Carissa Halston's Blog

Thanksgiving 2007, back when I could still digest turkey…

It’s almost Thanksgiving in the US, so I asked my dearest friend to help me invent casseroles that epitomize the season. In the name of inclusion, we decided to go by region, but since we’ve only lived in four states together, things may have gotten a bit out of hand for the regions we’ve never visited.

That said, it’s all done with love. So now, without further ado, I give you our Thanksgiving casseroles, arranged by regional popularity.
 
(Make and eat at your own risk.)
 
 
THE NEARLY VEGETARIAN NEW ENGLAND CASSEROLE 
 
Peel and cube some butternut squash. Boil and mash the hell out of it. Add some cinnamon. It’s November. Don’t act like you’re above that.
 
Roast some autumn vegetables. The variety is up to you. If you’ve never had an autumn vegetable, carrots, potatoes, turnips, onion, or zucchini should do you right. Spread the mashed squash over the roasted veggies. Bake it until the squash gets crispy. Once it’s ready, it should look a little like a rusty shepherd’s pie.
 
Grate some Vermont cheddar on the top, and douse in cranberry juice, then scoop it drippy over your choice of fish. If you’re a Maine-iac, that’ll be lobster, but if you’re closer to us in coastal Massachusetts, your only choice is bacon-wrapped scallops.
 
 
THE MID-ATLANTIC STARCH-MEAT GLUT
 
Make pierogi however you want. Boiled. Fried. Deep-fried. Grilled. Baked. Roasted on a spit. With or without onions. With or without chives. (Resist making taco salad.)
 
Once they’re hot, coarsely chop the pierogi while your best friend butters a pan. In the buttered pan, layer the pierogi. Over that, add chunks of scrapple. If you’re near Philly, drizzle Cheese Whiz on top, but if not, don’t fake that jawn.
 
Bake the whole mess and serve it with regional variations per the nearest city.

If you’re near Baltimore, add lake trout, and don’t skimp on the Old Bay.
If you’re close to Pittsburgh, put that sucker on bread and stuff it with slaw and fries.
When in New York, do as the New Yorkers do: eat it with thin crust pizza. Extra points if it’s grandma pizza for those of you into keeping score.
And if you’re in New Jersey, head to Wawa. The glut will feel right at home.

 
THE MIDWESTERN ONE-DISH 
 
In the spirit of Cincinnati chili, let’s start with Italian: Chicago deep dish, piping hot, topped with elbow macaroni. Then loop back for the chili. Add curried ketchup (no condiment judgment, live your life) and grate no less than four inches of Wisconsin cheddar on top. Wash it down with a pie shake from Iowa City’s Hamburg Inn No. 2. (For those of you in Iowa not in the know, here’s a pie shake. You’re very welcome.)
 
Regional alteration: If you’re in St. Louis, go ahead and add your pizza, but only if it’s on top of the deep dish. This is no time for scaling back.
 
 
THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN JAMBALAYA STEW
 
Sauté crawdads and drop them into a pot of chicken and dumplings. Mix in collard greens, turnip greens, and mustard greens. Cook off the remaining water. Replace the water with bacon fat. Ladle on and around a rack of ribs. Season with cajun spices. Sprinkle the top with pinches of crumbled cornbread. Apologize to your arteries and eat dessert: sweet potato casserole with marshmallows topped with your state’s name carved into Cool Whip, everyone’s favorite non-dairy whipped topping. And, if you want, add some sugar.
 
 
THE SOUTHWEST FRITO BURRITO PIE (AKA: “WE’RE SORRY, MEXICO”)
 
This is exactly what it sounds like (we all know Frito pie, right?), but, you know, with extra guacamole. And heartburn, probably. Pairs really well with the Pepto-Maalox-Tums-Pepsid-Prilosec casserole.
 
 
THE WEST. A LIST. (DON’T EAT THIS.)
 
Bison burger. Pig testes (also known as calf fries). A mountain. Fricasseed salmon. Fish eggs, also fricasseed. If you’re in California, add free-range, organic chicken. If you’re in Southern California, add road runner meat. But if you’re on the east coast, and want this “California-style,” add lettuce, tomato, and onion. And if you’re eating this anywhere else— Actually, don’t eat this at all.
 
 
ALASKAN AND HAWAIIAN CASSEROLES
 
As Thanksgiving is the only time of year we acknowledge the Native Americans in a nearly universally positive (albeit whitewashed) light, here’s a reminder of the leagues of people who lived here before Europeans settled in (euphemism of the century), growing and harvesting corn, beans, and squash, all of which many of us eat on Thanksgiving.
 
