Q & A: Donna Baier Stein on "Scenes from the Heartland" and "Tiferet"

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

This blog posts on Mondays. This year the fourth Monday of the month is devoted to a Q & A with a fellow writer.

It has been more than a couple of years now since I participated as faculty at the San Miguel Writers Conference, but shining bright in my memory is a chat in the emerald cool shade of some palm trees there with Donna Baier Stein. And then we crossed paths again at the Women Writing the West Conference. Pequeño mundo! And at some point in between, to my great honor, she published an excerpt from my book, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, in her journal, Tiferet. Donna Baier Stein’s latest book is a collection of short stories inspired by artworks by Thomas Hart Benton– one of the greatest of the greats among American artists, and a personal favorite of mine. >>CONTINUE READING THIS POST AT WWW.MADAM-MAYO.COM

Why Do Old Books Smell? / Plus from the Archives: "What the Muse Sent Me About the Tenth Muse, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz"

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

A most wonderful rare book about a 17th century American poet, whom I aim to write about, has arrived in my library. But phew, it STINKS. It stinks so nasty, I cannot even bear to read half a page of it.
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BatCat Press' Call for Submissions, Plus from the Archives: "Out of the Forest of Noise: On Publishing the Literary Short Story"

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

This blog posts on Mondays. As of 2019 the second Monday of the month is devoted to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. (You can find my workshop schedule and many more resources for writers on my workshop page.)

Now that anyone and everyone and their dog, cat, budgie, llama, and chartreuse polkadot giraffe can start a blog, or for that matter an online magazine (dub your blog an online magazine, pourquoi pas?), I am rarely asked, with that gaze of yearning, as I so often was twenty years ago, how can I get published? These days, um, lift a finger and click “publish.” 

Nonetheless it remains a fact that for most poetry, short stories, and literary essays, discerning readers will be easier to come by when said work is brought out not by its author, but by a print magazine or imprint of repute. (There are exceptions, but that would be another blog post.)

Back at the end of March I attended the annual AWP bookfair— this is the biggest litmag scene in the US– and what struck me about it was how little things had changed in the past 20 years. There were Poet Lore, the Paris Review, Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction— a whole host of venerable litmags that have been around since forever. (In the case of Poet Lore, that would be 1889.)

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The True Identity of B. Traven by Timothy Heyman in Letras Libres

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