lisa Fugard: Thank you for igniting the teaching side of my writing life. You make everything seem possible.
A huge thank you goes out to Jennifer Fabiano, Susan Pohlman, and Rudri Bhatt Patel, three amazing writers who served as manuscript beta readers for this book. These friends offered advice at every turn and directed me toward better drafts. Your support means the world to me, ladies.
To Bree Barton, Denise Howard Long, and Brianne M. Kohl: You’re the best critique group ever assembled. Thank you for reading chapters of this book along the way and pointing me toward my authentic path. I cherish each of you individually and adore you collectively.
Finally, I would like to thank each of the talented writers and editors who contributed advice, anecdotes, stories, and essays to this book. Every writer needs a tribe, but I’ve been especially lucky in the company I keep. Thanks goes to each of you for offering time and energy to this project. Your generous advice will help other writers find their way to success, too.
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Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays. Copyright © 2017 by Windy Lynn Harris. Manufactured in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No other part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 10151 Carver Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45242. (800) 289-0963. First edition.
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