Update from Dublin: New content LIVE at Hunger Mountain, Art & Insanity issue

The Lemon Scented soap

So here I am in Dublin, a literary capital. A renowned whiskey town. It's raining. We went for a walk this am, a literary tour that took us by Oscar Wilde's home, Finn's Hotel, near where James Joyce met Nora and where she once worked as a chambermaid. We stepped into Sweny's chemist--a pharmacy featured in Ulysses, here lemon scented soap is purchased. We joined locals gathering for tea and for a reading. 









Now I sit on a cafe near Grafton Street waiting for V to finish his last meeting before we head to County Wexford for two days and then we continue on to Paris. I am sipping an Irish Coffee and wondering how and when life became so pleasantly unexpected. Here I sit, at age 39, on my first trip abroad in Ireland, from whence part of my family stems. (Ah, whence, would I be using that word if I were in Austin. Nope.)

I am doing what I love for a living. Writing. Teaching. Editing. I am so grateful. And speaking of editing, it is today's recent work at Hunger Mountain, that I am here to share. The children's lit team is extraordinary and our Assistant Editor, Caroline Carlson, who is repped by Greenhouse Literary just earned herself a three book deal! As stated on the Greenhouse website:

Caroline Carlson’s MAGIC MARKS THE SPOT, pitched as Eva Ibbotson meets Lemony Snicket with a twist of ‘yo ho ho’, to be illustrated with maps, journals and letters, in which a girl is rejected by the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates and shipped off to a Finishing School for Delicate Ladies instead, from where she must escape and set sail with a motley crew including a governess, a budgerigar and a talkative gargoyle on a treasure hunt for the kingdom’s lost magic, to Phoebe Yeh and Toni Markiet at Harper Children’s, in a significant deal, in a pre-empt, in a three-book deal, for publication in 2013, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).


Congrats, Caroline and thank you, thank you, thank you for all you do at HM. You make my job easier, more fun and even more inspiring. All good things! (And possibly some Writers' Tears Whiskey in your future.) Cheers.

Now on to the latest over at Hunger Mountain...

This week, we welcome our Katherine Paterson prize winner and finalists, as judged by National Book Award winning author Kimberly Willis Holt: Him by Heather Smith Meloche; Forty Thieves and  Green-Eyed Girl by Christy Lenzi, and Cesar by Betty Yee.  Another highlight is Writing from Both Sides of the Brain, a feature by Kelley Barson, which explains how both the left and the right sides of the brain are engaged in producing good fiction. We offer several poems by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, author of the recent Under the Mesquite. This issue’s Flipside is unique. We offer three voices, a seasoned writing instructor, Uma Krishnaswami, author of The Grand Plan to Fix Everything and newer writing teachers, Sarah Aronson, author of Beyond Lucky and Debby Dahl Edwardson, a current National Book Award nominee for  My Name Is Not Easy. Each shares her own unique method of The Art & Insanity of Teaching Writing.

And as a reminder, we are accepting pieces for submissions for consideration for our Winter 2012 issue The Magic & Mystery of Identity and our Spring 2012 issue The Landscape of Literature. Please see here for submission guidelines. *Note: there is now a $3.00 submissions fee which is not a reading fee, but a charge that helps fund the cost of the online submissions manager. Since our readers and editors are scattered around the globe, snail mail submissions, which would also cost submitters roughly $3, are not viable. Thank you for your continued support of Hunger Mountain.*