But we’ve done enough damage to the Alaskan and Hawaiian cultures, so I’m just going to step back and point to Hawaiian Rice Stuffing and Salmon Pate.
 
 
And that’s it! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Happy eating and napping!
 
 
 
 
If you have food to donate this year, including unused ingredients you didn’t wind up using for Thanksgiving, check out Feeding America. They’ll help you find the food banks nearest to you and get meals to those who need them this season.

I’m immensely grateful for the good things that have happened to me this year. In March, I received a place at the Writers’ Room of Boston (which, if you’re in Boston, is a great resource downtown for writers seeking a private place to work). In April, I received word from one publisher that my story manuscript is on their long list of possible titles to add to their catalog next year, and this weekend, I found out that the same manuscript is also in the running for publication at YesYes Books.

In AP news, I ran a great event with Brookline Booksmith for a marathon reading of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel about fascism in the U.S., It Can’t Happen Here. And in early August, we got word that Krysten Hill’s galvanizing chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, won this year’s Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from The New England Poetry Club.

All of these things buoy me when I’m feeling particularly low. But there’s a persistent thought that makes the rounds among writers and the basic gist is:

If you stop writing, no one will care.

Cheerful, right? But nearly every writer I know has felt that at one point or another. Yet, despite its prevalence, there’s a flaw inherent in that sort of thinking. It discounts the writer.

Most writers start drafting for themselves. To be heard, to be received by an audience, maybe even to receive praise—ahh, the byproducts of publishing. But, ultimately, a writer starts working before they recognize any audience beyond themselves, and the time between publication dates, when we research and draft and revise, those are the days when we have to write and subsist only for ourselves.

The thing that drives me back to my desk, to my ideas, and to my work has to do with what a dear friend describes as the fiction writer’s dilemma: a writer’s dissatisfaction with the world and what she’s contributed to it, and that includes all the words she’s written up to that point. I’ve spent this past year writing and revising and working (for myself and others), and to say I’ve been dissatisfied with the world would be a tremendous understatement.

I’ve gone to so many protests this year that I’ve honestly lost count. I’ve donated more money to causes that matter to me than I can comfortably afford. I’ve volunteered my time. And I’ve written and wondered about the things we tell each other in order to keep going. To racists and white nationalists, just the existence of people of color wanting equality is reason for them to gather and yell. Seriously: just our existence.

So, the same thing is true, re: writing. Even though there are so many days when I feel like I’m not writing fast enough or getting enough of my own work done—when I’ve revised so much that I’m convinced I’ve actually made the work worse—I have to remember that the stories I choose to tell (just the fact that I choose to tell them, just the fact that they’re mine) makes a difference in terms of the sort of thoughts that are out there in the ether. And if that* isn’t reason enough to keep going, I don’t know what is.

 

 

* AKA: My agenda to fill every story with queer people and people of color and disabled people. Take that.

I’m not a member of Sioux Nation. My great-grandfather was half Muscogee. His mother and her parents are listed on the Dawes Rolls, the “Indian” registry last updated in 1905. Another term for members of Muscogee Nation is Creek. Most people know creek as another term for stream. I grew up in a small suburb in Pennsylvania, with easy access to creeks and clean water.

The Standing Rock Sioux Nation fought last year, and are still currently fighting, for their water. Fighting a company whose plans to run an oil pipeline over 1700 miles endangers the section of the Missouri River that they rely on for things so many of us take for granted: clean drinking/cooking water, bathing water, water to wash our dishes or hands or clothes.

Since they’ve started fighting, another oil pipeline ruptured just 150 miles from Standing Rock. In Cannon Ball, North Dakota, over 176,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into Little Missouri River, a tributary that feeds into Missouri River. The threat of building the Dakota Access Pipeline is still very real.

But even before that recent spill, there were more insidious threats. Last November, less than a week before Thanksgiving, after using rubber bullets, attack dogs, and mace on demonstrators at Standing Rock, police officers doused them with water in temperatures as low as 23ºF. Nine degrees below freezing. The protestors were unarmed. They were accused by police of aggression. They were accused by police of starting fires. They started fires to get warm. They removed a road block so emergency vehicles could reach their site.

Whether you side with the demonstrators or the police, whether you allow your opinion to be swayed by those in authority who you can’t bring yourself to question, you have to admit: the police’s choice to blast the protestors with water was telling. They used the element the demonstrators were there to protect (and, in fact, the phrase the demonstrators prefer is “water protectors”). Authorities used water to threaten and injure those whose jobs it is to protect it.

