Back in the spring of 2010, I published a story in the online literary magazine Temenos. Later, they decided to select from their spring and fall issues to produce a small print anthology for that year, but time and budgets being what they are, it took a while to finish the project. I’d quite forgotten they even planned one, yet today two contributor’s copies turned up in my mailbox. Seems my story was selected for inclusion in the anthology. Which is awesome.
Also awesome: a former classmate of mine from grad school down at the University of North Texas, poet and palindromist Michael Constantine McConnell, published an essay in the same issue my story appeared in, and sure enough, his essay, “Alleys,” was also included in the anthology.
I also noticed a poem by Daniel Ames, who also published a couple of poems in volume 8 of Tonopah Review (I had a story in volume 5). And there’s a poem by CL Bledsoe, whose name I’ve been coming across a lot lately (he published a minichapbook with Mud Luscious Press, who helped launch the career of Molly Gaudry, whom I recently interviewed about her project The Lit Pub, which I’ll be writing about extensively in a few weeks…).
Times like these, I really enjoy just how small — let’s say, cozy — the writing world can be. Some might call it insular; I call it familial.
NOTE: Today’s Writer’s Notebook might not turn up online until tomorrow. But hang on. It’s coming.
Samuel Snoek-Brown 