I am published!
This time, it’s all Romi.
In one of last week’s blog posts, I alluded to some exciting news coming about publishing and Romilegal: Downtown.
Nothing big has happened—yet—with publishing my manuscript or getting representation for me and my book. I haven’t started that chapter of my publishing journey. But as part of The Writer’s Studio Online, we had the opportunity to publish up to five pages of the writing we worked on during school in an anthology, emerge.
I am excited to announce that this year, emerge 20: The Writer’s Studio Anthology, features the first five pages of Romilegal: Downtown, which I workshopped with my fellow fiction students during our course.
I’ve been all about celebrating the small victories lately, and this is no exception. I am so proud of myself and my fellow writers! It might only be five pages each, but we have a book, available on Amazon, that contains our writing, bound and polished. We have something to show for our hard work and dedication. I am proud to have my words in the pages of a real gosh-darn book alongside my fellow Writer's Studio authors.
I hope this feeling never gets old. And that it happens over and over again throughout my career as a writer.
I never thought that I’d be part of an anthology—a collection of selected literary pieces—and now that I am, I think it’s pretty cool! The anthology contains poems, excerpts from non-fiction pieces, fiction (which is my genre), and speculative fiction and young adult. The launch for the book was the other night, and I am excited to read what the other students have to offer. The readings were quite entertaining!
This special 20th anniversary anthology invites you to journey outside yourself: float in a capsized rowboat, downward-dog through a yoga studio adapting to covid-19, reflect on the legacy of residential schools, find purpose on the Camino de Santiago, and make peace with your raccoon neighbours. These are stories of ego, loss, birth, renewal—the salient issues of our time.
In emerge 20, stories in fiction, narrative non-fiction, speculative fiction, young adult fiction, poetry, and lyric prose isolate the everyday tales of human resilience and solidarity that will leave you wanting more from these emerging writers.
The anthology features work from 78 students that were part of last year’s Writer’s Studio, and I might get the number wrong, but considering that there were only 12 writers in the first edition of emerge twenty years ago, that is one amazing progression for the writers of SFU. I can’t wait to be part of the future of writing and publishing post-SFU, and for my fellow writers to take emerge 20 and compare it to the actual opening of Romilegal: Downtown when it appears in print. Create your own destiny, right?
[Though if I’m being honest, I have my sights on another program at the school … though I’m definitely not planning on tackling that during Covid times and full-time momming. I’m not that crazy.]
Let me know if you grab a copy of emerge 20! I'm excited to get my hands on one.
Anya
Post-Reading at the emerge 20 Book Launch Virtual Celebration