Anna's Last January

My copy of In Pieces: An Anthology of Fragmentary Writing edited by Olivia Dresher (Impassio Press) came today. I'm delighted to be between its pages with so many fine writers, including Kim and Bill Stafford and William Pitt Root. My piece, Anna's Last January, is a series of diary entries pertaining to my mother's death.

"In Pieces celebrates the diversity of contemporary fragmentary writing by offering a sampling of fragments written by 37 different writers—those who are known as well as new voices. Selections from diaries, notebooks, and letters; aphorisms; short prose pieces and vignettes... These are some of the fragmentary forms represented in this unique collection, the first of its kind to present a wide range of fragmentary writing as its own genre."
- from the back cover

“We learn in school that literature has a hierarchy: poem, play, novel, essay. All else—diary, journal, aphorism, letters—are secondary, jottings, ephemera. Reading tells us a different story. The engaging and memorable are found everywhere. In books like In Pieces we are ‘49ers panning for gold and finding nuggets.”
—William Corbett, author of Philip Guston’s Late Work: A Memoir

I love being in an anthology, feels like a pot luck Thanksgiving, everybody sitting around playing music, telling stories, singing, just being themselves.