The Obama administration worked to stop construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline. Drumpf reversed that effort via executive order.

The EO comes as no surprise, but it would be foolish to ignore the means. Consider the ways Drumpf and his cohort work to malign the media, with claims that facts are fiction, that real news is fake, that our free press and its journalists are enemies of the American people. Consider the ways Russia does the same. In response to accusations that he lies to the Russian people, and literally leads with false claims, Putin said, “Some people believe that whatever they say is the ultimate truth, and there’s no way that things can be any different. So when they get something in response, it causes a strong emotional reaction.”

Consider the ways “a strong emotional” reaction might work in the GOP’s favor. Drumpf’s unqualified cabinet’s use of “alternative facts” and his cries of “fake news” are just two parts of a well-stocked arsenal the GOP is employing, by way of their elected leader, to use language against us.

George Orwell’s name has been raised many times since the election, and not just because his masterpiece, 1984, is on the bestseller lists. The Ministry of Truth is the government agency that spins propaganda for Oceania in the novel. Propaganda as “truth.” Of course we’re going to talk about Orwell. But Orwell’s political writing didn’t start or stop with 1984. You only need read the first paragraph of his essay “Politics and the English Language” to see what I mean:

“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.”

In re-reading that paragraph, I’m moved to ask: what happens when those in power have purposes counter to “our own”?

Just this week, NBC reporter Peter Alexander pushed for the facts when Drumpf lied (again) about the margin of his electoral college victory. Alexander asked “Why should Americans trust you?” and the questioning devolved into Drumpf asking, essentially, whether Alexander agreed that he had won the electoral college. Alexander provided only one fact: “You’re the president.”

In an astute article published yesterday, NPR correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben writes that the meaning of “fake news” is changing rapidly, and not only do we have claims of “fake news,” but there’s also “real fake news” and “fake fake news,” meaning the claim that a legitimate story is being branded as fake.

But the concept of “fake news” hasn’t changed for everyone. Kurtzleben tells us the left and the right exist in separate realities. And while I believe that there are many differences between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives, I don’t believe we exist in separate realities (if we did, that might solve quite a few problems).

I do, however, believe that we refuse to talk or listen to each other. So often, we “agree to disagree,” which means we have no lines of reaching each other and no one’s voice is ever heard, all nuance is disregarded, and there’s no chance of finding common ground. It’s the fast track to the point where we try to drown each other out because we believe our problems are the hardest, the worst, the most important, the ones that need to be solved before anything else. It’s the verbal version of dousing our opponent with water when it’s 23ºF. We’re freezing them by shutting them out. We’re using language to sabotage communication.

So, here we are, communication cut off. Is there anything to be done, other than to “generally assume that we cannot by conscious action do anything about” the GOP’s current assault on language? Silencing Senator Elizabeth Warren, fabricating massacres that didn’t exist, pretending that real news is fake—what can we, especially my fellow writers who consider themselves the protectors of language, do?

Looking again to Orwell, I’d say there’s quite a bit we can do. But we have to commit to fighting back. And we have to commit to being consistent, because the odds are already against us, and so many of us prefer inaction.

But here are some suggestions. First, journalists, when covering Drumpf, refer to Orwell’s section on “OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS.” Stop treating him like a celebrity. Stop pulling punches. If the GOP is trying to eliminate the EPA, and you think the bill won’t pass, don’t write “some of the agency’s defenders worry that it faces a far more stealthy threat of being hollowed out.” Don’t dress up your descriptions of horrible cabinet picks via distancing word order and diction. No one cares about your prose style right now. Tell us exactly who’s doing what, plainly and simply and quickly.

Now look at the section called “MEANINGLESS WORDS.”

“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.”

You probably disagree with the idea that we shouldn’t use the terms fascism, democracy, progressive, science, and equality, especially when the situation calls for them. But when you’re using them, try to envision the ways they’ve been used when the situation hasn’t called for it. Try to remember the ways the GOP has slandered science because of climate change. Fascism certainly applies to Drumpf and his cabinet of anti-intelligence hate mongers, but you’re going to have to revert to, again, a plainer and simpler term. Also, much as it pains me to admit it, I’d sooner rely on simpler terms than expect that everyone knows all the history behind our nation’s relationship with fascism.

By the way, reverting to plainer language doesn’t mean dumbing everything down or leaving out details/doing away with nuanced meaning. It only means we need to start with simple terms in order to earn the trust of readers who will work to follow us when the terms get more complicated. But they’ll only do so if they trust us.

