I’m pleased to announce that my story, Sobering, appears in the Winter 2011 issue of Brevity.

Brevity has this to say about the issue:

The Winter 2011 issue of Brevity offers eighteen concise essays — rich examples of the experimentation, illumination, and surprise that can come with the very brief form.

Included is one our briefest essays yet, from the esteemed Steven Barthelme, and some of our favorite authors returning for an encore, including Richard Terrill, Lance Larsen, and Tim Elhajj. Meanwhile, Linsey Maughan graces us with her first creative nonfiction publication ever, and more than a few graduate student authors display their growing talents and strengths.

Holly and I are collaborating on an online literary magazine called Junk. From the press release:

Tim Elhajj and Holly Huckeba have joined forces to bring you Junk, a literary fix at http://www.junklit.com. We’re a nonfiction literary magazine that focuses on addiction, but you don’t have to be an addict to submit to us.

That white elephant (pictured) is Whitey, our mascot. When it comes to memoir about addiction, Whitey is the (literary) elephant in the room that no one talks about (shhhh).

We just published our first official issue, a touching story from Elizabeth Westmark called Detritus.

Holly and I have some work posted, too. Check it out. I’d love to get your feedback. This is something I have always wanted to do and I’m so pleased it’s finally coming into its own.

I have always felt very strongly two things: 1) our creativity is one of the most powerful forces each of us has for creating good in the world; 2) memoirs about addiction and addicts are legion, but for some reason this work only appears in the same predictable ways, time after time. Junk is an attempt to bring these two ideas together and have some fun.

But mostly have fun.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Holly has agreed to work with me on this. I love working on creative projects with her but only realized this a few years ago, when Holly signed up to create memory books for the entire fifth grade as our kids graduated to middle school. It was early in the school year and she asked if I wanted to be part of it.

I laughed. “No way,” I said. “Count me out.”

Of course the plan for the memory books expanded. Then it contracted. Some of the fifth graders were confused. Others were prolific. Finally we came upon zero hour: it was the weekened before the memory books were due. Holly had so many stacks of art work, a few lists of names, and a lot of ideas.

“Are you going to help,” Holly said.

What could I say? Of course I would.

We ordered pizza for the kids and temporarliy lifted all TV and video game restrictions. We took all the art work to my office and spread it out on a ping pong table. The coffee machine clucked to life. We started trading ideas. The copiers and printers began humming. We got out the sicssors and started doing layouts.  The paper cutter made its chop chop noise. We sent out for Chinese. Finally, in the middle of the night, those memory books started coming to life. I had no idea it would be so much fun.

This weekend before last, Holly and I were at it again. We scoured our little corner of Washington to capture a photograph to go with Elizabeth’s fine story. What fun!

We posted the press release on the blog for the journal, where we post updates about research, all types of addiction, or literature that strikes our fancy. Our goal is to use the blog to create a community around the journal and see what happens.

Won’t you join us?

William Bradley is the Ethical Exhibitionist. He is also an insanely talented writer. His work is featured in the latest Brevity, which just hit the Web.

One day, my dad came home at lunch with the newspaper—fresh off the press—in his hand.  “Do you know this girl?”  She looked more interesting in black and white.  “She’s missing,” he said.  “Her parents think she was kidnapped.” 

“Julio At Large” by William Bradley

The latest issue of Sweet has hit the Web. I’ve got a story in this one, so I’m excited.

My story, Jimi Don’t Play Here No More, which appears in Brevity 29, will also be featured in a new anthology titled, Rough Beast: Stories of Exile and Unrequited Love, from Bannock Street Books. 

Helmed by Sarah Black, Bannock Street Books is a new micro-press that specializes in handmade chapbooks that feature flash fiction and memoir (although flash memoir isn’t mentioned on the site just yet).

I’m delighted.

In other ”Jimi Don’t Play Here” news, William Bradley linked to my story  from his blog. Bradley is none other than the Ethical Exhibitionist, which is something I bet we all wish we could say, but we can’t because Bradley thought of it first. 

I found his post this afternoon as I was browsing his site and was pleasantly surprised.

Brevity 29, the January 2009 edition, has hit the Web. I’ve got a story in this one, so I’m excited.

I’ve also still got a job, despite the carnage to the Seattle tech industry this morning. Good luck to anyone who may have lost theirs today. And if that’s not enough to make me feel grateful, this afternoon the police responded to reports of an armed gunman in the woods behind my kids’ elementary school. No one was hurt, but the school was locked down when Holly went to pick them up tonight.

Jesus. You gotta hope the dead don’t rise with the moon tonight.

Susan Reynolds just wrote to tell me that the anthology of stories about fathers with an excerpt from my childhood memoir is available on Amazon now. It’s not going to be available until May 18, but you can always do your Father’s Day shopping early.

I just realized I get to buy someone a Father’s Day gift this year!

