I just learned my story “Not Like What You Said” will be coming out in the Alaska Quarterly Review in fall/winter 2014 (hooray!). AQR first published my work in 2005 (some poems, back when I was writing poetry), then published an earlier story of mine in 2009. I admire that they actually read the slush pile for potential material; that they’re nurturing of new writers; that they’re interested in building a long-lasting relationship with writers that they do publish; and that there’s a consistent editor at the helm, Ronald Spatz. 

 “Not Like What You Said” is a short story I worked on….forever, after I become somewhat obsessed with reading about cults, and then came across the story of Lisa McPherson via Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion by Janet Reitman. After reading way too many books about Mormon fundamentalists, Jonestown, Scientology, and Christian Evangelicalism, among other belief systems, I became curious about how a cult (or any all-encompassing religion) pretty much always satisfies something in the people who join it. And how people can find a happiness within a cult when happiness eluded them in the outside world (even if that cult is causing destruction of the self). And how sad that would be for a parent, realizing you can not be part of your child’s happiness.  

If you’re interested in extreme religion, these are books I also found fascinating. I know, all this reading for a short story? But cults and religion end up seeping  into much of my writing these days. 

• Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, finalist for the 2013 National Book Award;
• A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown;
• Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult (about Sri Chinmoy);
• Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back;
• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (about Mormon Fundamentalists).  
• Escape (first person account from a woman who left the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints / FLDS) 
• Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife (another first person account of living in the FLDS – it became a genre for a little while, memiors of polygamist wives)
• Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith (by Oprah-endorsed life coach Martha Beck – but it’s really well written!)

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• alaska quarterly review,
• publications