interview up at Necessary Fiction
Amber Lee interviewed me for Necessary Fiction
part of the "Where Writers Write" series
I'm part of the "Where Writers Write" series @ The Next Best Book blog. This is a fun series profiling writers writing spaces. FYI: I did put the baby down after the video was over.
my book Quarry Light
It has been awhile since I've had new work out. My new book, Quarry Light, is due out from Magic Helicopter Press next year. I've worked long and hard on these stories, and I am still working on them. I'm proud of them.
Coming in 2013: Quarry Light, a book of short stories by Claudia Smith Chen that slashes at the blanket between horror and domesticity, finding catgirls in the walls and dogs on the porch and the hard eyes we're all of us—mothers, walkers, daughters—trying not to need so much.
story online
For the first time in a very long time, I have a new short short online.
"Hula" @ Wigleaf
on kindle
Put Your Head In My Lap is now available for your kindle or ebook! Three bucks.
flash reprint
My short-short "Wool" is featured in the Flash Reprint series @ Flash Fiction
poem for Mei Hua Esme Chen
I recently commissioned my friend the poet and editor Kathleen Rooney to write a poem on the occasion of my daughter's birth, and she sent me this fine poem:
BABY, BABY, BABY, OH
Magic tricks that are easy are not
worth learning—babies are a version
of getting kissed by fate.
Mei Hua Esme, you are a power-
house beauty, a cute head of hair,
a dark-gray rose. Your splendor
nosing forth on the very last day
of a Mississippi May is a story
we will tell ourselves over & over.
What is meant by glory?
Unless we ask the question
we will never hear a yes.
They say that the meaning of Esme
is “to love.” They say that Hattiesburg
got its name from a lumberman’s wife.
We say that in order to be magnificent
we have to be impractical. There are,
we know, so so so many babies
that your own tiny radiance
is like a candle flame almost-
invisible by daylight,
but a candle flame all the same.
We will never see anything
like you in our lives again.
Kathleen Rooney
June 2012
Kathleen was one of my editors at Rose Metal Press for The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts; you may find more about her work at her site and check out poems while you wait
Product 26
My short story "Propriety" and short short "Marks" are online @ the University of Southern Mississippi's Product 26