One more quote from Orwell’s essay, this one very short:

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

The issue with Drumpf’s and his cabinet’s frequent lying is that his supporters either know when he and his flying monkeys are lying, and his supporters just don’t care, or they believe every word from the new administration is true, just like they believed his campaign promises.

You can apply Orwell’s quote above solely to his supporters, or apply it to all the people—liberal and otherwise—who’ve said, “We should at least give him a chance,” though they haven’t said when that chance will be up, or what they plan to do when it is.

No matter whom you apply the quote to, here’s how to use it: for every time Drumpf claims that real news is fake, you can provide a lie he told on the campaign trail. He’s obsessed with reminding everyone that he won the election, so we can remind him—via Twitter, if you want, since it’s his favorite platform—how he lied in plain language at least 500 times during his campaign. That’s not an exaggerated figure, by the way. If you need a ready list of his lies, The Toronto Star‘s got you covered.

And if you’re looking for a way to use another kind of language—in the “money talks” sense—and you want to help the water protectors at Standing Rock, you can send them some funds directly. Or, in the longer term, you can also stop your money from funding the DAPL via investments from your bank. Nearly every corporate bank invested in DAPL, so check to see if yours is on there. And if it is, you can divest and move your money to a bank with sustainable goals through the Global Alliance for Banking on Values.

I’ve said it once, and with the way things are, I’m bound to repeat it again and again: the absolutely bare minimum we can do right now is to stay well informed. Every single day. Even on the weekends. Even on holidays. But if you’re up for doing more than that, and if you have this Monday off, consider going out and voicing dissent. (And although Boston’s not on that list, I promise you, we’re protesting this weekend. I’ll be in Copley Square on Sunday and the Common on Monday.) After all, it’s President’s Day, and it’s been nearly a month since we’ve had a president.

Less than two weeks until opening night of White Rabbit Red Rabbit and I couldn’t be more excited! Also, nervous. Also, scared. But mainly really excited.

I took part in a cast interview over at the Aforementioned blog, going over my introduction to the show, and how I’m preparing to perform a play I’ve never seen or read:

The bond between the audience and the actor is the work. By that, I mean the play itself, but also the effort. The follow-my-lead of it all. The are-you-with-me-so-far? relationship. The moments when the actor is leaning forward and the audience is leaning too, and the thing that catches them is the material wed to the delivery.

That’s what I’m most excited about. The symbiotic relationship between the actor and the audience and the work.

I also talk a bit about the novel I’ve been working on, and Krysten Hill’s forthcoming chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out!

Read the full interview, and then go get your tickets! Can’t wait to see you at OBERON on November 14, Boston!

Did you know bisexuals have a pride flag? It’s like we have our own sovereign nation!

I just posted this on Twitter, but wanted to expand on it a bit:

Since it’s ‪Bisexuality Awareness Week (hug your favorite bisexual!), I’ve been thinking about erasure, denial, visibility, and biphobia.

Just in case you didn’t know it, bisexuals walk among you. I’m one of them. You probably know others. You may have mistaken us as gay or straight because of the relationships we were in. But regardless of who a bisexual dates, that doesn’t erase or invalidate their bisexuality.

That said, there are a lot of people who believe that monogamous bisexuals have “made their choice.” When bisexuals choose a partner, that can lead to people assuming that we’ve finally decided which orientation we “prefer.” We’re finally going to be gay or straight.

But bisexuals aren’t gay or straight. We maintain the ability to feel attraction to all genders, regardless of who we’re currently dating/in love with/sleeping with.

In Mallory Ortberg’s Dear Prudence column last week, a lesbian wrote to ask if her friends were right to say she should be jealous because her wife is bisexual. Her wife had been engaged to a soldier, who then died while serving, and she understandably still grieves that loss. Thankfully, the woman writing in said, “I think this is biphobia,” but she still asked, “…should I be jealous?”

Ortberg handled it well, of course, but this woman’s friends’ insistence points to a deeply held belief that extends to all couples, which is: when we’re in relationships, we can’t acknowledge attractive people we aren’t dating, nor mention that our hearts can still engage.

Because if we mention these things, that’s an indication of wayward behavior, even though we haven’t done anything. We’ve only acknowledged that we can see and register the other people that still exist even while we’re in relationships. But let’s think more about why we can’t say, “I think [that person who isn’t the person I’m involved with] is attractive.” It’s because we’re all so fucking sensitive about thinking we’re “the one.”

Don’t get me started on the mythos surrounding “the one.” It’s all bullshit. It’s for people who think relationships don’t require work. Our egos have such immense capacity that we think that our partners aren’t allowed or inclined to notice what other people look like.

