Writer
I’m delighted to share that my personal essay “Multitude of Hosts” appears in the new issue of Barnstorm Journal, from the University of New Hampshire. The piece begins as a meditation on the candle that sits by my side as I write and opens to a range of memories from my childhood across Bosnia and Spain. Huge thanks to the editors!
Last week, I held a workshop at the American School of São Paulo, with the 10th and 11th graders who are interested in creative writing. I spoke about my writing path and my childhood in Bosnia and Spain and read them a flash essay about my parents’ weekend house just outside of Sarajevo when I was little.
The students were from Brazil, China, S. Korea, and the States, and during the session, they wrote about their own childhood neighborhoods and the people who inhabited them. One wrote about a man who’d come down the street, piled up with boxes, to bring his family their weekly fruit delivery. A couple of others said the exercise brought up memories they didn’t know they had.
It was an energizing, deeply engaged session, and I was left wishing we could have had more time together. I also heard from one of their teachers that a couple of students asked whether “Miss Lana could come back.” ❤️
I’m delighted to have my personal essay—filled with childhood memories from Bosnia—in the November issue of World Literature Today. It’s an honor to be included in this beautiful, thoughtful magazine for the second time this year.
The piece mentions a traditional Bosnian stew, and I include my dad’s recipe at the end. 
When it was accepted, I also bought a butterfly mug to celebrate, which you’ll appreciate if you read the piece.
Phenomenal writer Alina Stefanescu has reviewed Voices on the Move, the anthology of refugee writing to which I was honored to contribute in 2020. The book, edited by Domnica Radulescu and Roxana Cazan, is filled with impactful and diverse voices and includes a range of creative pieces. Stefanescu’s review, “The Aliens Created by Nation-States,” is available on WorldCityLit.
My personal essay, “Geography of Peaks and Dips and Lights,” describes my return to Bosnia 18 years ago and appears today in The Rumpus. The piece was beautifully illustrated for The Rumpus by artist Susan Ito. This piece, I am excited to say, will also be reprinted later this year in the anthology Voices on the Move by Solis Press.
My new short story, “Family in the Foreign World,” appears online today in Epiphany’s Women Writing Women series. Many thanks to the wonderful writer and editor Rachel Lyon for the care she took with this piece!
Lana Spendl 