First off, I am terrible at year in review stuff, as you can see by the fact that it is now a week into the new year and I’m just getting this done. I had a good year personally, amid the ::waves at world:: and I sometimes struggle with that, but I think it can be a victory in itself to allow yourself happiness. In that spirit, I look back on this year:

2024 Publications:

“Signs of Life,” a novelette in Uncanny about two estranged sisters and loneliness and purpose and art. Paula Guran, writing in Locus, called it “A charming, positive novelette about how creativity grows from need.”

Haunt Sweet Home, a standalone novella published by Tordotcom, which a Booklist starred review called "Fun, eerie, [and] unexpectedly beautiful ...” and of which Library Journal said, "Pinsker’s evocative prose turns an amusing reality-show backdrop into a haunting story of hiding from (and discovering) oneself." Haunt Sweet Home was picked at the end of the year as one of NPR’s “Books We Love” for 2024. Also, the audio version is a delight.

What those pieces have in common is that they were both inspired by exhibits at the American Visionary Art Museum, so come for the weird art, stay for the weird story, or vice versa.

Things I got to do because of Haunt Sweet Home:

Haunt Sweet Home had a book tour! I got to be on lots of podcasts and go to lots of book festivals and bookstores and even a conference for booksellers. I got to interview TJ Klune on stage in Nashville. I got to sign my book sitting at a table next to Joan Baez! I got her to sign a book for me. I got to hang out with lots of writers I love, and meet a whole bunch of cool writers I hadn’t met before. I got to go to a party at a house full of Lewis Carroll ephemera, including his own book collection, his typewriter, the Dali-illustrated Alice, and more. I got to buy a microscopic copy of Watership Down from a vending machine. I got to see old friends and new friends and students at all of my stops, which made it an excellent tour by any metric. Oh, and the Baltimore book launch at Greedy Reads was good fun, made better again by all the people I love who I got to see for a couple of hours, as well as the total strangers who took a chance on the event.

Other writing related stuff of the sort you can celebrate but not plan for:

“One Man’s Treasure” was a Hugo finalist and Locus award finalist, and “There’s a Door to the Land of the Dead in the Land of the Dead” and my collection Lost Places (all 2023 works) were also  Locus award finalists.

I sold a movie option on “Two Truths and a Lie.” I’ll admit I’m very curious to see the choices they make if anything happens with it.

Someone gave me beautiful calligraphy quotes from my own books. The Bookmarks festival commissioned cool book art for each author. 

I was a guest at writing events at Eastern Tennessee State University and Stevenson University.

My book got its own ice cream! The Charmery made a Haunt Sweet Home flavor, with smoky apple brandy and toffee bits. A portion of the proceeds went to Day's End Farm Horse Rescue, and it was delicious.

Other writing related stuff of the sort you can plan for:

I got to attend the Sycamore Hill workshop with a bunch of wonderful writers who push me to be better—and also got sneak previews of all their terrific new works. I got to sit on a porch in the mountains of North Carolina and play music and chat. And while that beautiful location was cut off from the world by the hurricane, the buildings weren’t destroyed, and they are hard at work repairing the roads and water lines so they can invite guests back in 2025.

I went to Worldcon in Glasgow, my first time in Scotland. I love the European Worldcons because I get to meet new-to-me writers and fans from all over (six of seven continents, no Antarctic aliens), as well as writers whose work I have long admired but who don’t attend American cons. I had a reading and a signing and a kaffeeklatsch and a standing-room-only panel on fungi in fiction and a fun one on mysteries in space, and probably a couple more that I’m blanking on right now. I got to visit the Kelpie statues with a friend I hadn’t seen in twenty years. After the convention, a bunch of friends and I took a bus tour of the Highlands, where we experienced every season in a day, ate fish and chips and single-malt whiskey ice cream, and met a very good spaniel who wanted to play fetch in the rain. 

Writing: Writing OF 2024, not published in 2024? Well, I worked on a lot of things that are not done yet. I finished and sold exactly one story, which isn’t announced yet. A year of nudging things forward means that this year should be a year of finishing, I hope.

Teaching

I taught the spring and fall semesters at Goucher, with two more classes full of delightfully creative writers. For the second year in a row one of my students was a finalist for the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy. 