Full disclosure: When I was 18, I started dating this guy who emotionally wrecked me. And that wreckage began when he mentioned a girl he found attractive, and I crumbled like a leaf. I beat myself up over it and jumped to conclusions. From “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?” to “IS THIS BETRAYAL?” to “I’M NOT ENOUGH.” etc.

I wish I could’ve told my younger self: “You have so much growing to do.” Because his comment didn’t mean anything and it certainly wasn’t betrayal. He did a lot of other dishonest things to me, but that wasn’t one of them. And of the other things he did, that comment hurt me the least.

NB: That partner was bisexual but afraid to say so. The closest he ever got was, “I used to think I was gay,” to which I literally screamed, “ME TOO!” It was such a relief to tell someone. But it was just a half step. Because (gentle reminder) being ‪bisexual isn’t the same as being gay.

But being bisexual is a scary proposition because there’s this notion that follows couples everywhere: if you talk about your capacity to notice other sexual beings who aren’t your partner, you’re telling them they’re not enough for you.

And friends, that is fucking bullshit. Because it amounts to telling bisexuals to NEVER say “I’m bisexual.”

Because of someone’s ego. Because people confuse acknowledging attraction to other people with genuine infidelity. And because people think that saying “I’ve slept with men and women/am attracted to all genders,” means “I’ll sleep with anyone!” which means DANGER.

But promiscuity is only dangerous when we don’t talk about it (e.g., the current state of emergency in Saskatchewan because of recent uptick in HIV cases). Also, telling someone they should be ashamed of expressing their attraction to others is dangerous. And given the prevalence of the belief that bisexuals only communicate their bisexuality to gain attention (how shameful), that might explain the high rate of depression and suicide among bisexuals, especially women.

The bottom line here is that I know it’s hard to not be hurt when the person you’re with acknowledges someone who isn’t you, but worrying about past experiences (or measuring up [a.k.a., The Chasing Amy defense]), and thinking potential is the same as action is unfair.

It’s like saying, “I think that house is pretty,” when you and your partner have recently bought an apartment. Committing to one space doesn’t negate your ability to admire the architecture of another space.

Or, here’s a more realistic scenario. You have two potential paths: 1/Your partner says, “Hey, that person is attractive,” and your feelings are hurt but you get over it because you’re both adults and you know and trust your partner. Or 2/You tell your partner, in any of a number of ways (verbally telling them, giving them an ultimatum, shaming them in front of other people, shaming them in private, physically threatening them, physically abusing them, assaulting them, etc.), that since they’re committed to you, they’re not allowed to mention anyone else, including statements of fact about their orientation, as if that implies anything beyond capability. And, as a result, they close themselves off to everyone, including you.

So, which would work better for you? Which is the easier scenario?

There’s a ton of awful shit that might happen in life. (Cue the list of 108 things that could [but probably won’t] kill you). But just because you could OD on zinc, that doesn’t mean you should avoid it or force it into hiding or deny that it’s even real. (Just like bisexuality, zinc is a very real thing.)

Denial hurts. Being told you don’t know your own mind hurts. But it hurts exponentially more when it comes from someone you care about. So, as a reminder—not just this week, but every week, in perpetuity—don’t police your bi friends or your friends who love them. Don’t call bisexuality a phase. Don’t say it isn’t real.

And if a friend opens up to you and says, “I’m bisexual,” regardless of their history, you only need to do one thing: believe them.

Just in case you haven’t heard, there’s a top-secret show called WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT. It’s by an Iranian playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, and he wrote it while he was forbidden from leaving Iran.

The reason it’s top secret is that none of the performers have ever seen or read the show. Every night, one actor gets the script in a sealed envelope. And then they read it for the first and last time in front of an audience.

I am in awe and terrified of this show.

So, on November 14, at 7:30pm, I will perform WHITE RABBIT RED RABBIT.

I made this promo image. I hope you love it like I do.

If you’re in the Boston area, I hope you’ll come see me. And if you can’t make it on November 14, I hope you’ll come to one of the other performances. This limited engagement is only running for three nights (Nov 14-16), so get your tickets while you can, and I’ll see you in November for what promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

Can you guess which bygone online platform first published my fiction way back in 1996? Have you ever wondered about the reasons behind my long-standing fascination with Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie? Did you know The Cincinnati Airport isn’t even in Cincinnati?

Thanks to the kind folks at The Massachusetts Review, you can now read my thoughts on all of the above, and learn a bit more about why I write long stories, and the genesis of my novella, “Emergency Exit.”

