Among some great prose and poetry in the July issue of Bodega, I have a single unit of flash fiction, “All Good Things.” This monthly journal puts out consistent, constant writing, and I’m grateful to have a space in it.
This story is one more piece of historical fiction, set in Dublin. Strangely, like most of the fiction I’ve had published, it has mysteriously never been in a creative writing workshop.
-jk
I’m pleased to announce that my flash essay “After Zion” is the featured online nonfiction for the next print issue of Blue Earth Review. It is what the title suggests: Dawdling after a long hike through Zion National Park. You should also check out the featured fiction and poetry for this issue while you’re there.
This short essay, along with one recently published in Dark Mountain, is one in a long string of environmentally-focused flash essays I read back in September as part of an Idaho MFA tradition, the yearly symposium: Each second-year student reads a selection of their work in a low-stakes setting, usually a faculty member’s house, and responds to questions and comments about their work to prepare them for their third-year thesis defense. Two-thirds of the flash essays I read at my symposium have found homes in print or online. Does that mean that I will only successfully defend two-thirds of my thesis next year?
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I’m pleased to announce that my flash essay “Notes on Preparing for a Wildfire Evacuation” appears in Dark Mountain 15, which is themed around forest fires. The Dark Mountain Project is a UK-based literary and arts organization whose goal (they literally wrote a manifesto about it) is to use art to realistically address global ecological crises.
Much of my writing is environmentally focused, and this particular essay is about growing up in the mountain West, where wildfire season is a yearly, ongoing fact of life. I’m glad to have an essay in Dark Mountain, and I’m glad for the encouragement for the weird, at times discomforting direction my personal essays are going. Now that I live in northern Idaho, wildfire season remains a fact of day-to-day life. So too, though, are forests and mountains, the quieter features of the mountain West, the areas I’m used to exploring freely, that I hope to continue to explore. My writing will inevitably dwell on forests and fires alike. Now that I am about to enter my final year in an MFA program, as I prepare a book of essays for my final defense, I’m grateful for institutions like Dark Mountain whom I can trust with my weird, discomforting work.
-jk
I’m honored to announce that I have a short story in Issue 4 of Longleaf Review, a relatively new and very cool online journal. The theme of the issue is aliens, just in time for the Halloween season, but the theme is broad. You can read my story “The International Congress for Kids Whose Dads are Commie Draft Dodgers,” among so many other great essays, stories, and poems. For me, this is one more historical fiction story, part of what I hope will amount to a manuscript for a collection. For now, though, I have a full, rich online journal to read.
-jk
I’m pleased to announce that I have an essay in the August issue of Split Lip Magazine. It’s titled “Faking It,” and it’s a creative nonfiction essay about the time I sold my soul to the devil. It might be called excessively creative nonfiction.
Feel free to read it, but also check out the other work this month and in the archives. Split Lip publishes a small handful of writers each month, as opposed to many other journals who feature a lot of writers two or three times a year.
For me, this is an honor, and also a good way to kick off the semester on the first day back to work for TA training.
-jk
Recently, I had a short story published in issue 20 of Prism Review, titled “The Next Best Thing.” This is good news, of course, and I’m honored to be featured in their journal. In addition to the contributor copy I received in the mail, the journal also offered monetary compensation. This was the first time in my life I have been paid for my writing. Even more exciting is that I have an essay debuting soon in an online journal that also pays its contributors. Twice this year, so far at least, I can say I’m a paid writer.
I haven’t done the math on this, but I know that what I’m been paid in writing this year will not meet or exceed what I’ve paid in reading and contest fees. I know these fees are important for literary journals to survive, and now that I’m volunteering for a literary journal in Idaho, I know how crucial these funds are. It’s standard to pay two or three dollars to submit to a journal online. In a way, it’s like gambling.
In an ideal world, the written word would be more collectively valued and publicly funded, and authors would be paid for their work, and ideally this would include journalists, reporters, and screenwriters. But this isn’t an ideal world. Instead, art is publicly devalued, journalists are called the enemy of the people, and production companies easily get away with underpaying their screenwriters.
To be clear, I didn’t go into writing for the money. If I wanted to be rich, I’d go into punditry or the gun lobby where writing fiction is valued. I’m not the kind of person who cares about, or really believes in, worshiping the bottom line or breaking even. I’m not struggling to make ends meet, but I’m still writing–and submitting–on a budget. I have to decide when to gamble and when to withhold a reading fee, and for many other writers, budgetary decisions are much more pressing.
The last thing writers and publishers need right now is to be divided over funding. Both of these things are true: publishers need to survive, and writers deserve to be paid. This is a balancing act, but it doesn’t need to be a competition. I hope I can more easily do what I can to get my writing into the world, and until then, I’ll happily balance reading fees and writing on a budget.
-jk
I’m pleased to announce that I have a poem in an anthology titled Arizona’s Best Emerging Poets, from Z Publishing. The poem is called “Spring Gift,” and is in the anthology’s section on nature and environmental poetry. For me, this was the first publication that came from another publication. An editor at Z Publishing found a poem of mine at The Tunnels, my Alma mater’s undergraduate journal, and contacted me to suggested I submit something new for their upcoming Arizona anthology.
This publication comes at a strange time. It is April, and National Poetry Month. This is the first month in years I have not tried to write a poem a day, because I’m swamped with other obligations. In the MFA program here in Moscow, Idaho, I have classes to take, classes to teach, work for the literary journal Fugue, blogging for the MFA program, and other activities.
I haven’t written a poem in a long time, over a year, maybe. This will change, because sooner or later I’ll have time for poetry. I don’t want to leave it behind, but juggling genres is hard. I’m glad I have this poem, this call back to my home state, as a reminder of what I’m capable of. If you take a look at the anthology one way or another, I’d be honored. If not, I hope, there will be more poems to come in the future.
-jk
Photo taken at the University of Idaho Arboretum and Botanical Garden
. . . I wonder if this is the only anniversary in my life that matters. I started this blog four years ago. Hopefully, the quality of posts has improved just as the quality of the world has diminished.
I’m knee-deep in the first semester in my third college program, this time an MFA in creative nonfiction. Since October 27, 2016, I have started a blog series about the Russian Revolution, had one essay published and one short story published, finished my Master’s degree in English, and moved from Nebraska to Idaho. I’ve also started writing for the Idaho MFA blog, reading nonfiction submissions for Fugue, and volunteering as an editorial assistant for Western American Literature. My literary life has expanded substantially in a year, and yet I’m still ambitious. I have writing and reading to finish, journals to curate, places to visit, sweeping political generalizations to make.
This has been a rough year for the country and the planet. Regardless, I will blog away into oblivion. Here’s to another year.
-jk
I’m honored to have my short story “Scouting Locations” published in Issue XIII of Waxwing, one of my favorite literary journals. It’s one of several historical fiction stories that made up my MA thesis at UNL. It’s about old Hollywood, among other things. But before you read it, you should read the other excellent work featured in Waxwing.
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I’m honored to announce that my essay, “Buffalo Park,” is featured online in Atticus Review. Feel free to read it, but also read the other nonfiction essays, short stories, and poetry featured in Atticus as well. This essay has been published one year to the day that I first submitted it to my graduate nonfiction workshop at UNL. I’m grateful, as always, for the feedback my peers and professor offered me about the essay last September. This is also the essay I used as a writing sample for my application to the University of Idaho’s MFA program. With a little luck and a lot of work, I might have a few more publications on the way.
-jk
Keene Short 