Today I just have a quick update that my story “How We Are Changed” has been accepted for publication at Third Wednesday, a quarterly journal of literary and visual arts from Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is a story that has undergone many drafts and revisions over several years. Some of you from workshop may know this as my “crow story.” It was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest and nabs Honorable Mention here in the George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest, judged by writer Phillip Sterling. He said that the story caught his attention for “the anaphoric syntax and detail that brings to intense familiarity the pathos of a life lived fully” (Sterling). Anaphora, as I teach in my comp class, is the repetition of a word or phrase.
Here’s how it starts, so you can get a feel for it…
This is how we are born. This is how we looked. This is you in a blue paper cap. These are the rows of blue and pink paper caps. This is the noise of the newly made. This is the smell of St. Francis understaffed. This is the white light of the OB. This is how the doctor caught you: by the foot.
There are two pieces without which this story wouldn’t have happened, the first being Jessica Sofer’s “Beginning, End,” which looking back now is almost embarrassingly similar, and the poem, “Naming of Parts,” by Harry Reed.
If you’d like to read it in its entirety, you can support Third Wednesday by purchasing a print copy for $11 or a PDF for $5. You will need to create a Submittable account (free) if you would like to purchase online. Otherwise they do accept orders by check. Specify that you would like to purchase the “Fall Issue” after you have filled out your address.
Thanks for reading!
MJA
write like mike 