Look at this beauty I received in the mail this week: 

Nowhere Lands: Exploring Utopian & Dystopian Voices is a new college textbook from Chemeketa Press, and it includes my story “Song of the Balsa Wood Bird.”  This story was first published in Fireside Magazine and reprinted in Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction.  I’m honored that it continues to resonate, and being part of the table of contents in Nowhere Lands floors me.  I’m next to Mary Shelley!  And in the same book as Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” one of my all-time favorite short stories! 

On the topic of utopia/dystopia, I wanted to share some comments that I heard another writer, Chinelo Onwualu, say on a panel a few years ago that stuck with me:  

“Even the most dystopian fiction implies ‘There but for the grace of God,’ or ‘There if we’re not careful.’” —Chinelo Onwualu

“When you are already living in a dystopia, the act of writing a utopia is itself revolutionary.” —Chinelo Onwualu

Powerful stuff.