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Excerpt
The first paragraph of a story called "Open Door," which I may finish as part of the Write-a-thon:
Arlene Gaines stood in the open doorway of the patio looking out at the garden sitting saturated as an overexposed photograph--blinding snow cover, the ice-encased branches of the trees, the sky brilliantly blue. A bush tinkled shushing snow onto the ground in the middle distance, knocked by her, that shadow bleeding into nature's play of light and shade. The red head scarf flared like a lit match then doused. One eye glittered, then the second. The woman-creature was creeping away. Arlene continued to stare but the dazzle of the sun winked the woman out, like the revelation of a mirage.
Bio
April Lott has a MFA in poetry from the University of Virginia. She graduated Clarion West in 2004, and Cave Canem, a series of three summer workshops for Black poets, in 2005. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she has lived the last decade and a half in Minneapolis.
Publications
I have had poems published in the anthology To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Poets from Pre-Territorial Days to the Present, and in the magazines Tiger's Eye, Flyway, Dreams and Nightmares, and others.
Writing Description
I write fantasy stories that I think are odd, maybe a bit dreamy, partly in their logic and structure, in how they leap. They tend to be quiet, giving a sense of unease. My poems usually reference myths and fairytales, and, although they are lyric rather than narrative poems, they have dense stories they are trying to illumine.
Goals
My goals are to submit a story or poem to a market every week, draft a new poem every week, draft a new story in the odd weeks (1, 3, 5), and complete a story and a poem in the even weeks (2, 4, 6).
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