In July, I got to teach week four of the Clarion West workshop. Clarion West, for those who don’t know, is a six week workshop for genre writers. It’s been going for decades, and I had always wanted to attend as a student but never had an opportunity to apply, so I was delighted at the opportunity to teach. And it lived up to all of my expectations! The students were talented and hard working (they write a story every week while also critiquing seventeen other manuscripts!) and so generous with each other, both in workshop and outside of it. At the end of the week they gave me a copy of my collection that they had illustrated, and I made them sign my emotional support unicorn, and we went to a great party and then hung out into the wee hours, and then I had to leave and they had to keep going for two more weeks.. Some of the stories we worked on together are already seeing publication! (see below)

And the workshop took place in Seattle, which meant there was a lovely view of the mountain from the back deck of the dorm building, and also meant that I got a couple of days afterward to visit with old friends and whale watch and go to an art talk on Bainbridge and stuff. 

Movement metrics:

I walked a little over 600 miles. Pretty good, could be better; so sayeth I, so sayeth the dogs. Logged a few miles on my friend’s cute green Haflinger pony as well, which makes my heart happy. 2023 was the year that my shoulder froze, and it took about eight months of PT to get close to normal, well into 2024. So that’s a victory for this past year too, that I managed to unfreeze my shoulder without surgery, and that I can ride horses again, and scratch my own back. I’d love to start running again, since that’s a thing that I dropped; I had no idea how many things involved my shoulder until I couldn’t use it. 

Movies:

I must have seen some, but this was a year of so much travel that I didn’t make it to the movies or the theater much. I think my favorite 2024 movie was Thelma. Also caught up on American Fiction and All of Us Strangers and some other 2023 movies on planes. Godzilla Minus One was great too! The Golden Globes told me what I already knew, that I have basically missed everything this year, except Thelma, which was adorable. 

TV: 

I dug the new season of For All Mankind. Man on the Inside was good stuff: I like the heart that Schur puts into his shows, and it was fun seeing the Good Place cast popping in here and there. Death and Other Details was a decent mystery, sort of a White Lotus/Knives Out kind of affair. Kaos was ambitious, chaotic fun, and I’m sad it won’t get another season. Black Doves was a decent spy thriller centering women and gay characters, and I adore Sarah Lancashire and Ben Wishaw. The new Doctor Who episodes this year were the best in a while. I loved Jodie Whitaker and her companions, but I thought the writing for her was subpar, so it’s nice to see a combination of fun doctor and decent stories. 

Music:

I mostly went to and listened to local stuff this year. I didn't play any shows at all, but I had a good time playing music with people on a few occasions. Favorite local albums: Manners Manners’  I Held Their Eyes, I Kissed Them All.  June Star’s Latency, J. Robbins’ Basilisk. Fell for Allison Russell with The Returner. Saw a good Jason Isbell show. Neil Young brought Crazy Horse out of the garage and dusted them off and propped them up and made glorious noise for what I’m guessing might be the last time, and I got to see them before their tour was permanently interrupted. SONiA and disappear fear in February and December, always a highlight. And Springsteen’s show at Camden Yards, which was probably the best I’ve ever seen the E Street Band, and I’ve seen some good shows. Something about the ballpark and the music reaching out into the perfect September evening. 

Games: 

I played zero video games OF 2024. Kellan Szpara made me finally finish Breath of the Wild and start Tears of the Kingdom, and I think that might have been the only thing I played in 2024. I didn’t have a lot of time to play, which means that every time I attempt to do so I wind up flailing wildly and forgetting where everything is and where I’m going and then I go read a book instead, which is too bad, since I do have fun wandering around and discovering things. I’m just not as good at following the plot.

But – we did two book nook kits, which I thought were a fun way to spend time, and my obsession with escape games continues apace. And I continued some other creative projects, including painting a tiny horse for Nicola Griffith.

