Recording of the Anthology Launch and Author Reading!
“This anthology offers seriously admirable work. Highly recommended.”
Lightspeed Magazine
“24 impressive stories of healing and rebuilding. These stories offer something for any speculative fiction reader.” —Publishers Weekly
This November 1st Essential Dreams Press launched a second anthology in the Dreams series: Dreams for a Broken World, from Series Editor Julie C. Day and Guest Editor Ellen Meeropol. Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop co-hosted the launch and reading, which featured short readings from 11 of the anthology’s 24 authors, shared craft tips and writing prompts (from the authors), as well as raffle prizes and giveaways that happened throughout the evening.
All proceeds from the sale of the anthology go directly to the Rosenberg Fund For Children.
Editors / Hosts
Julie C. Day is currently at work on her mosaic novel Stories of Driesch. Her dark fantasy novella, The Rampant, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is also the author of the genre-bending collection Uncommon Miracles and series editor of the charity anthologies Weird Dream Society and Dreams for a Broken World. Day has had over forty stories published in magazines and journals such as The Dark Magazine, BlackStatic, Podcastle, Interzone, and The Cincinnati Review. With an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and MS in Microbiology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, all research is now in service of her stories and her rabbit-hole curiosity. You can find Julie online at @thisjulieday or on her blog at stillwingingit.com.
Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest and the play Gridlock. Her dramatic program telling the story of the Rosenberg Fund for Children was produced five times between 1997 and 2013, featuring Ossie Davis, Mandy Patinkin, Ed Asner, Danny Glover, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Bill T. Jones, Angela Davis, Eve Ensler, and Howard Zinn. Recent essay and short story publications include Ms. Magazine, Lilith, Guernica, Lit Hub, Solstice, and Mom Egg Review. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Women’s Prize, Women’s National Book Association, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book. A founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild, Ellen coordinates their Emerging Writer Fellowship program. Find her online at ellenmeeropol.com.
Anthology Authors Reading at the Launch Event
Cynthia Robinson Young is a native of Newark, New Jersey, but after thirty years in the San Francisco Bay Area, she now lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee with her family, which includes eight children and seventeen grandchildren. She is the author of the chapbook, Migration, which was named Finalist in the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award for chapbooks. Her work has appeared in anthologies including Across the Generations, vols. I and V, and in journals and magazines, including The Ekphrastic Review, The Amistad, Mantis, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Sixfold. She is currently working on a novel.
Marie Vibbert has published over seventy short stories, including eleven appearances in Analog and three in China’s Science Fiction World. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, is about a female biker gang in outer space rescuing a gay prince. Vibbert played women’s professional football for five years with the Cleveland Fusion. By day she is a computer programmer.
Lisa C. Taylor is the author of two poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections including Necessary Silence and The Other Side of Longing with Irish poet and writer, Geraldine Mills. She is also the author of two short story collections, most recently Impossibly Small Spaces. Taylor’s honors include the Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Lecture at University of Connecticut (with Geraldine Mills) in 2011; writing residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Willowtail Springs, and Tyrone Guthrie at Annaghmakerrig in Ireland; a spotlight feature in AWP (Associated Writing Programs); the Hugo House New Works Fiction Award; and Pushcart nominations in fiction and poetry. Taylor holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast, University of Southern Maine. She is the fiction editor for the online magazine, Wordpeace, and a book reviewer for Mom Egg Review and other publications. She is online at www.lisactaylor.com.
Veronica Schanoesis an American author of fantasy stories and an associate professor in the department of English at Queens College, CUNY. Her novella Burning Girls was nominated for the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award and won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novella in 2013. She lives in New York City.
Robert V.S. Redick is a novelist, teacher, editor, and international development consultant with thirty years experience in the Neotropics and Southeast Asia. His debut novel, The Red Wolf Conspiracy, was a finalist for the SFX Novel Award and received a special commendation by the 2010 Crawford Award Committee. He is the author of The Fire Sacraments epic fantasy series, including the recently-published Sidewinders, and The Chathrand Voyage Quartet. He is a winner of the New Millennium Writings Award, and a finalist for the Booknest Award for Best Novel and the Thomas Dunne Novel Award. Redick lives with his partner, Dr. Kiran Asher, in Western Massachusetts.
Benjamin Parzybok is the author of the novels Couch (a two-time Indie-Next pick) and Sherwood Nation (chosen for the Silicon Valley Reads program). Among other projects, he founded Gumball Poetry, a literary journal published in gumball capsule machines; co-ran Project Hamad, an effort to free a Guantanamo inmate [Adel Hamad is now free]; and co-runs Black Magic Insurance Agency, a one-night city-wide alternative reality game. Parzybok also provides guidance to a number of projects such as Street Books, a bicycle-powered library for people living outside, and the Between the Covers podcast, a literary interview series. He lives in Portland, Oregon with the artist/writer Laura Moulton, and can be found at www.levinofearth.com and on Twitter @sparkwatson.
Jan Maher novels Heaven, Indiana, Earth As It Is, and her short fiction collection The Persistence of Memory and Other Stories have each won Kirkus “Best Of” designations. Her stories and poems have been published regionally in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and Compass Roads: Poems about the Pioneer Valley. Her documentary stage play Most Dangerous Women celebrates with word and song a century of the international women’s peace movement. She leads three online programs for The LAVA Center in Greenfield, MA: a poets & writers café, a playwrights circle, and a book club. Maher is a member of the ECHO Greenfield project team, a local history project that encourages people to uncover the hidden histories of their communities and to recognize themselves as history makers. Her website is www.janmaher.com.
Aimee Liu is the bestselling author of the novels Glorious Boy, Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face, as well as the memoirs Solitaire and Gaining. Her work has been published in more than twelve languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
Céline Keating is an award-winning writer of fiction. She is co-editor of On Montauk, A Literary Celebration and the author of two novels, Layla, a Huffington Post featured title, and Play for Me, a finalist in the International Book Awards, Indie Excellence Awards, and USA Book Awards. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress, The Stark Beauty of Last Things, won the first-place fiction award from the Tucson Book Festival in 2021. Her story “Home” received the first-place 2014 Hackney Award for Short Fiction. Other short fiction has been published in Appearances, Echoes, Emry’s Journal, Mount Hope, The North Stone Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Santa Clara Review. Keating lives in New York with her husband, Mark Levy, and is on the board of environmental organization Concerned Citizens of Montauk.
Cai Emmons is the author of seven books of fiction: the novels His Mother’s Son (winner of the Oregon Book Award), The Stylist, Weather Woman, and Sinking Islands, as well as two fall 2022 novels Unleashed and Livid. Her collection of short stories, Vanishing, won the 2020 Leapfrog Press fiction contest. Emmons’s short work has appeared in The LA Times, Ms. Magazine, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Arts and Culture, The Santa Monica Review, LitHub, and Electric Literature, among others. Before turning to fiction Emmons wrote plays and screenplays. She has taught film and fiction at various universities, (most recently the University of Oregon), and is now a full-time writer.
Joy Baglio is a speculative-literary fiction writer and proud Leo living in Northampton, MA. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, The Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Her honors include residencies/fellowships from Yaddo and Vermont Studio Center; scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Sewanee Writers’ Conference; and grants from The Elizabeth George Foundation and The Speculative Literature Foundation, among others. Joy holds an MFA from The New School and is the founder of the literary arts organization, Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop. She is at work on a novel and short story collection. Find her online at www.JoyBaglio.com and Twitter @JoyBaglio.