Reading for Filth is back at a new venue–– the transitioning Eastern Bloc (soon to be Alan Cumming’s aptly-named venture, Club Cumming). For the 4/26 inaugural reading, I brought “Raunch Daddy” a short epistolary: All is illusion except for your odor, mi norteño. Let me also remind you that it’s quite inconvenient–given my populist and… Continue reading The Return of Reading for Filth!
Category: fiction
#SASFest17 Class Photo
Atop the Quarter in the Hotel Monteleone’s Vieux Carré Room with some fellow Saints & Sinners Short Fiction Contest finalists: Debra Curtis, winner J. Marshall Freeman, P.D. Walter, runner-up Alise Wascom, Thomas Westerfield, Louis Flint Ceci, Chris Smith, William Moeck, and contest judge Michael Thomas Ford. Get the anthology over at Bold Strokes.
Miss Bensonhurst a W@W finalist 👑
“She and the girls are enveloped in the warm bakelite booth. A curtain shields her from the crowds. The two little angels share the hard seat. The camera – that possessed apparatus which would stalk her to the end – here blinks obediently. Flash.” “Miss Bensonhurst,” a fictional account of my grandmother Helen Rizzo’s friendship… Continue reading Miss Bensonhurst a W@W finalist 👑
My story ✍🏽 your pocket📱
Great Jones Street Press is a new platform and we are in a relationship now. They have a well-designed app that brings a curation of award-winning short stories to your mobile device. Get the app here. Find “Drowned River” in the app’s searchable database.
UPDATE: “Jesus Year” a finalist 👸🏽
Saints & Sinners has narrowed the selection down to 15 finalists and JY made the cut. The story will be published in the 2017 anthology published by Bold Strokes. Michael Thomas Ford is judging the contest this year. Congrats to fellow finalists–see you in New Orleans for the festival.
“Jesus Year” a semi-finalist 🙌🏽
in the Short Fiction contest of the 2017 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. The story, a fractured fairy tale, is based on “Nailed Up.” Chris Tolliver wakes up on his Jesus Year birthday in a hotel room in Bethlehem (PA) after his re-enactment of the central myth of the Catholic faith goes off the rails. With the help of a hustler… Continue reading “Jesus Year” a semi-finalist 🙌🏽
Satellite Rules, Stranded Longings in Chelsea Station
This short story has sexual content! Real-life experience enhanced for your pleasure. Chelsea Station Magazine
Christopher Hewitt 2015 Award for Fiction
And they will halt my ghastly nose-dive into hell, and lift me up, up, high up into the fields of stars. The quote is from “The Lifting Team” by Christopher Hewitt, poet, “queer crip”, person in recovery, posthumous honoree of the award I received this year for “Drowned River.”
Drowned River
2015 recipient of A&U Magazine’s Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction. Appears in the October 2015 Issue, the one with Gilles Marini on the cover. Based on two people I have loved and lost, who never had a chance to meet each other. After hot lunch, we go back to Tenté’s. His roommate is out, I can beat… Continue reading Drowned River
More Sequins than Cloth
Appears in Issue 9 of Jonathan, September 2015, edited by Raymond Luczak, from Sibling Rivalry Press. Based on true stories merged and barely fictionalized. Érick is also interested in American politics; he asks me about Glenn Beck. When I tell him I believe Beck is an untreated alcoholic with anger issues and delusions, he seems relieved. I think… Continue reading More Sequins than Cloth