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J e f f  F e a r n s i d e

WRITER

~ Featured ~

Agents or editors interested in learning more about either or both of the following manuscripts may contact me via email.

Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air: And Other Stories of Flight is a collection of 13 short stories linked thematically by the recurring idea of flight, in its various definitions and senses. Stories in this collection have already been published or accepted for publication by journals such as Rosebud, Many Mountains Moving, Controlled Burn, Eureka Literary Magazine, Isotope, and Lake Effect, among others. The first five stories were awarded a Grand Prize in the Santa Fe Writers Project’s Literary Awards Program, and the collection as whole was recently named a finalist in the New Rivers Press MVP Competition (see ***NEW*** below).

Silk Road Tales is an account of my four years living, working, and traveling throughout Muslim Asia, primarily in Kazakhstan. In letters, journals, and poems, it describes—colorfully but accurately—life in this vast, complex former Soviet state during a tremendous and sometimes difficult transition, as well as my travels along the Great Silk Road from Turkey to China (map). Portions of this manuscript have already appeared in Etude: New Voices in Literary Nonfiction, Permafrost, and Protestpoems.org, and on the CD-ROM Peace Corps in Central Asia and the U.S. Peace Corps website.

Leading a writing workshop at the Grand Canyon

At China’s Taklamakan (Go-in-and-you-won’t-come-out) Desert

***NEW***

May 13, 2010: I’m catching up on some older news here, but it’s very good news indeed: my short-story manuscript Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air was named a finalist in the New Rivers Press MVP Competition! This is a long-running (since 1981) and distinguished competition from a terrific university press, and obviously I’m thrilled with this honor.

April 14, 2010: My short story “Maps and Compasses” was recently named a finalist in the Summer Literary Seminars 2010 Unified Literary Contest in Fiction! The honor includes a partial scholarship to attend one of their highly regarded writing workshops, either in the beautiful city of Montreal, Canada, or the exotic country of Kenya in Africa. (Oooh, I would LOVE to attend one of these! Let’s see if we can make it happen…)

Jan. 16, 2010: I’m highly pleased to announce that my work has been recognized twice in the 2009 Soul-Making Literary Competition sponsored by National League of American Pen Women, Nob Hill, San Francisco Bay Area Branch.

      My short story “A Husband and Wife Are One Satan” won the Mary Mackey Short Story Prize, while my essay “Itam” was an Honorable Mention for the Tara L. Masih Intercultural Essay Prize.

      Writers from 25 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and British Columbia, Canada, placed (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) or were named honorable mention in the 12 categories of this national/international contest.

      As a winner, I’ve been invited to read Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. in the Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, Civic Center.

***To read all the past news that I’ve posted, please visit my News Archives page.***