Mother’s Day never fails to make me feel displaced. I grew up with a steady stream of input on how feminine I wasn’t, how I should be accordingly ashamed, how my mother’s enforced absence had somehow backfired, how she’d been cut from my life for my own good yet I was still shaping up to be as disappointing a woman as she was.

Most information I have about my mother, I received from my father. That information goes something to the effect of: my mother was low class, ill-educated, and a chronic liar. There were other appraisals, all unfavorable, by way of facts and figures, as if life was a numbers game and my mother had racked up all the wrong stats: the number of children she’d had (at least two before me and at least two after), the number of husbands she’d had (current count: 3-4), the number of different men who’d fathered those children (again: 3-4), and whether there was overlap between the fathers and husbands (yes and no).

So, according to my father, my mother was batting a hundred.

The last time I saw my mother, I was seven years old. I watched her leave our house (“our” including me, my brother, my father, my paternal grandmother, and two of my father’s brothers), get in her car, and drive away. It was both dramatic and anti-climactic. Dramatic because she was angry. My brother and I had, at our father’s request, recently told a judge we didn’t want to see her anymore. Anti-climactic because my parents had been divorced for at least three years before that, with my father having been awarded something close to sole custody, mainly because my mother had taken us twelve states away during their divorce proceedings without telling him.

Things I remember my father being angry about when my brother and I visited my mother before her visitation rights ended: if I came home with nail polish on my nails (usually clear polish), if I forgot a toy or clothes at my mother’s, if we talked about the food we ate there. My father didn’t want my brother and I to have separate lives when we weren’t with him. But I wound up feeling split nonetheless: the person the world expected me to be (a girl who, by proxy of being a girl, was supposed to love her mother) vs. the person I was (a girl whose mother was a stranger).

As I got older, I learned to care less, at least about my mother’s absence. I was immensely lucky to have many women who decided to look after me. Not that I got into trouble that often (I was honestly too boring for that), but all the important lessons I learned about life, the lessons that shaped the person I am—how to fail gracefully, how to find optimism in a sea of negativity, how to believe in myself despite high odds stacked against me—I learned from other people’s mothers. Andrea Davies, the mother of my closest childhood friend, Shauna, saw I had no idea how to accept my own shortcomings. She recognized I was petrified of failure. She told me it was okay to screw up. She explained that I’d live, and even if I didn’t get better, I’d someday be better at something else. (For perspective, I was nine years old. I took the fast track to Type A.) My dear friend, Sandy McClintock, who was my drama teacher in high school, once said I busted my ass to get things right, which meant I busted everyone else’s ass too. She wasn’t scolding me, rather, she was giving me permission to set the bar as high as I could reach it, while also reminding me I had to reach out to pull everybody else up with me. My all-but-adopted mother (and former boss), Dana DeVito, who never made me feel bad about not talking to my parents, told me it’s okay to be angry, as long as anger isn’t my whole life.

These women are my mothers. These women are my fathers. They taught me how to grow beyond the rotted soil I was planted in. They taught me I could, in fact, find new soil without sawing off my roots.

Despite the slew of reasons (some I’ve mentioned elsewhere) that I don’t talk to my father, I’m grateful that he’s mostly left me alone since I left his house.* My mother, on the other hand, found me online and emailed me several years ago to ask me to be in touch, to tell me she loved me, to basically remind me she existed.

Of the two of us, my brother remembers more of her than I do. Of the two of us, my brother had always wanted her in his life. So I told him: here’s her contact info. I don’t want any part of it. I tried, though I’m pretty sure I failed, to properly explain why I didn’t and don’t want to know her.

Bloodlines aren’t contractual. They’re borne of circumstance. Given enough time and pressure, they erode. I don’t discount the hard work that so many people put in to maintain regular contact with their families. Families are complicated systems. I know the mettle they require. But for me, what matters more than blood is the respect shown by strangers (literal strangers) who went out of their way to make me feel less alone, to make me feel less forgotten, who know me and make me feel worthy of guidance regardless of their expectations for me, regardless of how we’re related.

Charities that make Mother’s Day feel a little less alienating: The Compassion Collective and The Motherless Daughters Foundation.

 

 

 

 

* That said, he called the police the day I moved out and told them I’d robbed him when I moved. I told the police everything I took was mine. They said I had to ask for a list of stolen goods, and if I had anything on the list, I’d have to return it. When asked for a list of what I’d stolen, my father didn’t respond, a fact I bring up because of his regular insistence that my mother was a liar. Between the two of them, it’s no wonder I wound up a fiction writer.

I’m thrilled to say that my long story (97 pages!), “Emergency Exit,” is now available as an ebook from The Massachusetts Review!

