Keeping Track: Fiction of Lists, Edited by Yelizaveta P. Renfro

Keeping Track

Fiction of Lists

Edited by Yelizaveta P. Renfro
ISBN: 978-1-59948-381-8
cover price $14.95 ($12.50 if ordered from the MSR Online Bookstore)

Release date: November 27, 2012.

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Contributors / Introduction

Introduction

From ex-lovers to holiday ornaments, from resolutions to stay sober to fantasies about home-cooked meals, the stories in this anthology chronicle losses and upheavals through that most basic of forms-the list. In despair or frustration, with determination or sorrow, the characters in these eighteen stories frame their lives with lists to make sense of the turmoil, to learn what is most important to them--and why. A young biologist bands songbirds in Alaska and discovers a new destiny. A grieving son attempts to save what remains of his father's legacy from a flood. A social worker at a halfway house tries to make it through the day. Teenage girls burn the symbols of rejected lives. An immigrant suffers the loss of a child and her husband's cruelty far from her native Africa. These stories--and many others--list the things we lose and the things we keep.

--Yelizaveta P. Renfro

CONTRIBUTORS

Steve Edwards, Fitchburg, MA
Steve Edwards lives with his wife and son in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. His memoir, Breaking into the Backcountry, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2010. He is currently working on a nonfiction project about his grandfather's appearance on the cover of LIFE Magazine in 1942. His work has recently appeared in AGNI Online, Electric Literature No. 6 and The Silk Road Review.

Kathie Giorgio
Kathie Giorgio's novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks, and her short story collection, Enlarged Hearts, were both published by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Her stories and poems have appeared in many national and international literary magazines, and in anthologies by Papier Mache Press, the Main Street Rag Publishing Company, EBibliotekos, Fearless Poetry and Susurrus Press. She's been nominated for the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Million Writer Award and for the Best of the Net anthology. She is the director and founder of AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop, an international creative writing studio. She also teaches for Writers' Digest and serves on their advisory board.

Judith Hannan
Judith Hannan is the author of the forthcoming memoir, Motherhood Exaggerated (CavanKerry Press). Her essays have appeared in such publications as Woman's Day, The Healing Music, The Martha's Vineyard Gazette, and Mom Writers Literary Magazine, among others. She is a judge for the Arnold P. Gold Foundation's Humanism-in-Medicine essay contest. Ms. Hannan lives is New York City where she leads writing workshops for homeless mothers and at-risk teens and serves on the boards of the Mt. Sinai Adolescent Health Center, Mt. Sinai Global Health, and the Children's Museum of Manhattan.

Amanda Holmes
Amanda Holmes was born in England, educated at Emerson College and received her MFA in Fiction from George Mason University. Her stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Rattapallax, Phoebe, So To Speak, QWF, The Christian Science Monitor, Sunday Express and on the Ether Reads app for download to iPhone. She has edited art listings for 'Goings On About Town' at The New Yorker and written reviews for The Washington Independent Review of Books. She and her husband have lived in New York, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Brussels, Rome, and Falls Church, Virginia. They have a daughter and two sons. She blogs at www.irrelevanceofhope.blogspot.com.

Mary Larkin
Mary Larkin is the 2011 recipient of the Southern Indiana Review Mary C. Mohr Editors' Award for Fiction for her story “All That Was His.” Larkin earned a PhD in Creative Writing and English at Florida State University and her MA from Hollins University's Creative Writing Program where she won the Andrew James Purdee Award and was the AWP Intro Journals nominee. She is a Fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a Pushcart nominee, a Writers@Work National Finalist, a two-time finalist for the Doris Betts Fiction Award, and the recipient of the Blumenthal Writers Award. Her short stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Cutthroat, The Nebraska Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Rio Grande Review, Inkwell, and other journals.

Jennifer Lesh
Jennifer Lesh was born in San Bernardino, California and has lived in and around Portland, Oregon for the past seven years. Her work has appeared in XConnect, VoiceCatcher, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and other places. She was honored to read her poems during the Wordstock 2011 literary festival. She's a past Pushcart Prize nominee and is a founding member of Portland-based writing group, The Guttery (http://theguttery.com). "The Things We Burned" is her first published short story.

Teresa Milbrodt
Teresa Milbrodt grew up in Ohio, and received her MFA in Creative Writing and her MA in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University. She is the author of a short story collection, Bearded Women: Stories, published by ChiZine Publications. Milbrodt's stories have appeared in Nimrod, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Natural Bridge, Indiana Review, The Cream City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and New Orleans Review, among other literary journals. Several of her stories have also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, where she lives with her husband Tristan and cat Aspen.

Mimi Moriarty
Mimi Moriarty is the poetry editor for The Spotlight, a weekly periodical in the Hudson Valley. Her short fiction, poems, essays and articles have been published in many journals, magazines and newspapers, including Margie, Alehouse, SLAB, Thema, Rockhurst Review, Connecticut Review, Chronogram and Irish America. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, and teaches creative writing to adults and teens. Her chapbook of 23 poems about the aftermath of war, War Psalm, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2007. Her second chapbook, Sibling Reverie, is due out in February 2012. It was co-authored with her brother, Frank Desiderio, and is also being published by Finishing Line Press. A third chapbook, Crows Calling, will be published by Foothills Press, also in 2012.

