Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients in a chapbook

Literary Arts and the excellent Mel Wells have issued a special promotional e-chapbook for the 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients. I have the honor to be among that amazing group of writers and publishers, and so I’m in this chapbook, where you’ll find a little Q&A with me, an excerpt from the novel (you get to meet the rougarou face-to-face in this one, gang!), and some beautiful, kind words from the fiction judge, Pinckney Benedict, about my work.

(Seriously, those comments: I’m undone by them! It’s fantastic enough to know that people read and enjoy my work, but when someone like Benedict actually gets my work and can explain it –thematically, structurally, psychologically — even better than I can, as though he’d reached in my head and seen my vision first-hand…. I don’t like to get too hung up on validation, gang, but wow! That does an ego good.)

And then there’s the company I get to keep in this little book. The poets and the publishers and dramatists and the YA author and my fellow fiction writer Gina Ochsner! Every time I look at anything related to Literary Arts or these fellowships, I feel such tremendous gratitude for being allowed to play in the same literary playground as these people.

So go check out the whole chapbook. You’ll love it.

Or, if you want to skip straight to my section, you can find me on page 26.

Also, I called this a “promotional” chapbook because it’s also a good reminder that the deadline for next year’s fellowships is coming up. If you’re an Oregonian and you want to become a part of this state’s amazing literary community, head to the website and apply by June 28. No matter what happens with the application, you won’t regret getting to know Literary Arts and the people that hang out together in name of literature.