The Brevity blog is now using the Journalist theme, which includes a little word balloon for the tag line. I love how it makes the old dude in the Brevity icon look like he is offering concise writing advice. 

I have a piece forthcoming at Brevity, the magazine. It’s an essay called Jimi Don’t Play Here No More. Most of the authors who published stories in the recent issue of Brevity have also written blog posts on the Brevity blog. These posts offer the writer’s opinion on their piece or some insight into how it was written. Even though I hadn’t been asked, I already wrote a blog post about my story, Jimi Don’t Player Here No More. Can you tell I’m excited?

This is my first published story about using dope or my ordeal in New York City.

When Dan Jones of the New York Times called about publishing one of my stories for Modern Love, I was delighted. I was also determined not to let him know I had a drug history. Dan had emailed me that he thought my story might work well for Father’s Day and wanted to discuss it more by phone. I immediately thought: Don’t tell him about the drugs. He’ll think you’re a loser. But then when he called, we talked for less than five minutes before my drug history came up.

It went something like this:

“So if your son was in Pennsylvania with your ex-wife, what were you doing in New York City?” Dan asked.

I chuckled demurely. Lying seemed like a bad idea.

“Well,” I said taking a deep breath. “That’s another story.”

As it turns out, Dan is a great guy who quickly put me at ease. “I hear stuff like this all the time,” he said. He sounded like an AA sponsor or a Catholic priest. I guess if you’re going to be the editor for a column like Modern Love, you end up hearing your share of confessions.

So I told him my story. I had been in an inpatient drug treatment program in the Bronx. He asked the obvious: What type of drug?

“Heroin,” I said, my voice sounding squeaky and small.

I told him about the first time I tried it. I was seventeen and I used for about 10 years after that. I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in adding any of this information to the story, which Dan had said needed to be fleshed out more. If I were originally worried that Dan would think less of me for using drugs, now I was concerned that he would ask me to add my drug history to the story. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. You tell people you have a drug history and you never know what to expect.

Dan assured me we didn’t need to add any information I wasn’t comfortable revealing. But now there was a different problem. He was hesitant, taking his time to make his next point.

“Is it honest?” Dan asked.

This question confused me. I started thinking about the James Frey scandal, but that’s not where Dan was going. To clarify his position, he quoted a line from my essay. “You wrote,” Dan said, “that you ‘couldn’t help but feel guilty about [your] divorce, even though [you weren’t] the one who had asked for it.’”

There was a pause. I still didn’t get his point.

“That puts the reader’s sympathies on your side,” he said. There was another pause as I let this information sink in.

“It certainly does,” I said. I chuckled nervously. Dan is too nice a guy to finish that sentence, but I thought I understood where he was going. Is it honest to let the reader feel sympathy for an addict? Would leaving this information out be some sort of lie of omission?

It’s a legitimate question. If you’re an editor, your first obligation has to be to your readers. I felt a little uncomfortable, but I definitely had an opinion. Two people can have different interpretations of the same event, but here is one thing of which I am certain: I never wanted that divorce. More important, the story I wrote was about the relationship I created with my oldest son, despite having been an absentee father. Adding the drug history would have overpowered that story and pulled the drug problem center stage. The story about the relationship with my son would have gotten the short shrift. I didn’t want to do that. I don’t mind talking about my drug history in the right context. I’ve come to terms with that part of my past and have even written about it and intend to write more. But I’m not sure that means I have to include a disclaimer in every essay I write.

I didn’t mention any of this to Dan that afternoon on the phone. To be honest, I didn’t know what to say. In desperation, I told him that my ex-wife knew about my drug use right from the start. This is actually the truth. I think I told her about the drugs on our second date. I remember popping my collar and saying something like, “Baby.” (I was trying to channel James Dean or Elvis.) “I’m bad news. And you better stay away from me.”

What teenage girl could resist that?

Although it was the truth, I felt bad presenting it to Dan this way. If I blame my ex-wife for leaving me, what does that say about me? Now I was getting flustered. I stood up and started to pace from living room to kitchen and back, all the while talking. I found myself telling Dan about how terrible I felt right after the divorce. I talked about my fruitless effort to woo her back. I even mentioned my father and his failed marriage. Although my parents had never divorced, I had sworn I would never be anything like Dad.

Pretty soon Dan interrupted me.

He had made his decision. He took the story with some minor revisions and no drug history. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t try to defend my position with a reasoned argument: Instead I let my story speak for me. What could be more honest than that?

I’ve got an essay appearing in a special mid-summer bonus edition of Brevity 27. This is a companion piece to my Modern Love essay from earlier this week. The Modern Love essay examines my relationship with my son, while the Brevity piece explores my relationship with Dad.

The Brevity piece also appears on the Brevity blog, a great place to discuss creative non-fiction, truth in memoir, or the concept of a mid-summer pick me up.