I'm excited to have a new short story, "Sneaking Into Dr. Zhivago," in the spring issue of Confrontation. It's an honor to be in a journal that's published the likes of Cynthia Ozick and Joseph Brodsky! Here's how the story begins:

If not Paris, Vienna. That's where I should have landed. My father sent my brother to medical school in Vienna, and I, I was being groomed for the Sorbonne. I would have studied history. And literature. Between the wars, many of my cousins moved to Vienna, London, New York. Children of my seven uncles.

Below you'll find a photo of the first page of the story so you can get more a taste of it. If you're intrigued, you can order a copy for just $12!

The Daughters of the Air launch party Tuesday night was a dream. The Fireside Lounge at the Hotel Sorrento was all decked out for the holidays: twinkly lights, garlands, and the lounge's quintessential warm glow. I was astounded at the turn out—and relieved we splurged on 100 alfajores! The books sold out within half an hour. Then Hugo House hurried over with more books. Then those sold out. Then Michael hurried to the car to get a box of my own books. Then we hauled out the second box.Christine Neulieb, Editorial Director of Lanternfish Press, opened the night with a few words about publishing Daughters of the Air. My dear friend and Furnace co-founder Corinne Manning read a beautiful excerpt from her novel Potential Monsters. And, we talked about metamorphosis, the pungent air by the Gowanus Canal, the inverted landscape of fairy tales. You can see more photos from the party here.Saturday night, Salon published by essay "Writing a Holocaust novel without writing about the Holocaust." in which I discuss exploring the Holocaust obliquely in Daughters of the Air. Last week, I spoke about this theme in an interview with Erin Popelka over at Must Read Fiction, along with how reading poetry and teaching ESL informed my creative writing. (If you retweet the interview or like it and follow Must Read on Instagram, you'll be entered into a giveaway for a copy of my novel.)Finally, I have a new short story, "Healers," in Geometry,  a new magazine based in New Zealand. The .pdf is available for free, but you can buy a beautiful print copy for $15 and support a literary magazine that pays writers.What a week! All the excitement has given me a cold, but I love an excuse to flood myself with big bowls of noodle soup. 

Well, gosh, November snuck up on me! I try not to let a whole month go by without popping in over here, so here's what's been cooking.  Daughters of the Air will be out in 18 days (you might add it to your Goodreads list to be notified of giveaways); the last several weeks featured early mornings hunched over my laptop pitching book critics and events to bookstores and a handful of book clubs. Anxiety-fueled self-googling is at peak levels, which, yes, I know I should not be doing. But every now and again someone says something lovely about the book, which, as I've said on Instagram, has me rolling around like a happy puppy. (Also: I am increasingly on Instagram, where I overuse creepy filters, such in the photo above.)I just finished teaching for the first time a fiction thesis writing class in the online MA program I work for. It's an interesting class that coaches students through the first 30-50 pages of a novel or story collection, and I am embarking upon it once again very soon, just as my own novel will be hitting shelves. Our final week's discussion on paths to publication (traditional vs. hybrid vs. self-publishing) will be rather timely.  In related news, as I head out on book tour next year, I'll be teaching online for Hugo House as well: an eight-week intermediate fiction class touching on point of view, dialogue, and scene construction. Watch for one-day classes at Chicago's StoryStudio and Port Townsend's Writers' Workshoppe! Amidst all this activity, I'm looking forward to some holiday downtime, if that is even possible. Lately I've been starting my day with Anne Carson's Plainwater and ending it with Mavis Gallant's A Fairly Good Time: a superb literary sandwich. Before the year is over, I hope to get to Nathaniel Hawthorne's Gothic novel The House of the Seven Gables. I picked it up from a used bookstore in Montreal, The Word, just before graduating from college...in 2004. Yes, I guess it's about time I get to that one.Stay tuned for stories forthcoming from Lilith Magazine, the New Zealand-based Geometry, and the new Pacific Northwest-based Cascadia Magazine. If you'd like monthly news in your in-box, which will include information for upcoming events across the country, you can sign up here. Until launch day!

Sharpen your pencils: I'm teaching two classes at Hugo House this fall. Member registration opens today and general registration opens August 22. Scholarships are available: apply here by August 25!

• Wall-to-Wall Writing Prompts will be a fun-for-everyone one-day writing bonanza. I'm bringing in all my favorite prompts. If you're eager to kick start some new writing, this one's for you. Come with some overheard lines of dialogue and leave with six story openings and a plan to finish at least one. Meets Saturday, September 30, 1-4 pm. Sliding scale pricing available for this class. Please call Hugo House at (206) 322-7030.
• Fiction I  is a six-week intro to fiction, with a special focus on character, plot, and landscape. We'll read short stories from James Joyce, Jamaica Kincaid, Flannery O'Connor, Sherman Alexie, and Louise Erdrich, among others. Writing prompts in and out of class will be geared toward writing a short story, though of course all the skills covered are applicable to novels. We'll also learn the basics of the workshop model. Meets Saturdays from October 14 to November 18, 1-3 pm.

Hope to see you then!

I'm really looking forward to teaching a new short story class at Hugo House about Anton Chekhov and his influence on modern short story writing. So many craft techniques in wide use today originated from Chekhov, and I learned a lot deeply engaging with his stories. In fact, my story "Old Boyfriends" started out as an imitation of the structure and themes in "Gusev". In addition to reading iconic stories from Chekhov, we'll read Mavis Gallant and Jhumpa Lahiri and Ehud Havazelet, and try our hands at a range of techniques. Here's a micro-lesson preview of the class. I hope to see there, Mondays 7-9 pm, starting April 27!

This winter, I'm teaching Intro to Fiction: Writing the Short Story, a six-week class at Hugo House laying out crucial elements of story. Here's the course description:

This class will zero in on the three-part backbone of story: character, plot, and landscape. Who is your main character? What do they want? What keeps them from getting what they want? Readings and discussions will include canonical and contemporary stories from James Joyce, Anton Chekhov, Mavis Gallant, Jamaica Kincaid, Louise Erdrich, and others. Writing exercises will focus on crucial craft elements as well as generative exercises to get started.

I'm also teaching a special one-day class at the Henry Art Gallery in conjunction with Ann Hamilton's show the common S E N S E, which I'll write more about in a separate post. Registration for Hugo House members begins on December 9 and for the general public on December 16. Hope to see you there!