Tag: writing

“The Witch of Osborne Park” Is Here

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The September/October issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction is here, and it brings my story “The Witch of Osborne Park.”

It was expensive to live in Osborne Park, but it was worth it, the realtor promised. You were paying for the charm, engraved corner stones and peaked attics. You were paying for block parties and solstice celebrations. You were paying for the Neighborhood Association; for tranquility and protection.

(Spoiler alert: neither tranquility nor protection are found.)

It is a special joy to share this story with the world during the fall, when the children of Osborne Park gather in their purple robes and don their wooden masks. Happy Halloween, and hold your children close, unless maybe you shouldn’t.

You can order print and digital subscriptions, purchase an eBook copy, or find the issue on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and a million other stores.

First Review for Who Will Speak for America?

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Our first review is in! Kirkus writes:

Feldman (The Angel of Losses, 2014) and Popkin (Everything Is Borrowed, 2018, etc.) gather a medley of diverse voices to reflect on politics, society, and culture in contemporary America.

Essays, poems, fiction, photographs, and cartoons bristle with emotion from contributors responding to issues they consider most urgent: racism, sexism, poverty, and injustice. Nancy Hightower, who grew up in the evangelical South, captures the tenor of the collection when she urges the church, academia, and publishing—which she sees as being largely white—to break down racial boundaries and become “filled with, and overflowing with diversity.” She suggests that “if those in the literary arts want to transform the landscape of America, they need to be better evangelicals.” By that, she means that they must “write and publish work that speaks to students in the Bronx and LGBTQ teenagers in Oklahoma.” Inclusivity, she asserts, would produce a “glorious rhetorical army” to resist the president “and his corrupt administration.” Not surprisingly, many contributors rail against Donald Trump. Fiction writer Carmen Maria Machado cites her observations of racism and homophobia as reasons she should have known that Trump would be elected president. Poet, novelist, and creative nonfiction writer Samira Ahmed, who was born in India, takes on racism, reporting that she has been called terrorist, rag head, and sand nigger. “You realize, too young, that racists fail geography,” she writes, “but that their epithets and perverted patriotism can still shatter moments of your childhood.” Keeping silent is no adequate response, she warns: “in this land of the free and home of the brave, you plant yourself. / Like a flag.” Cartoonist Liana Finck depicts a map of America with U.S. crossed out, substituted by T. H. E. M. Novelist Diane McKinney-Whetstone celebrates the “hopeful vibe” she felt when she participated in the Women’s March. Hope counters an undercurrent of despair for many contributors: “I don’t want to give up the struggle,” says a despondent individual drawn by Finck. “I want to win and move on.”

A heartfelt and thoughtful collection.

Read “The Hermit” in The Maine Review

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I’m thrilled to see my story, “The Hermit,” in print in issue 4.1 of The Maine Review.  Living in a decaying neighborhood,  a young woman thinks her only hope of salvaging her inheritance–and the life she hoped for–is to sell her mother’s rowhouse to the company planning to demolish her city block. But when a religious hermit moves into the abandoned house next store and begins dispensing wisdom through the boarded windows, she realizes her loyalties are more complicated than she thought. Ultimately she must decide what kind of neighbor she truly wants to be, and what it means to call a place home.

Copies are now available.