{Update to previous post: Hey, guess who else showed up in the “Honorable Mentions” of the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror? Aimee Nezhukumathathil!! Wow! Also, Albert Goldbarth. And the poet that reviewed my chapbook for The Pedestal Magazine, JoSelle Vanderhooft. There was only one poem chosen for the actual anthology, everything else was prose.}

First of all, go read Charles Jensen’s excellent post called “What Makes a Writer?” It talks about rejection in a very interesting way.

My anthology could beat up your anthology! Or at least beat it in Worlds of Warcraft…
I don’t know if this is news you should congratulate or mock me for…
Sure, we all know Reb Livingston made it into this year’s Best American Poetry – which we are all very happy for her about! Way to go, Reb! – but I got into The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror! A kind editor pointed out that he had seen my name in there, and sure enough, I went to the local bookstore and found the new 2006 edition, opened it up to the introduction, and in the section marked “Poetry,” the editors talked about my chapbook, “Female Comic Book Superheroes.” Four poems from the chapbook were listed as “Honorable Mentions” in the back as well – although my first name had lost one of its “n’s” So, anyway, this was a huge surprise! I don’t usually consider myself a fantasy and horror writer, but I’m going to go with the flow. Kelly Link, one of the editors, is one of my all-time favorite female writers, right up there with Atwood – if you haven’t read her short-story collection, Stranger Things Happen, you should go out and get it, it’s amazing.
I also had two acceptances – one from Sentence, who included a nice note about the poems I sent – and another from a magazine I just discovered, called The Magazine of Speculative Poetry.

I went to Susan Rich’s book launch reading and party for Cures Include Travel, her newest edition of poetry, at Elliot Bay Bookstore. The room was more full than I had ever seen it for a poetry reading, the crowd was very responsive, and the party afterwards – thrown by the women’s residency center Hedgebrook – was so crowded you could barely move. So, a happening event. Congrats, Susan!