It’s a story about (among other things) competition, envy, and expectations, and it follows a stewardess who has sex with passengers while she’s at work.

It was such a delight working with the crew at MR, and Managing Editor Emily Wojcik-Thurston wrote an intro that’s an essay in its own right–here’s a peek:

“There is a cliché about female friendship—especially workplace friendships. It suggests a parade of pre-dawn yoga classes, fretting in the break room about sex and weight gain, and complaining over happy-hour Cosmos. Or else constant competition, office “frenemies” who backhandedly compliment each other’s haircuts while spreading vicious gossip or digging their claws into easily seduced bosses. Female friendship is at best a shallow diversion from job or family, at worst, a career-ending betrayal: BFF or backstabber.

Which is what makes Carissa Halston’s brutally funny, complicated Emergency Exit feel so original. Her women—stewardesses (not flight attendants in this world slightly out of time)—grab the narrative controls from the very beginning and fly this particular plane into uncharted airspace. You may think you’ve met Halston’s unnamed Stewardess before, perhaps in an episode of Mad Men or maybe the pages of some low-rent pulp novel.”

You can read an excerpt or jump right in and buy the story. It’s currently available at Amazon, and much to the delight of my bookselling heart, it will soon be available from Kobo as well!

And just in case you’re into A/V: you can hear me read from the story, courtesy of Steven LaFond and his reading series, Belt It Out:

A friend of mine who’s currently finishing up her MFA recently emailed me to ask for advice about submitting work to literary journals:

I have been writing a few short stories recently (plus many excerpts from the thesis/novel) that I would like to take a crack at publishing somewhere. The problem? I am mystified by the way that authors find magazines that “fit” their style/writing. I’ve heard it’s best to just read lit mags to see where an author should submit, but there are so many! I looked at short stories of authors I like and saw where those stories were originally published (but they were heavy hitters like Granta and Ploughshares, which I don’t think I’m ready for).

I’m wondering if you have any advice for finding magazines and deciding which ones to subscribe to or even how to find them. I don’t necessarily want to subscribe to fifteen random magazines because I have no money and that seems like more of a crapshoot than anything else.

Have any advice on how to navigate this stuff? Anything would be much appreciated!

In responding to her, I thought I might offer up this info to everyone, since these are questions that I certainly worried about when I started writing.

First of all, researching journals is as important as doing research to write fiction. So, try not to be discouraged about the number of journals in existence, and instead think of it as a required part of your job.

Since most journals only publish short work by fiction writers, and I’m a fiction writer, I’m focusing entirely on publishing short fiction. But you can apply these rules to just about any sort of short-form writing. Essays, poems, hybrid work, etc.

With that in mind, following my friend’s example, it’s a good idea to look at collections you admire to see where the stories therein were first published. But I’d encourage you to look at more than one collection. If you want a minimum, I’d say look at no fewer than six collections. If that sounds extreme, think of it this way: if you were researching a story, you’d have to include a detail that came up four or five times, right? Same rule applies here. You’ll know the journal you want once you see it mentioned again and again.

A NOTE ON TOP-TIER JOURNALS

Don’t tell yourself you’re not ready to send work to a journal just because that journal is, in current parlance, kind of a big deal. Look at your work with a critical eye. If you’ve revised it and revised it, and you’ve read it fifty times, and you’re still engaged by it, still impressed by it, admittedly still wowed by it, send that fucker out to the best journal you can. (As long as it fits within their guidelines, of course.) If you haven’t yet revised ad nauseum, but you still want to get your feet wet in terms of publication, read on.

So, let’s say that every single collection you look at has overlap in the following journals: The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta. Such prestige—how intimidating. What’s a writer to do? No sweat: Just look at different collections. More specifically, look at collections published by presses other than the big five.

This isn’t just my preference as a small press publisher talking. Small press editors are more willing to take risks on lesser known (or unknown) writers because small press publishers don’t need to recoup the expenses of printing hundreds of thousands of books each year.

If you have no idea how to find a small press book or journal, think about how you would describe your work in general terms. Then plug those terms into your favorite search engine, add “submission guidelines,” and see what comes out.

AN EXAMPLE

I write long fiction. My “short” stories are usually well over 10,000 words, which usually means they run about 50 pages. That limits me to approximately 25 journals where I can submit work. But let’s say I didn’t know which ones. Looking for “novella” + “submission guidelines” brings up a page at Bookfox with a list of journals that regularly feature long fiction. But your terms might not be formal constraints—maybe you write satire, or sci-fi, or gender-bending scenes about Morocco in the 1840s. (We all have our projects.) For that last one, I searched for gender fiction “submission guidelines,” and got first-page links to (among others) American Short Fiction and Story Magazine, two journals that regularly publish work by emerging writers, and a page on The Review Review for LGBT lit mags.

