Jenny can be found in Gabrielino Tongva nation land. That’s L.A., folks. The Los Angeles Times has this super cool map that you can learn a little more or you can also check out this historical site.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’ve been working on a full-length collection of fiction.
Who is your favorite author?
There are so many! A few of my favorites are Ha Jin, Alice Munro, David Sedaris, Raymond Carver, Amy Bloom, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Per Petterson, Etgar Keret, Elena Ferrante, Haruki Murakami, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Domenico Starnone.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
This is even harder to narrow down. A few that really stand out for me are Waiting by Ha Jin; In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin; My Ántonia by Willa Cather; Come to Me: Stories by Amy Bloom; Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born); Baba Dunja’s Last Love by Alina Bronsky (translated from the German by Tim Mohr); and There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers).
What inspires you to write?
Everything in life, I think.
What are you reading right now?
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway’s memoir about being a young writer in Paris in the 1920s, and The Red Convertible, a collection of short stories by Louise Erdrich.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
Chocolate mousse! More traditional versions taste amazing, but the quick and easy recipes—especially when garnished with whipped cream and chocolate shavings—are no slouch, either.
This past November, I moved from my home of nearly 20 years, a mango grove in Miami Shores, to another house in a bird sanctuary called El Portal. It’s only two miles away, but having traded mangoes for peacocks that wander the streets in flocks, it feels a world apart.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
In 2019, I was a finalist for several poetry and manuscript prizes: The 2019 Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry from New Letters; 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Contest from Tinderbox Poetry Journal; 2019 Construction Literary Magazine Poetry Contest; 2019 Jacar Press Full-Length Manuscript Competition; 2019 Gold Wake Press Open Reading Period. Both manuscripts were picked up and are forthcoming–one this August from David Robert Books, called the Burning Where Breath Used to Be and one in 2023 from Salmon Poetry, called Hunger Until It’s Pain.
I also recently learned that I won the 2020 Tiferet Writing Contest for Poetry. The poem that won is a villanelle called “Birkat HaBayit: A Woman Is a Bird When.”
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’m currently a Deering Estate Artist-in-Residence for playwriting. I’m writing a play for middle school-age children set in the endangered ecosystems of South Florida.
Who is your favorite author?
Whoever I’m currently reading at the time. I read all the time, which makes this question even harder to answer.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
See above!
What inspires you to write?
The natural world, science and medicine, social issues.
What are you reading right now?
A variety of journals–the Cincinnati Review is open on my desk right now–and a novel, Call Me Zebra.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
I’m addicted to Gummi Bears. I’m unsuccessfully trying to cut down.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
I graduated with my BA, then with my MFA, and am now 2 years into my PhD (all creative writing). I had a chapbook, Dante’s Cartography, published with The Cupboard Pamphlet in October 2019. I’m also currently working as a prose editor for the journal Quarterly West.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I recently completed my first novel manuscript. I’d describe it as a surrealist museum-scape obsessed with paleoanthropology, ghosts, colonial violence, historical palimpsest, human evolution, the origins of language, and disco music.
Who is your favorite author?
Ugh, rude question. I love Beckett and Calvino. I’m itching to rattle off a couple dozen more, but I’ll refrain.
Ha Ha. We get it. We have lots of favorites, too.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Again: rude. I can’t answer that, but I will say I’ve had “Part of Eve’s Discussion” by Marie Howe in an open tab on my phone for probably six months and can’t bring myself to close it.
What inspires you to write?
The way light falls.
What are you reading right now?
Just finished the exceptional Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
My go-to these days is dark chocolate and bourbon. 🙂
We found a great place to learn about pairing boubon with chocolate! It’s edcuational, right?
Each week we will be connecting with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.
Name: Will McMillan Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: “Exploded” Issues: 9.2
Find Him: You can find Will in Portland, Oregon.
If you want to read more of his work, check out this piece.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
In the past three years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have my work featured in an amazing selection of journals, including The Sun, Hobart, Nailed, Citron Review, Thread, and Pidgeonholes, among others. One of my essays, which was featured in Nailed, was used as the premise for a piece I did for This American Life.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I recently completed an essay collection, consisting of 30 nonfiction, memoir style essays, of which roughly half have been previously published. It’s been submitted to a publishing house, and seeing the culmination of years of work coming together like this has been extraordinary.
Who is your favorite author?
Stephen King/Ray Bradbury/Barbara Kingsolver
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
That changes constantly. Which is probably a good thing.
What inspires you to write?
For me, writing is essentially instinctive, something that I’ve always just done. Something tied into my DNA that compels me to write. Wanting to share my perspective, my feelings, my take on what’s happening in life. Wanting to be, in some way, a teacher. To reach out to people and share experiences with them, to connect, to feel less alone.
What are you reading right now?
Right now, I’m reading a short story collection, “If it Bleeds,” by the lovely Stephen King.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
Strawberry rhubarb pie. Always has been, always will be.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
I was honored to learn that a chapbook, NORTHERN COWBOY, was selected by Jessie van Eerden as the winner of the Wilt Prize for Creative Nonfiction at Lightning Key Review and will come out with Green Rabbit Press. Other pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in Washington Square Review, CutBank, Notre Dame Review, Moon City Review, Hobart, McSweeney’s, Hypertext, Contrary, North Dakota Quarterly, Inkwell, and Red Rock Review. I also have an academic article forthcoming on Joseph Conrad in a volume called Conrad and Ethics.
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’m completing a full-length book of essays, which includes the essay in Sweet. If I can plug another effort here, I’m also trying to bring awareness to and raise funds for a family friend, a girl of sixteen months named Kristina, who lives in Russia and needs an expensive drug to survive.
Who is your favorite author?
Joseph Conrad, without a doubt. While he’s not currently in vogue–Michael Eric Dyson told the New York Times he’d remove Heart of Darkness from the canon, and Robert Zaretsky is even more insistent in The American Scholar–it’s hard to imagine anyone who’s more conscious of race and the evils of oppression than Conrad. Moreover, even if Conrad were complicit in giving voice to the evils he decried–and he wasn’t–to suggest that we should only read works that we find morally tolerable is to ignore the bulk of great literature and fundamentally miss the point of reading.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Forgive me for listing four: the Bible’s Book of Job, Melville’s Moby-Dick, Conrad’s Nostromo, and McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. All four are of a piece and part of what you might call a literary tradition of artistic nihilism. That is, they take on the world, pit man against the elements, and strive for a kind of meaning–literary or aesthetic–in a world that offers none. They’re also astonishingly funny and dark. To me, these four works are the greatest vindication of humanity and miracles in their own right.
What inspires you to write?
The Bible, Melville, Conrad, and Faulkner, along with other writers–Lily Hoang, Teddy Wayne, Amina Gautier.
What are you reading right now?
Jayson Iwen’s Roze & Blud, Becky Hagenston’s Scavengers, and Chris Fink’s Add This to the List of Things That You Are.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
I’ve uploaded a picture of our family friend, Kristina, who needs a drug to survive. If you ask me, she’s pretty sweet.
After seven years in Vermont, Heather is learning to live–and drive–in New Jersey. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University.
We are temporarily closing Creative Nonfiction submissions while we catch up on all the amazing submissions we have received. Keep writing and we’ll let you know when we open back up. In the meantime, you can read our latest issue here!
While attending an artist residency this summer, I lived with two poets working on a joint chapbook. I had never thought of writing as a collaborative process before, but I was beginning to imagine how it could be. When Sweet published the essay, “Come Closer,” a collaborative effort between Brenda Miller and Lee Gulyas, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to learn more! Continue reading
