Yippee! My short story “Paper Planes” is the first web exclusive in American Short Fiction. I’m super excited and so thrilled the editor of ASF, Stacey Swann, accepted my piece. Last summer I wrote five of these short stories,  in a sort of fugue, one right after another, all of which stretching beyond the normal constraints of the real world. Though I left a couple of them in a drawer, the three I revised have all found homes. One couldn’t be more happy with such a bewitching bunch. Here’s the ASF newsletter:

We are thrilled to announce our first Web exclusive is up online. “Paper Planes,” by Laura Madeline Wiseman, is a story of death, dislocation, and cheese curls. This story was much loved among our staff of readers; we’re excited to share it with you.

This was the short story I had tucked and ready in a folder to read at my no name last month, but, alas a late afternoon snow storm put city buses an hour behind schedule and though I did attempt to make it by  car, the roads were slippery, snow filled, and scary.  Luckily, I’ll be reading on March 27th, so I hope to see you there.

The new ASF spring 2009 issue contains the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Yoon, Smith Henderson, Rachel B. Glaser, Amelia Gray, and Joe Wenderoth, among others. I must say, I’m a bit of a fan of Joyce Carol Oates. I first read her story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” in a fiction class I took at Iowa State. Of all the short stories we read, this one stuck with me–the coiling phone cord, the pull to darkness, weird lines like, “Yes, I’m your lover. You don’t know what that is but you will.”  Later when I lived in Tucson, it was a bit unnerving to learn the short story was based on murders there. Another chilling text is We Were the Mulvaneys. On the more classic side of things, I taught The Best American Essays of the Century, which she edited, in a composition class. I wonder what book of hers I should read next….