Writer & Editor
It was an honor last week to read my work at Slought in Philadelphia, with the Cheburashka Collective, in solidarity with Ukraine. Such well-being came from being around so many wonderful writers from Eastern Europe. I’m grateful that we had a pre-reading reception where we could connect and share stories. Thank you to the UPenn Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies, and Russian and East European Studies programs for making the evening possible!
I’m thrilled to serve as one of the judges for New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize for Poetry again this year. Deadline to submit is Dec. 15. The prize is $1,000 and publication in New Ohio Review. All submission information can be found on Submittable!
Writers attending the 2022 AWP Conference in Philadelphia in March: I will be presenting on a panel called “What Kind of Times Are These? Immigrant Poets and the New Politics of Resistance” with poets Olga Livshin, Anna Halberstadt, Mariya Deykute, and Larissa Shmailo. If you attend the conference, I hope to see you there!
My flash essay, “Women Like Them,” appears today at Hawai’i Pacific Review. It processes an early student experience and features a turkey vulture! Big thanks to the editor, Tyler McMahon, for including it.
I’m thrilled to announce that the anthology Voices on the Move, to which I contributed a personal essay last year, has just won first prize in nonfiction in the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation annual writing contest! Congrats to editors Roxana Cazan and Domnica Radulescu, and to all the other contributors!
My prose poem “After the Date,” which appeared in print issue 25 of New Ohio Review, has been republished online. Thanks to the lovely NOR editors! Always such a pleasure to connect with them!
Writing friends, I’m excited to serve as one of the judges for New Ohio Review’s NORward Prize in poetry! The prize is $1,000 and publication in New Ohio Review 29. Deadline to submit is Nov. 15. Hope I get to see some of your gorgeous writing!
My flash fiction piece, “On the Dalmatian Coast,” appears in the anthology Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction From a Small Planet (Vol. 3) from Press 53. A few of the other authors and I will be having a virtual reading on October 21, moderated by Editor Cliff Garstang. Details are available on Facebook—be sure to check it out!
My personal essay, “Geography of Peaks and Dips and Lights,” which appeared online earlier this year in The Rumpus, will be reprinted in the upcoming anthology Voices on the Move: An Anthology by and about Refugees, available for preorder now from Solis Press. This multi-genre anthology explores the nuances of displacement. About the book, novelist Samrat Upadhyay writes:
“Voices on the Move is a moving, must-read artistic exploration of migration and the trauma of displacement. Through diverse modes of expression—poetry, fiction, photography, play—the voices in this collection present the multitudinous ways with which we experience uprooting and belonging. The book is a jewel, a chronicle of our times, an intense awareness of humanity’s suffering and its yearning for home.”
Lana Spendl 