Renée K. Nicholson
Renée K. Nicholson is a former ballet dancer who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. She was the 2011 Emerging Writer in Residence at Penn State Altoona, and since 2007, has been Assistant to the Director of the West Virginia Writers' Workshop. Her stories, essays, and poems have been published in The Superstition Review, Mid-American Review, Paste, Poets & Writers, Dossier, ABZ, The Gettysburg Review, and other publications.

Valerie Nieman
Valerie Nieman is the author of a new novel, Blood Clay, as well as two earlier novels, a collection of short stories, Fidelities, and a poetry collection, Wake Wake Wake. Her work has appeared in many journals, including New Letters, Poetry, the North Carolina Literary Review, and the Kenyon Review, and in several anthologies. She has received an NEA creative writing fellowship as well as grants from North Carolina, West Virginia, and Kentucky, and prizes including two Elizabeth Simpson Smith awards in fiction and the Greg Grummer Prize in poetry. She graduated from West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte. A longtime newspaper reporter and editor, she now teaches creative writing at North Carolina A&T State University, conducts writing workshops throughout the region, and serves as poetry editor of Prime Number magazine.

Matt Peters, Orlando, FL
Matt Peters has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans and a BA in English from the University of Central Florida. "To Do" is part of La Rue House, a story collection centered around a homeless shelter for street kids. His other publications include Voices Rising: Stories from the Katrina Narrative Project edited by Rebeca Antoine; Bits of the Dead and Skeletal Remains, both edited by Keith Gouviea, and 580 Split by Mills College. He lives in Orlando, FL and runs Beating Windward Press. Matt can be reached at ThatMattGuy@Hotmail.com.

Nicole Louise Reid
Nicole Louise Reid is the author of the short story collection, So There! (SFA University Press) a novel, In the Breeze of Passing Things (MacAdam/Cage), and two fiction chapbooks, If You Must Know (Burnside Review Press) and Girls (RockSaw Press). Her award-winning short stories have appeared in the Southern Review, Other Voices, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, and Meridian. Winner of the 2010 Dana Award in Short Fiction and 2011Burnside Review Fiction Chapbook Competition, she teaches creative writing at the University of Southern Indiana, where she directs the RopeWalk Reading Series and is editor of RopeWalk Press and fiction editor of Southern Indiana Review.

Susan Jackson Rodgers, Corvallis, OR
Susan Jackson Rodgers is the author of two story collections: The Trouble With You Is (Mid-List Press, 2004) and Ex-Boyfriend on Aisle Six (Press 53, 2012). Her fiction has appeared in journals such as New England Review, North American Review, Glimmer Train, Beloit Fiction Journal, Quick Fiction and Prairie Schooner. She is the past recipient of two Kansas Arts Commission Fellowships and two Pushcart Prize Special Mentions. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon with her husband and three children, and teaches at Oregon State University.

Mary Mclaughlin Slechta
Mary McLaughlin Slechta has survived many dark times by the "rule of five": a five-item list of daily accomplishments, which may include brushing one's teeth. Her stories have appeared in a previous Main Street Rag anthology, A La Carte, and in journals including the Marco Polo Quarterly, Damazine, and The Pedestal. She's the author of a poetry collection entitled Wreckage on a Watery Moon (FootHills) and is an associate editor with Comstock Review in Syracuse, New York.

Sarah Jamila Stevenson
Sarah Jamila Stevenson is a writer, artist, editor, and graphic designer living in Northern California. Her short fiction has appeared in Verbal Pyrotechnics, TBR Tallboy and Southpaw Literary Magazine, and she was runner-up in the 2006 Permafrost Midnight Sun Fiction Contest. Her first novel, a book for young adults entitled The Latte Rebellion, was published by Flux Books in January 2011; her next YA novel, Underneath, is scheduled for publication by Flux in 2013. In keeping with the list theme, here are a few random things she is enthusiastic about, in no particular order: 1. printmaking, 2. cooking (and 2a. eating), 3. travel, 4. video games, 5. YA literature, and 6. Welsh language. For more information, please visit her website at www.SarahJamilaStevenson.com

John Struloeff
John Struloeff grew up in the mountainous rainforests of northwestern Oregon. His debut poetry collection, The Man I Was Supposed to Be, was published by Loom Press in 2008, with individual poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, ZYZZYVA, PN Review, and elsewhere. His awards include a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, an NEA Literature Fellowship, a Sozopol Seminars Fiction Fellowship from the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation (Bulgaria), and both the Weldon Kees and Tennessee Williams Scholarships. He has taught at Stanford University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he received both his MA and PhD in English. Currently he directs the creative writing program at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

G. Walker
G. Walker is an Alaskan writer living in Richmond, Virginia. She's published work in a variety of journals including Five Points, Phoebe, and Bird Watcher's Digest. Her writing has been featured online in Xenith and Everyday Genius.

Lynda C. Ward
Lynda C. Ward, author of Save Everything, is a writer, photographer, and a professor of religion at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her short stories, poems, feature articles, and interviews have been published in numerous magazines, including Main Street Rag. She is also the author of two nonfiction books. Her website is www.AnEnchantedForest.com

About the Editor

Yelizaveta P. Renfro
Yelizaveta P. Renfro is the author of a collection of short stories, A Catalogue of Everything in the World, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, North American Review, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, South Dakota Review, Witness, Reader's Digest, Blue Mesa Review, Parcel, Adanna, Fourth River, Bayou Magazine, Untamed Ink, So to Speak, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska. Born in the former Soviet Union, she has lived in California, Virginia, Nebraska, and Connecticut.

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