Sacha is a Notable Author!

My dear S. is notable!! ♥

"22 Ways of Looking at Chagall," by Sacha Siskonen

Check it out here, scroll down to the New Mississippi Review.

Notice how close her name is to Robert Olen Butler's?!

You can read her wonderful story at the Mississippi Review Online, here. You might have noticed the link to it in the sidebar, before, under "My Friend Wrote a Story."

You might have seen her blog in my blogroll at the bottom, it's
Those Who Can't Teach. Check out her latest post, "Take Note," to read how she found out about this honor---it's mind-boggling!


Congratulations, S.

I couldn't be more proud of you, you author, you.

Martindale Literary Prize for Short Fiction

Remember that short story contest I mentioned a little while back? Well, somehow---I won! For a short story I first wrote in 2007, called "Wet Season."

I still can't quite believe it. My first writing prize! And the first time I've actually made money through my writing. I totally got all teary and shaky when they called me up to the little podium last night, even though I'd promised myself that I wouldn't.

They made the announcement at the opening reception for the 2009 Pima Writer's Workshop. A reading by Peter Turchi, (the judge for 2009 and a faculty member at the workshop), was the main event.

Linda Lyons won second runner-up for her story "Footsteps." Tom Printsner (sp?) won first runner-up for his story "Leonard and Martha," but unfortunately he was out of town.

Peter Turchi was nice enough to sign my copy of his short story collection, Magician, even though I was all mumbly and nervous.

Meg Files was super-sweet, and she signed my copy of her craft book, Write from Life. (Laura Van Etten, my workshop instructor from this past semester, gave that to me as a going-away-to-Minneapolis present! If you're ever looking for a writing class in Tucson, check out one of Laura's, it was great. And she recommends Meg Files' class highly. Judging by this book, I absolutely agree, and I'm sorry I never had the chance.)

Nancy Wall gave me the call to tell me, last Tuesday. She was really nice. I cried. She made me promise not to tell anyone until after the announcement---it was so hard to keep my mouth shut!

Nancy Wall, reading Peter Turchi's comments about "Wet Season." Meg Files, taking a picture.
(PLEASE disregard my terrifyingly bad posture, eesh.)


Peter Turchi was the judge for 2009. Here he is reading his work. (Pardon the craptastic photo quality.)

Linda Lyons getting her certificate from Nancy Wall

Meg Files, Chair of the Pima English Dept. and Pima Writer's Workshop founder

It's called the Martindale Literary Prize. It's an annual prize for short fiction, it began in 1988. The rules are that you can only submit one unpublished story, you can't have won before or be Pima faculty, the story has to be between 5,000 and 10,000 words AND you have to be taking at least one class at Pima Community College---so the applicant pool is pretty much limited to people in Tucson.

And the award is $1000! I'm still hyperventilating. I can't even explain how much this will help with my move to Minnesota. Things have been looking really grim on my financial front, lately.

As much as the money saves the day for me, this really does mean even more to me on an emotional and professional level. I feel SO grateful and so lucky. I hope this post doesn't come off as braggy, because that's not what I want. I'm just really happy---the MFA, and now this? It's like the world is telling me: Go ahead, do this. I've got your back. (And I go: Well, I was going to go for it anyway, but this really helps!)

The prize is a bit obscure, I have to admit. You'll have trouble finding information about it on the internet---apparently they don't have a website set up for it. (I'm tempted to ask them if they'd like me to make one for them! But I know that's crazy talk.)

So please forgive me---I'm going to indulge myself a bit here, and tell you everything you'll ever never want to know about the Martindale Literary Prize.

I'm warning you ahead of time. I'm going to blab and blab, so feel free to skip this. Okay? Okay.


Kaleidoscope, published by Pima Press in 2007.

Kaleidoscope is an anthology of nineteen winning stories from a yearly contest at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona.

The competition, sponsored by the Martindale Educational Foundation, awards an annual prize of $1000. As Mr. Robert C. Martindale explained in 1987 at the first meeting to discuss this competition, his foundation was offering a substantial award, and he therefore expected substantial stories.

The judge for each year's competition is a well-known fiction writer, and all of the judges have commented on the unusually high quality of the work submitted. Several of the authors appearing in Kaleidoscope have had short story collections or novels published, while the work of others has appeared in serious literary journals, some publications containing the stories from this anthology.

Hey, wanna know who won the Martindale in 2000? Tayari Jones! Remember when I read Leaving Atlanta and loved it? She did her MFA at ASU, and she's fiction faculty at Rutgers-Newark now. The Untelling is on my list of must-read-soons.

Here's the flier that started this whole thing:


Wanna know what's funny? Peter Turchi and Charles Baxter (faculty at Minnesota) edited a book on craft together! It's called Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. Turchi was the director of the Warren Wilson MFA program from 1993-2008, and Baxter still teaches there, I think.