Regardless of how you discover the journals you want, once you’ve got your list ready, seek those journals out online. Since most print journals have at least a few examples of exemplary work on their websites, and all online journals have their archives online by dint of the medium, you don’t necessarily need to subscribe.

A TIP (slash caveat)

You’ll want to read more than one story in any given journal before submitting your work, so even if you can’t afford a subscription, you could get a back issue, which are normally offered as a discount and would provide more than enough content for you to scope the journal’s aesthetic, not to mention it would support the journal, which helps literary journals stick around.

As for how to figure out which journals to subscribe to, I’m of the mind that the content and design are of equal importance, so I’m visually oriented when it comes to subscriptions. For me, the finest looking journals are Oxford American and McSweeney’s, two very different projects, but the content is comparable in terms of quality, which is to say both are solid. I usually have at least one print subscription (currently: Oxford American and The Cincinnati Review**; past: AGNI*, Fourteen Hills**, Tin House, The Massachusetts Review**, Willow Springs**, and Electric Literature, all of which I recommend except EL, but only because EL is now entirely online). Also, friends love reading whatever’s out when they come over, so as a bonus: having print journals around makes everybody happy.

As for how I found these journals in the first place, I was a bookseller for five years, and a periodicals clerk. It was a great way to get paid to know things about magazines. And now, I know a lot of writers and we all like talking about journals we love—easier than acknowledging the ones we hate (a post for another time). So I find out about new journals by talking to people I know, not to mention hearing about new projects via Twitter and Facebook, etc.

FASTER WAYS TO FIND JOURNALS

Poets and Writers, The Review Review, and NewPages, all of which have searchable databases. TRR and NP also review lit mags, which can give you insight into which issues to read when scouting for journals. Also, Entropy has a bimonthly list of calls for submissions.

Things I consider when sending out work: Does the journal have an easily navigable website? (After all, I don’t want it to be difficult for readers to find my writing.) Will the journal promote my work via social media or am I on my own? Will I get paid? If it’s a print journal, will my work also be published on their website? If it’s an online journal, do they publish supplementary material (e.g., audio files of authors reading their work, interviews with contributors)? And, most important, what can I do to elevate readers’ awareness of that journal?

This may sound backward to many writers—isn’t the whole point of a lit mag to promote new writing? Looking at it from a self-serving vantage point, if you have an eye for keeping your work in print, you’ll want the journals where your work is published to be successful. Also, I come at this from a chatty perspective: I like talking about writing I love. I want to tell my friends about journals they would enjoy. It makes me happy. I did it above. I’ll do it again. Here’s a list of online journals I regularly read because I find them to be the most consistent, re: quality writing, diversity in curation, and innovative fiction: The Collagist, Paper Darts, Collapsar, Bomb, Diagram, Recommended Reading, Triquarterly, and Guernica. I’m also going to mention apt, since that’s the journal I read without question every week, and all promotion is helpful, even self-promotion.

By the way, if this whole system of reading and submitting in order to get published sounds like months (or even years) of work, it is! Just like writing. But reading contemporary fiction (i.e., work by writers who are still alive) is what you’ll want and expect people do for you, once your writing is published. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard me talk about community, how to be part of one, and why literary communities are important. Submitting work for publication is your introduction to the online literary community, which we’re all de facto part of by being writers who use the internet.

So, hello. Welcome. It’s nice to see you. You’re almost ready to send work out.

FINAL SUGGESTIONS

Submittable is really helpful for managing submissions, but there are still journals that use other submission trackers. Since you’ll probably submit work to more than one journal at a time, it’s helpful to track your submissions so you can withdraw them from consideration should they get accepted elsewhere.

Also, I’m not the first writer to try to tackle the dense subject of submitting work. Lincoln Michel wrote an in-depth guide to getting published in lit mags for BuzzFeed. Lynda Barrett wrote an article on “What Editors Want” for TRR. And Michael Kardos wrote a mini course on cover letters over at Writers Digest. Read each and take heart: you are not alone.

Now go forth and submit. And read, read, read. And, if you can swing it, subscribe to one journal. And if you can’t, go to the library and read one cover to cover. Then tell all your friends about it. Every little bit helps.

 

 

 

* – I was an editor for AGNI, but no bias: they regularly publish good work.

** – Subscribed as a result of having work published in those journals, or winning/placing in a contest. But they’re all gorgeous books worthy of your subscription.