Category Archives: creative nonfiction

creative nonfiction, writing

New essay published in Tenderly

Last month, I was happy to have my second publication in Tenderly, a vegan-focused Medium site. The essay is called “I Don’t Feel Comfortable as a Vegan Activist Because of My Evangelical Upbringing.”

This publication felt special to me because it bridges my past and current writing selves. Until May, I thought of myself as a creative writer and primarily focused on writing and submitting creative nonfiction and fiction. In May, I became a full-time freelance writer. Personal essays in mainstream publications (by which I mean not literary magazines) are a way for me to connect these two writerly identities.

For those who didn’t see my first Tenderly publication that came out last July, check out “Should Vegans Eat Honey?”

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creative nonfiction, fibromyalgia, health, writing

New article on Inside Higher Ed

I have a new article on the Inside Higher Ed site. It’s called “Navigating Graduate School While Managing a Chronic Illness.”

This publication excites me for three reasons: 1) I got paid for writing it, 2) it has to do with health/illness, which is an area I want to write and speak more about, and 3) it draws on my recent experiences and I’m trying to find more ways to meld my non-creative career experiences with my writing.

I’d be honored if you gave it a read, and positively pleased if you shared the link with someone who you think might be interested in it.

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creative nonfiction, writing

New short essay up on Brevity blog

Brevity is known as the go-to site for flash creative non-fiction. I haven’t been published there (yet!), but they also have a blog that’s pretty awesome, and I’m happy to announce my writing was published on it a few days ago.

My post is titled, “#ShareYourRejection: I Received 330 Writing Rejections in One Year, and I’m So Happy About It,” and I’d be honored if you read it. I found out the Brevity blog has 45,000 email subscribers, so this is probably my most widely-read piece of writing so far.

I don’t think I’ll consider myself a “successful” writer until I have a book published, but I’ve made a lot of progress in my writing career in recent years, and I wrote this post to help encourage people who are interested in a similar path. It still feels surreal to call myself a “writer” or to talk about my “writing career” at all–I’ve spent more years of life viewing a writing career as a pipe dream unavailable to me in any real sense than I have pursuing it in earnest.

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creative nonfiction, fibromyalgia, health, ibs, migraine, pots, writing

New publication in MTV Fit

New publication: Staying Fit with Chronic Illness Required Me to Redefine “Exercise”

A friend shared a link to a (secret?) Google doc containing a compilation of tweets from editors looking for pitches. When I saw an editor at MTV Fit (a fitness vertical on MTV’s UK site) was looking for health- and fitness-related essays, I spontaneously pitched her one on exercising with chronic illness in that moment. She said yes!

This was exciting for me. I’ve only pitched a couple of times (that’s how I had the Marie Claire article published), and because my background is in creative writing, not journalism, I still feel like I’m sort of faking it when I send a pitch.

I’ve been submitting to lit mags for a while now and I feel like I have the hang of submitting. It’s relatively easy and mostly repetitive. You submit whatever you’ve written, in full, along with a short cover letter that is more or less copied and pasted aside from a personalized sentence or two.

Pitching, however, is a whole different ball game. The cover letter isn’t a formality–it’s the entire thing. Lit mag editors often purposely avoid reading cover letters accompanying submissions until after they’ve made a decision. Mainstream editors reading pitches generally make their decision based on the cover letter–the pitch–alone.

Lately I’ve been writing more personal essay than fiction, so I see a lot of pitching in my future.

 

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creative nonfiction, writing

New essay in the Hawai’i Review

hawaii review jay vera summerMy essay, “Fibromyalgia, Me, and Doris Lee” is in the Hawai’i Review ’87. I’m excited to be getting some print publications, since most of my publications thus far have been online. I kind of like online pubs better because then I can share the link with my friends, but print publications seem to still be viewed as more prestigious, and it’s fun to hold something that feels like a book and see my work in it. Seeing my work in print gives me confidence that some day I’ll have an entire book of my own. :)

hawaii review jay vera summerYou can order a copy of the Hawai’i Review ’87 by sending a check for $10 along with an address to:

Hawai’i Review 
Hemenway 107
2445 Campus Road
Honolulu, HI 96822

For more info on the Hawai’i Review, click here.

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