In case you're thinking, Hey, that sounds fishy!, let me assure you that this is just a wonderful cosmic coincidence. Check out the flier: They didn't say who the judge would be, and Turchi never saw my name. Even if he had, I can promise you that at this point I've said about seven words to Charles Baxter, (Hello, it's so good to meet you), and he has no idea what I'm doing with my insignificant little summer, or what kinds of longs shots I'm shooting for. Turchi did his MFA at the University of Arizona, so really it's not so strange that he's here to do the Workshop. But I just love unexpected connections like this.

*

What about the story? "Wet Season" was part of my MFA application portfolio. I wrote it for a summer fiction workshop taught by the excellent Rachel Yoder. At the time she was an MFA student at the University of Arizona. It was my first creative writing workshop, and she was just such a really engaging, dedicated, supportive teacher. Please, please go check out NewPage's review of Alligator Juniper, Prescott College's literary journal---she edited this issue!

I've revised the story a few times already, and I plan to keep working on it. After taking Laura Van Etten's awesome short fiction workshop this past semester, I realize that what I probably need to do is go back and cut, cut, cut. She has this way of saying things that really made stuff make sense to me in all kinds of new, sparking and/or comforting ways.

If you check out my earlier post, you'll see that I submitted this story to a few other contests/journals, and struck out. I guess it goes to show---just keep trying! You never know.

*

While I'm at it, I'd like to thank:

(Well, my family, of course, and S. But those are givens! Always.)

Rachel Yoder, Emily Lundin, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Manuel Muñoz, Laura Van Etten, Carlos Gallego, Tenney Nathanson, Judy Blunt, Terry Woronov, Praise Zenenga, Bridget Radcliff, Wendy Burk, Susan White, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi & Ron Grant. Thanks for being such inspirational (& dedicated!) writers, teachers and advisors. Your classes & workshops/story-essay-poem comments/advice, guidance & encouragment/recommendation letters/help ETC! have made such a huge huge difference in my life. Many of you probably have no idea what a big impact you've had on me---I really ought to do something about that.

There are SO many more wonderful teachers I'd like to mention here, but it would take miles...I hope you know who you are.

Not that most of these folks are likely to see this : )

*

Phew! It's ridiculous how long I've rambled on. Goodnight, world!

Congratulations to Manuel Muñoz!

I bumped into Prof. Manuel Muñoz today after work (I'd stopped by campus to deposit my check and chat with a couple of friends.) The four of us got to talking about his second collection of stories, The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue. We talked about the heartbreakingness of his story "When You Come Into Your Kingdom."

Then I mentioned that "Tell Him About Brother John" was one of my favorite stories in the collection, and he told us that that story has been selected for an O. Henry Prize and will be published in the 2009 collection! This is wonderful news---I couldn't have been happier to hear it. It's kind of funny, because we read the 2008 collection in the advanced fiction workshop that I took with him this past Fall semester.

Recently, he won the 2008 Whiting Writers' Award. He got his MFA at Cornell and is now teaching fiction at the University of Arizona.

Here is a mediabistro.com interview with him about teaching and the "writing vote."

Here is a great little chat with him from miapogeo.com.

Here's an article from the UA website that came out when he won the Whiting Award.

I feel so lucky and grateful to have had the chance to take a class with him. He's an amazing writer and an equally amazing teacher. It's just so clear that he's truly invested in helping his students to improve as writers.

Congratulations Prof. M!


PS---I know, I know, I wasn't supposed to blog first today. But it's a special circumstance! And so far, I've kept my promise to stay away from the blogs. But I'm jonesing bad, man, jonesing bad. Into the tub with me!

Update 8:30 pm: Still haven't looked. I think I'll make it this first day. That has to be the hardest part, right? The only problem is that I've smoked more today than I have in a long time (like 5 cigarettes, instead of one or two.) My health vs. my peace of mind...well, I wasn't very healthy, anway.

Short Story Contest (Rejections)

I'm taking a short story workshop at my local community college. Since I made the mistake of graduating from Local University in December (why, why, why?!) I have months and months to kill before starting an MFA this fall. I want to bring some new stories with me, and I want to make sure I stay in practice. Also, I'm switching my focus from creative nonfiction (undergrad) to fiction (grad), so a little part of me feels like I need to "catch up" somehow.

Our instructor handed out a flier about a local short story contest, which is apparently open only to students enrolled in least 3 credits at the college. So I'm thinking that the applicant pool can't be too very big. But get this---the prize is $1000. Can you say holy what-what?

I could really use that money. (See my mini-rant on unemployment, below). I have a story I'm thinking I might submit---it doesn't hurt to try, I guess. I already submitted it (rather foolishly) to a Glimmer Train "Family Matters" contest, One Story, and Alligator Juniper's national contest. I think I paid a total of $25 for the contest entries.

I was rejected, rejected, rejected. And no surprise, I understand why. It can definitely use more work, and quadrillions of "real" writers submit to those journals.

On the other hand, it was part of my MFA sample, and so far I know that it (and another story) got me into at least one wonderful program. And this contest has no entry fee.

So maybe I'll have a chance at this thing?