Writing Update: May 2026

Readers, this author comes to you bearing sad news. In the time since we last spoke, she has not finished editing her novel. She did not, in fact, revise her essay about a Bowie burlesque show. And as of yet, she has not completed a piece she started back in April about an art show related to galaxies. These three broken promises haunt her everyday but alas, their haunting does not inspire her to pick up the pen just yet to get the job done. And that’s ok. After all, that’s art.

What she has done:

• Helped write a bio for her sister-in-law’s London Marathon fundraising page

• Travelled to Scotland

• Judged a mini-memoir competition for Five Minutes on the theme “Inheritance”

  • 80 submission!

• Wrote a mini-memoir piece herself about friendship that she still (as of 10:00AM today) has not submitted to aforementioned Five Minutes contest

• Started (maybe?) the opening of a sequel to A Way Back

• Read seven books

• Considered taking a writing class which, as of 7:56pm on May 30th has not committed to yet

She has excuses galore, but none compelling enough to go through in detail here. So instead, let’s jump into the second-to-last bullet and get excited for some breathtaking publications coming up this summer.

April and May pulled me back into a few oldies: East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte. I’d read neither of these oft-named works, and while they did not make my top highlights, it was fun to get into novels that English degrees (and people generally) talk about so much. I will say I did not expect Wuthering Heights to be as violent or disturbing as it was, so kudos to Bronte on subverting my expectations there. The two combined clocked in at over 1,000 pages, so I was definitely lucky to read other noteworthy publications these past few months. The two featured below are nonfiction to balance out my last highlight.

• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Nonfiction)

  • I think a good number of Radden Keefe’s books (Empire of Pain, Say Nothing) have made it into this featured section and, I’ll confess, London Falling left quite a bit to be desired for me (at least in narrative structure). All the same, it was compelling and crazy and tragic story, moving at a breakneck pace with nods to historical context and so, felt very much like it did deserve its spot here. In this newest work, Keefe investigates the death of a London teenager who fell out of a window to his death in 2019. As we soon discover, the young man had been masquerading as a Russian oligarch’s son. The book takes us into the London underground and the history of Russian oligarch interest in the city, set against the backdrop of an ever-striving system built on class and social media wealth. The book, as Keefe himself confessed on an April podcast with Louis Theroux, doesn’t have the same satisfying click as Say Nothing and while I think parts of the narrative should have been flipped to start with the parents’ petition to Keefe, it was a page turner, exposing a world in which everyone plays pretend and some, unfortunately, don’t get out alive.

• The Hollow Half by Sarah Aziza (Memoir)

  • The subtitle reads “A Memoir of Bodies and Borders,” and it’s an account that circles around the themes of immigration (voluntary and involuntary) and anorexia. Aziza moves us non-linearly through her memories; at one point, we’re in a rehabilitation clinic and then on the same page, the timeline shifts and we’ll be crossing an Israeli checkpoint and then, it’ll shift again, and we’ll be watching Aziza, at six years old, meet her grandmother for the first time. It’s an account of Palestine and Israel, lived through the lens of three generations of a Palestinian family from Gaza who move to the US and then, attempted to return to their homeland by way of Egypt and Jordan. One memory, where Sarah’s American friend meets Aziza’s grandmother for the first time, makes fun of the woman for not being able to speak English and, as a result, Aziza feels deep shame and anger towards her matriarch for being “different” was particularly difficult to read. For me, the shock of the scene was mostly due to the recognition of my own feelings as an adolescent toward my Italian grandmother. It’s a heavy book, moving through sexuality and illness and displacement and assault, done with a voice that is part poetry, part historical record, part lament, and part confession, and it bowled me over every time I opened it. For that, I am grateful.

This is turning into the year of the anthologies. First, Best of Ghost Parachute, earlier this Spring and then next up, 100-Foot Crow: Years 1 & 2, followed by The Anthropocene Epic with a net new piece that was rejected over 40 times before being accepted by Sera and the Beyond the Stars crew. Additionally, you’ll find a short story of mine debuting with Vestal Review (!!) in their summer issue. I know! I KNOW! It’s also, interestingly enough, sort of about product management? Anyway, so excited to share the piece with all of you. I promise that the next time you see me in your inboxes, I will have more new writing to report and even a writing class enrollment! Wish me all the luck. Writing is…hard.

Stats for the year so far:

Stories accepted to be published in 2026: 13

Rejections received in 2026 so far: 51

Submission sent in 2026 so far: 56

Acceptance rate (year to date): 8.3%