The Short List

This post comes from two places. The first is that one of the bloggers that I link to has a whole category of "shameless self-promotion." I'm not very good a self-promotion but I should probably work on propping up some of the good news that comes my way. Such self-promotion on her part though did make we want to know more about her so there is some danger in revealing one's anonymity by posting specific moments of renown. But in my case, I'm so far from actually anonymous and the good news I found was layered so deep that that being outed didn't worry me too much. The second is that my good friend who lives in CA and I are working on being friends again after a pretty huge falling out and she assured me that publication was just a matter of time. Lots of people say that, but when it comes from someone who now has some distance from you and your would-be successes, it seems somehow more plausible.
Publication-wise, this summer has been somewhat exciting but mostly kind of depressing.
I was short-listed at Graywolf nonfiction contest, Sarabande's novel contest, AWP's nonfiction contest and a few poetry contests. I found out last night that I was short-listed at the Faulkner Contest for the novel. Last year, I was a semi-finalist. This year, bumped up to the short-list of finalists, but still not quite a finalist. That one would be great to win because big books sometimes come from winning--The Three Junes being the most famous.
I've had a couple of poems and essays accepted which is very great. Still, I feel like I'm always a bridesmaid, never a bride at these book contest things. Perhaps my agent will still come through with something but, man is this process slow!

But the good news is that my friend M emailed last night to say a magazine I'd been published in had been favorably reviewed in New Pages and had quoted me. And so I went cruising around the internet to see if there were any other reviews of mags I'd been in and Utne reader had a really nice bit about a recent publication of mine and a magazine/writing group chose an essay from another pub of mine to be their Lit Pick of the Quarter. So. Slow. But good.