The Year in Flowers:

My garden did okay this year. An overabundance of tiny tomatoes, then a late season rally by the lemon boys. We made it to Sherwood Gardens in time to see the incredible tulips (on eclipse day!) and to Fort McHenry in time to see the cherry blossoms. My lilac bloomed happily in the spring, but I'm a little worried for it in 2025 given that December was so warm it actually bloomed (!) and also I think the lanternflies have caused it some problems. I have not killed any houseplants this year. *okay maybe one

The year in ice cream:

I have to say that getting my own flavor was the absolute highlight, but I'll also shout out the smoked vanilla ice cream at Timber in Johnson City and the Edradour single malt whiskey ice cream.

 Books:

I’m on slightly firmer ground here! I read a decent number of books. I’m happy to be back in a place where the number doesn’t matter anymore since I quit adding to Goo Dreads. I still keep track, but just for myself. Some of my favorites that came out in 2024 included Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife, Micaiah Johnson’s Those Beyond the Wall, Kelly Link’s The Book of Love, Kailane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, Victor Manibo’s Escape Velocity, and In Universes by Emet North, Tara Campbell’s City of Dancing Gargoyles.

On the novella front, The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar was the last thing I read in 2024 and it absolutely blew me away. Izzy Wasserstein’s These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart impressed me too. My friends Hildur Knutsdottir and Sunny Moraine wrote books that were far too scary for me but were just scary enough for other people, and I had fun chatting with both of them at a bookstore in Richmond. Nathan Ballingrud's Crypt of the Moon Spider also gave me nightmares.

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy and Orbital by Samantha Harvey both served as beautiful change-of-pace in a frenetic year. 

Of other years: Victor LaValle’s Lone Women and John Langan’s The Fisherman are both going onto my list of all time favorites/why did I wait so long to get to this. They are both absolutely brilliant and terrifying in beautiful ways. I reread Wylding Hall, and then my library got the audiobook in, so I listened to it again too. Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott was fascinating and exhausting. 

 I’m making my slow way toward the complete Daphne du Maurier, and My Cousin Rachel was an excellent read. I finished it on tour just in time to talk about it with a podcaster who turned out to be a huge du Maurier fan as well. 

Short fiction:

Forgive me, but I’m casting about to remember what I read in the short fiction realm, and coming up very short. I feel bad about it until I remember that I read and critiqued ninety stories for my undergrads, and eighteen stories for my Clarion West students, and another dozen plus for my Syc Hill colleagues, plus a few for friends, plus books for blurbs, plus at least six books for in-conversation events. So it’s not that I wasn’t reading short fiction, it’s just that everything I was reading was unpublished. 

So I’ll just brag on my students and THEIR 2024:

Conrad Loyer’s short story “The Carcosa Pattern,” from my week of Clarion West, was published in Issue 32 of FIYAH this fall, with abundant space creepiness.

Chris Campbell’s novelette “In the Palace of Science,” appeared in Asimov’s.  Chris also edited the anthology New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention. Chris was in my CW class.

Max Franciscovich’s “After We Kill Our Father And Before We Reach the Mainland,” appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. (Also! Max’s story from my CW week, “Dead Dog Mans the Lighthouse,” just came out in Strange Horizons yesterday! You will love The Dog, and you don’t have to worry about him because he’s already dead and working on being good.)

Somto Ihezue’s Desperate Ark Wives appeared in Haven Speculative. Somto was in my CW class.

Beston Barnett’s “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain,” appeared in the Jan/Feb 2025 issue of Asimov’s, which may seem like a 2025 thing, but some awards count Jan/Feb issue appearances as 2024, so I thought I’d mention it here.  Beston was one of my students at Rambo Academy’s Wayward Wormhole workshop in Spain last year.

Gio Clairval, also from the Wayward Wormhole, had “Found in Translation” in Nature Futures in October.

M.T. Khan’s novel Amir and the Jinn Princess came out in July. During Clarion West!

Dylan Halsted’s “Armageddon.txt” was a Dell Award finalist. Dylan is one of my Goucher students (and one of my TAs this fall.)

And not published-in-2024 but 2024 newsworthy: Auden Patrick, also from the Spain workshop, sold a Hamlet reimagining called THOUGHTS BE BLOODY to DAW! It’ll come out in 2026.

I think that’s everyone, but apologies if I’m wrong.

So that’s the year in me, with some bonus other people. 

Good luck with 2025 to all, and love from snowy Baltimore – Sarah

Sarah