Pushcart Nomination for "The Loneliest Creature on Earth!"

Excited to receive a nomination for the Pushcart Prize from Little Fiction for my story, "The Loneliest Creature on Earth." Congratulations to all nominees; you've earned it! 

Pushcart Nomination, "Greater Good"

So excited to receive a Pushcart nomination for my story, Gargoyle, "Greater Good." It's my fifth nomination for the Pushcart prize; maybe this will be the lucky one! Above all, I'm so grateful to Richard Peabody and the staff of Gargoyle for believing in my work.

"She will love him, honor him, comfort him, keep him in sickness and in health, forsake all others, be true to him as long as they both shall live. She will tell white lies, that she doesn’t mind if he wears the ugly green and blue-stripe golf polo to the museum or to the garden party or that his feet stink, yes, monstrously so, does he ever wash between his toes, or that the smell of beef and vodka on his breath, ruffling the air around him like waves of heat, makes her ill. She will tell not him she is not sure what love is, if she ever felt it, if she feels it for him."

To read more of "Greater Good," go here. 

Pushcart Nomination for "I'm Such a Slut and I Don't Give a Fuck"

So honored that my story, "I'm Such a Slut and I Don't Give a Fuck," has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Smokelong. Congrats also to Tamara Schuyler, Raul Palma, Andrew Mitchell, Gwen E.  Kirby, and Geoff Kronik! Crossing my fingers for everybody!

PS, you can read my story here.

Pushcart Nomination for my story, "Three Girls"

Super excited that Barrelhouse Magazine nominated my story "Three Girls" for a Pushcart. If we're doing everything in threes, hopefully the third time's the charm for me! You can read the story online here:

"When they were twelve in the stairwell they didn’t kiss. It was not something she had considered then, and even as she daydreams about him now, gripping her shoulders from behind, penetrating her, in backyard tents, behind basement dryers, underneath his old sailboat comforter, she realizes that they should have run into the snow that night. If they did not think about it, the cold, they could get very far away."

Pushcart Nomination for "The Goodbye Party"

Great news from Dawn Raffel and the folks at the Literarian: my story, "The Goodbye Party," has been nominated for a Pushcart. Here's a teaser of the story, in case you missed it:

Alvin said he wanted to go to the goodbye party with Sam. They were on the subway coming home from Alvin’s school. Alvin wore the straps of his child-sized backpack around his ankles, the pouch part resting atop his outstretched legs. Sam had always told him not to do that, that they needed to get up and off the subway car quickly, but what Alvin said about the goodbye party stunned Sam into silence, and when the car braked at their station, he lifted Alvin over his shoulder and ferried him off, backpack hanging from Alvin’s legs.

Sam had not told Alvin about the goodbye parties, believing he was not ready to understand. Alvin had barely understood his mother’s death almost a year ago, although now and then he displayed such surprising resoluteness and peace about it that it had aged him, had made Sam feel like the child instead of the father, crying while making a peppered-turkey sandwich in the kitchen because he had gotten the turkey from the deli Elizabeth had loved.

But last Saturday, when Alvin had gotten up in the middle of the night, a bad dream, and found that Sam wasn’t home, he had asked his grandmother, who was babysitting, where his father was. Sam’s mother, not sure what answer would be acceptable to Alvin, and very annoyed at Sam for not accounting for this scenario (but only slightly so that she had not accounted for it), told Alvin to wait until his father got home.
It was a goodbye party for the dogs at the shelter, Sam had explained to Alvin later that morning, his eyes still wet, a burn in his left shoulder from cradling an 80-pound Rottweiler, Mugsy, whose eyes were root-beer candies, as the shelter employees had arrived. A goodbye party because they’re getting adopted.

For more, go here: http://www.centerforfiction.org/magazine/issue-10/the-goodbye-party-by-jen-michalski/