Looking through old photos

I dug out my old, printed photos recently after seeing a sub call for printed media. I’ve stored them for years in a boot box, all mixed together in clumps, so there are photos spanning childhood to my early 20s mixed with photos my cousin had mailed to me when we sent letters to each other as teenagers. The photos from my cousin are of her life, her bedroom, but also her friends, so there are many pictures of a literal stranger (named Jessica). I was surprised to find that most of my photos…weren’t actually that good: blurry but not in the pleasing way achieved by photo filters, or multiple staged shots of inanimate objects which I loved to compose as a kid, exposing some sick desire to live inside a toy catalog.

I found photos of my past pets and was sad to realize I’ve forgotten the name of the beautiful, fluffy beige hamster, precious and yet my mind has erased his name. I asked my sister, whose memory is different from mine (we recall different things from childhood and have to patch them together to reveal the whole picture), and she thought his name was Squishy. No way I named him that. But I do recall the names of all the cats and gerbils in the other pictures, the cats I got from a boyfriend after he told me his coworker was giving away some kittens and then when he brought them to my house, they were adult cats. I loved those gerbils and still remember the birthdate of Mickie and Minnie’s babies: March 22, a date my memory marks every year whether I want to or not.

Another thing that struck me during this memory dive were the “selfies” I’d taken as a child and teenager in the mirrored closet doors of my childhood homes. I used a brick-shaped plastic Kodak camera for most of the pictures, so the photos are every time overwhelmed by the light of the camera flash. My face (sometimes my entire head) is obscured in each photo. The effect is like an orb of light, another universe poking through, it’s origin: my eye socket or skull or hand.

Editing news

JMWW published my creative nonfiction (“No Heroes”) last year, and then asked me to read it at their inaugural creative nonfiction reading. Their editors were so gracious to work with on this one, which I’d been editing and then shelving for a few years and had at one time thought was maybe too weird. I’m proud and excited to join the jmww team as an associate fiction editor!

Free “how to submit” resource

I’ve wanted to make a short class or tutorial on how to submit to lit mags and offer it for no cost, something covering the things I wish I’d known or understood when I sent out my first submissions, especially mistakes I made like falling prey to weird submittable listings with questionable sub fees. I’d like to teach it as a course but I’m such an anxious person/talker, I do not know how well it would go, even teaching it over zoom. I made a document instead, a downloadable PDF. (There’s a .ppt too but thought the pdf was easiest way to share.) It lives in my web site if anyone wants to check it out.

++ “How to Submit to Literary Journals” – PDF

New story

The Dodge published my story “Terrible Tilly” this month. I just went again to the coastal Oregon town that inspired it; I’d started writing the story a year ago after I visited. I finally managed to walk on the beach at night, like the character in my story, and was able to see the stars. I just had to get away from the light long enough for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

xx Thanks for reading!!