Sandra Gail Lambert

Not Somewhere Else But Here

Yes, that is an Adrienne Rich quote, but it's also the title of an upcoming anthology from Sundress Publications.  Not Somewhere Else But But Here: A Contemporary Anthology of Women and Place will include my essay "Rolling in the Mud" which was first published in The Alaska Quarterly Review. 

Sundress Publications "is a (mostly) woman-run, woman-friendly publication group founded in 2000 that hosts a variety of online journals [Including Wicked Alice, Gone Dark Archives, and Intentional Walk which is devoted to the poetry of sports] and publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats." 

I'm so glad to be part of their endeavors.         

 

 

 

Libby and the Cape of Visitability

"Visitability" is the idea or a conviction or sometimes an ordinance that all new homes should be built with a few specific features that make it easier for disabled people to visit, to come for dinner or a meeting, to comfort a sick friend, to be part of community.  For over a quarter of a century Eleanor Smith and her organization Concrete Change have spread the word, changed laws, and made us all smarter.  

And now, Eleanor is retiring.  But she and Nadeen Green have written a children's story to keep the visitability movement spreading on into the future.  Libby and the Cape of Visitability is an e-book available from all the usual places.    

Rejection

This has been one of those inevitable weeks of rejection.  Actually, it was a day, no, really, it all happened within 2 hours.  First of there was this residency that I "just had a feeling" was going to accept my application.  And that's what I told way too many friends with a now embarrassingly smug tilt of my head and pursing of my lips.  Well, I was wrong.  But who cared about that when an hour later I got an email whose subject line said I'd won this big deal literary journal's contest.  Yippee.  But the odd thing was that the e-mail had no content.  But I checked their online submission chart and it said I'd been accepted as well.  Yippee, again.  I sent the e-mail back to the editor pointing out the lack of content.  The next message in my inbox was a form rejection from this same contest.  I clicked over to the chart, and it had been changed to "rejected."  Oops.  Sure mistakes get made, but a note of apology would have been nice.  Anyway, a friend says that rejections come in threes so I'm waiting. 

Go Long, Dear Writer, Go Long

Each year it seems the word count limits for journal submissions drop.  The reasons given range from our supposed diminished attention spans to the goal of including more writers in each issue.  For me, the result is that I write shorter.  Shorter than I used to.  Sometimes shorter than the piece should be. 

But now there's Big Fiction: Long Shorts with Style. They take pieces up to 30,000 words and nothing less than 7,500 for their hand-designed letterpress issues.  And they offer the Knickerbocker Prize.  And this year I came in second place.  Which means the editor and I worked on revising my story ("Half-Boy") and you know what?  She found places where she wanted more.  We ended up making it longer not shorter.  It was as if the story was allowed expansive breaths that rushed oxygen into the sentences.

Big Fiction Magazine says it "celebrates the soul of the long story: generous, transportive, and a little wild."  Me, I think we should all subscribe right now.

A Curiosity

In 2009, I finished a collection of interwoven short stories and thus started the years of submissions.  Never, not once, despite a few close-but-no-cigar rejections, has a single word ended up published.  I've given up many times - said that's that and mourned.  But a call for submissions would catch my attention, so I'd format a piece and once again press "send."  I mean, why not?      

And now, four years later, in the past two months, two of the stories have won contests.  In a Chamber of My Heart took first place in the 2013 Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest and Half-Boy came in second for Big Fiction's 2013 Knickerbocker Prize.  What is going on?  Why now?  It's a curiosity.  And a thrill.  I'm remembering that eager author from 2009 with her fresh manuscript and her wild hope.  Perhaps I'll dust her off.        

Rhonda Riley, The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope, and Saying "Thank You."

This weekend I went to a celebration of Rhonda and her debut novel.  She was surrounded by supportive friends, fellow writers, a daughter, and a husband who told me he had discovered that Amazon had a ranking system and now he was checking it every hour which is pretty much one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. (She's trending down!)  And then Rhonda gave a speech that not only thanked people but named all the ways she'd been helped by them in this long process of writing her novel.     

