Ethel Rohan

My first novel, The Kingdom Keeper, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in early 2017. I find it impossible to put into words how happy, and relieved, and grateful I feel.

The Shebooks anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You, won a silver medal in the Independent Book Publisher (IPPY) Awards. My memoir single, Out of Dublin, is included in the anthology. Huge congrats to editor, Laura Fraser, and to my fellow five contributors, Faith Adiele, Barbara Graham, Susan Ito, Beth Kephart, and Mary Jo McConahay.

The audio version of Out of Dublin also just released. You can listen to a two minute audio sample here. I admit it felt stirring, and gave me goosebumps, to hear the work read, and read so well. Huge thanks to narrator, Billie Fulford-Brown.

After decades of secrets and silence, it is surreal to listen to me, trying to get heard. It is a little shattering, too. I intend fierce, beautiful things to fill-in the cracks and breaks.

was something my dad often said before he’d start a sceal (the fada accent is missing from sceal, look both ‘sceal’ and ‘fada’ up if you need to).

Wait till I tell you, driving scares me, especially driving on freeways, or to new places, or at night, or on narrow, winding roads, or on cliff edges, and on and on. I’m afraid of losing control, of getting lost, of hurting myself, or someone else. I sweat salt beads that sweat salt beads and my heart tries to get outside me, to run away.

I’m afraid and I wrote about it, for a potential readership of 20 million at Ozy Magazine.

I’m afraid and I’m maybe crazy.

In the illustration Ozy used, I’m also a blonde.

Yes, a blonde.

That’s blondism, another made up word like ethrophobia (just read my essay already).

This is the photo of the tree I mention in the essay (which they didn’t use).

Beep, beep.

Congratulations winners of the Shebooks first print anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You.

Please send me your addresses and I’ll get your copy in the mail right away. Huge thanks to all for entering and your interest.

I hope you three winners enjoy the read.

Shebooks have published their first anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You: Six Memoirs of Resilience, Strength, and Forgiveness, a collection of six of its “Best of Shebooks 2014” non-fiction essays which includes my contribution, Out of Dublin. My fellow authors are Faith Adiele, Barbara Graham, Susan Ito, Beth Kephart, and Mary Jo McConahay. Editor is New York Times best-selling author, Laura Fraser.

“I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures…We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.” — Gail Caldwell, Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship.

I have 3 copies of Whatever Doesn’t Kill You to give away.

If you’re interested in receiving a copy, please leave a 10-25 word response in the comments to any book you’ve read in 2014. I’ll select 3 lucky winners this Friday, December 12. Worldwide entries are welcome.

Thanks.

Come hear me, and my five fellow contributors, read from the forthcoming anthology Whatever Doesn’t Kill You: Six Memoirs of Resilience, Strength, and Forgiveness which includes the print version of my e-single, Out of Dublin. Tuesday, October, 14, Booksmith, Haight Street, San Francisco, 7:30 pm. Full details here.

Really pleased with, and grateful for, this review of Out of Dublin. Out of Dublin will be included in Shebook’s forthcoming print anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You. I’ll be reading from Out of Dublin, alongside my five fellow anthology contributors next Tuesday night, October 14th, at Booksmith on Haight Street at 7:30 pm. Won’t you join us? Please join us.

I’ll be the one trembling.

After six years of Internet friendship, I finally got to meet Roxane Gay last night at her excellent reading of Bad Feminist at a packed Mrs. Dalloway’s Books in Berkeley. She was everything I thought she would be, and more.

I’ve admired and respected Roxane’s work for years and felt excited to meet her at last. I didn’t expect to feel quite so awed or nervous, though. As I approached Roxane, I started to shake and that damned jaw of mine locked. In those moments before I spoke her name and introduced myself, I realized just how much I was struggling with feelings of unworthiness.

It’s almost surreal now, but five years ago I was in an online writing group with Roxane and exchanging emails about our lives and various concerns and highs, and now here she is, an acclaimed cultural commentator and a revered New York Times bestselling author. I felt wholly inadequate and worried I no longer had any right to lay claims to friendship.

My angst fell away, however, as soon as Roxane and I made eye contact. For all her height and stature, Roxane has these soft, lovely eyes that mirror an equally soft, lovely, and captivating voice. She and I both value our personal space and neither of us is big on hugs (although I’ve gotten much better in recent years), but we did hug and the connection felt warm and wonderful. I was at last meeting in the flesh a cherished friend, brilliant mind, and phenomenal spirit.

I loved sitting in that audience listening to Roxane speak and read, all of us rapt. She mesmerized me. I believe she mesmerized everyone there. She was funny, eloquent, honest, vulnerable, smart, and utterly seductive. She read about Mr. Rogers, female friendship, her ‘being’ Miss America, and her first year as a college professor. Even after an insane schedule of teaching, touring, writing, and interviewing, Roxane Gay delivered a stellar reading and Q &A with impressive generosity, grace, and gumption. Throughout, I nodded, laughed, nodded, shook my head, nodded, and uttered silent Amens. Yep, I fell star struck.

Roxane reads tonight in San Francisco at City Lights Books at 7 pm. I honestly don’t know how that small reading space will contain her and the crowd she’s going to attract. Get there early, friends, to avoid disappointment, and prepare for an extraordinary evening.

When I returned home last night, I read Roxane’s inscription and I tell you my eyes and throat filled. After, I went to bed and slept the best sleep I’ve enjoyed in a very long time. Thank you, Roxane. Shine on.

I recently enjoyed a week-long gig as guest editor for SmokeLong Quarterly Magazine, a revered publisher of flash fiction with a story limit of 1,000 words. The magazine editors charged me with choosing 1 story for publication from amongst all the submissions received in that week.

A record number of 84 stories came in, all of which I read blind. After a lot of reading and agonizing, I chose 1 story for publication and highly recommended 4 others. The winning story will publish on November 3rd and the 4 stories I also loved will be further considered for publication by the magazine editors.

Out of the 84 submissions, 16 stories rose to the top and I strongly considered each for the win. I read the 16 stories at least 3 times, ruthlessly rejecting until the strongest story, and the 4 ‘so damn close’ stories, emerged. Through the process, it became clear it’s often difficult to quantify what makes a story great, and much easier to identity why stories fail. It also became clear just how many factors go into selecting and rejecting work, not least of which is the personal tastes and biases of the editor, the aesthetics of the magazine, and the limited space available in any one issue.

Some stories I read once and knew immediately they weren’t working. The particular challenge of the short-short story is to craft with conciseness and precision work that conveys urgency and a sense of something at stake. The work and its character(s) must take risks and the character(s) must have a central desire. The work must also focus on an important moment in the character’s life. There has to be trouble. I noted, too, amongst the strongest stories I read that the writer utilized great imagination, language, obliqueness, and a compelling central image that threaded the entire piece.

The stories that didn’t work felt familiar and lackluster, and started too soon and finished too late. What was omitted in these stories wasn’t artful, but confusing and dissatisfying. With the exception of the two strongest stories, every story would have been strengthened by tightening (every word must count, must perform) and by deleting at least the last couple of sentences.

Ultimately, short-short work must–in the fewest possible words and with the most selective of craft choices–grip the reader and make us care.

This week I’m guest editor at Smokelong Quarterly Magazine. Full details here. Please send me a great story to read and publish.