I know the author from a writing group, so read this story with pride but was also uniquely moved by it – how I had met the author when she came to my reading in 2018 and then met her again at the writing group and now was reading this gorgeous story to emerge from all the hard work she did in between. She will be a Stegner fellow this year and I am looking forward very much to the collection this will be part of. Here is what I wrote to her about this story:
I LEGIT cannot get your story from A Public Space out of my head. It’s so incredibly sweet, deft, haunting, all the elements of mystery, suspense, legend, history, plus that person’s voice (a person, definitely. Not a “creature” except also a creature – the image of “sea grave”, the teeth, etc). Melancholy, loving. The intense magic of the voice that lives in between the strangeness of a creature and the authority (and love) of a grandmother. The self conscious “anthropology.” There is a layer of sophistication belied by the clarity/ simplicity of the language. It. Will. Last. I know it. What brings tears to my eyes is how reading it influenced me to cherish my own work in a different way. : )
first published in A Public Space #29 and available to read here)
A Personal Anthology 