Word Riot Travel Grant

I'm really thrilled to receive a first-quarter travel grant from Word Riot! Word Riot has grown from online lit journal to publishing books (Word Riot Press, which published Paula Bomer's critically acclaimed Baby a few years back) to also offering grants to writers to help offset their travel expenses (which, can be imagined, small and even large presses don't include in their book budgets). Finally they will also publish their 10-year anniversary print anthology in 2013. Word Riot is just a ball of goodness that has gathered no moss this past decade under the leadership of Jackie Corley and her editorial staff. As a journal editor myself, I have no idea how they do it. I suspect fairies and superpowers are involved, but I don't want to spread rumors.

If you're interested in applying for a second-quarter grant, check them out here:

http://wordriot.us/travel-grants/

You can also make a small donation to keep the award coffers rich and plentiful.

Go on, Word Riot. Keep on turnin' and burnin'.

Interview with Paula Bomer in Rain Taxi

A couple of summers ago, novelist Paula Bomer interviewed me in Rain Taxi about one of the two novellas that would eventually comprise the couplet in my collection Could You Be With Her Now. "May-September" had just one first prize in Press 53's 2010 Open Awards in the category of novella. Little did I know then that "May-September" would be destined for even greater things:

I think both the young and the old tend to underappreciate the other. Neither thinks the other understands their unique challenges, but we all sort of go through the same things. It was sort of a challenge to me, coming from a close-knit family, to write about a mother and daughter who aren’t close, and to write it from the mother’s point of view. But I understand their fear and pride in not extending the olive branch. I’ve seen so many broken families operate on this principle. And I feel so sad for them. It was hard to write Sandra and her daughter without wanting to make them kiss and make up at some point, but they never do.

To read more, go here:

Paula Bomer mentions me on Writers Read!

Paula Bomer, author of Nine Months and Baby, had some nice things to say about Could You Be With Her Now at the blog Writers Read. Very, very exciting:

Another book I'm reading is the forthcoming couplet of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now, by the amazing indie writer, Jen Michalski. Each novellas is startling with bravery and a mastery of language and pacing. Also, they couldn't be more different, which is no small feat -  to have such range. I can't wait for more of the world to know about Jen Michalski.

Interview in Rain Taxi Review of Books

The wonderful Paula Bomer interviewed me in this issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books about my novella May-September. Thanks so much, Paula, for the thoughtful and perceptive questions:

I should add the disclaimer that this story came to me as a fully formed dream, and I woke up and struggled with whether to actually write it. Even though you don’t write for anyone but yourself, you don’t want to waste months or a year on a story that you’re just going to put in a drawer. It wasn’t something that I thought anyone was interested in reading, and yet the dream really affected me and intrigued me. When the “voice” of the story came to me, I sat down and wrote it over the course of a few months. But even then I didn’t know what to do with it. It was a sincere story, but I struggled with the idea of people responding to some sort of “shock” value associated with it. But the response hasn’t been like that at all—people who have read it have responded to it in the gentle, sincere way that I wrote it.

To read more, go here.