It reminds me to thank my "people."  So to those who cook dinner for me, take care of my dog, and bring me pie, to the ones who drag me away from my writing desk to have fun, to the fellow writer who squeals because I finished a draft no matter how bad her own writing day was, to the editors of my work and to the readers, to that guy who said my point-of-view as a disabled person wasn't "enough" (getting pissed off = renewed focus), to my friend in the care facility who kept my published pieces fanned out on her dresser, to my dog who sits in the small of my back and heats it, to each of you, know this, you are beloved and most appreciated.   

And the Winner Is . . .

My story "In a Chamber of My Heart" was chosen by Felice Picano as the winner of the Saints and Sinner Short Fiction Contest.  Which means, among many things, that I get to read at the opening night fundraiser of Saints and Sinners, A LGBT Literary Festival, and that my story, along with the runner-ups 'Nathan Burgoine and Vince Sgambati and all the other finalists, will be published together in an anthology from Bold Stroke Books.  (Available for pre-order now.)  Oh, and I'll be going to New Orleans for the first time ever. 

So far, this sixtieth year of my life is going quite well.         

Poet Sidney Wade at the Library on April 11th

Once again, we are so lucky to live in Gainesville.  On Thursday, April 11th at 7:30 at the downtown library Sidney Wade will read from her new (the sixth, I think) collection - Straits and Narrows.  Many of the wild spaces that I love are in Sydney's poems.  In fact, she and I met as our kayaks came up alongside each other on Orange Lake.  So come to the library and hear a poet published in places like The New Yorker and the Paris Review read to us of our own prairies and rivers and birds.   

Women in Hot Water! Book Tour - Our Editor Glenda Bailey-Mershon

Glenda Bailey-Mershon is the founder of Janes' Stories Press Foundation and one of the editors of Bridges and Border (the anthology that we're all coming together to celebrate on Sunday April 14th at 2pm at Volta Coffee.)   She's a poet, fiction writer, and an advocate for the rights of her Romani people.  I don't think we'll get to hear her read at the event, so here's an excerpt from her short story "Space Walk."

At night, Reina played among the stars.

She rose from her pillow, gliding up and up, one arm outstretched, as the Earth spun into a small ball below. Inevitably, she bumped into a speeding comet, pulled herself up and perched on it, as on a black velvet throne, surveying the planets rolling away like glass marbles into the field of space. When she tired of the views passing before her, she skipped onto other heavenly objects — asteroids, moons big and small, unidentified bits of space junk of unknown origin — until she sighted the phenomena she most loved: giant, spinning galaxies, great milky spills of stars across the horizon-less void.

Her days unfurled in stark contrast to her nights. She awoke in her bed to rise and dress in stained shirts and shorts, took the bus to where she crawled on her knees across someone else’s kitchen floor, sodden cloth in hand, crunchy cereal and cracker crumbs prickling her fleshy limbs. Under her absentminded gaze, load after load of soiled clothes turned spotless.

Then she ran home for her nightly adventures. For slow leaps through universes rushing like amusement park rides, one into another. In some of those universes she was a child again. Her father blew dandelion fluff with great gusts of his stubbly cheeks, as Reina leapt to catch it. In others, she was someone she had not yet been: a woman with an explorer’s audacious smile, diving through blazing wormholes, stardust billowing around her like sheets on a line.

So many Reinas, so many ways to travel. 

Excerpted from Space Walk by Glenda Bailey-Mershon

 

Women in Hot Water! Book Tour - Tricia Booker

Our immoderate moderator for this event (Sunday, April 14th at 2pm at Volta Coffee) will be the writer/fighter/mom Tricia Booker.  She's a journalist and creative nonfiction writer who these days is most known for her irreverent "mommy" blog My Left Hook.  This is going to be fun.