"Shasta in Stanzas" accepted by Telling Our Stories Press UltraShort Memoir Project

Her tent was a silhouette, wrapped in the shadow of twilight.

Sunrise on Mt. Shasta (Wikipedia commons)

That's an excerpted line from "Shasta in Stanzas," a recently accepted submission to an UltraShort Memoir anthology put out by Telling Our Stories Press. It "seeks raw, close to the bone writing about meaningful personal experiences" under 300 words. No pay, but I'll receive two print & two e-book copies of IMPACT: An Anthology of Short Memoirs, to be published Feb. 29.

 

According to their call for submissions:

We are seeking literary personal narrative with well crafted writing employing literary techniques such as explicit or implied storyline, conflict, symbolism, theme, interiority, rich imagery and description. Entries will be judged on originality and the use of various structural forms, language and cohesive storytelling... As with any memoir, there must be some uncovering of whatever wisdom was gained.

I wrote the first draft of this piece as a writing exercise in David Vann's MFA workshop last year. After getting constructive feedback from Susan Bono at Tiny Lights and rejection from their flash prose contest, I cut and compressed into the current one-pager. It is amazing how much can be told in such a short space. I believe I achieved what was asked for: a storyline of lost and found, symbolism through descriptive imagery, interiority of character--all through a unique structural form of stanzas.

When it's published I'll post a link...
...in the meantime, it's back to the pen and ink.