Author: Claire Polders

American Library in Paris Workshop

The Long Game of Short Work

Getting Your Writing Published (ages 12-18)

 

On February 15, from 19h00 to 21h00, I’ll be teaching a teen-oriented workshop in the American Library in Paris!

Overnight success is a myth. The road to a published novel or memoir often begins with the publication of short prose. Not only to capture an agent’s attention and assemble a body of work, but also to practice and benefit from feedback. We’ll talk about literary magazines and the submission process, dealing with rejection, promoting your work online, and finding your place in the writers’ community.

Advance registration is required for Teen Nights. Participation is free for Library members and €10 for non-members. Sign up with the library.

Overdue Elegy

Bending Genres published by personal essay “Overdue Elegy.” Thank you, editors!

You wouldn’t know how often I think of you. We didn’t see each other during the last years of your life. Not because of differences or hard feelings: Our lives had simply forked like two roads and somewhere among us flowed a river. We wrote to each other occasionally, building a digital bridge word by word. You confided in me, despite our distance, telling me about your darkness, which was spiraling and never-ending. I took your disclosures as proof that a true connection once existed between us.

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Photo by Milan Popovic

February 2019

Gado Gado

Thanks to Jen Michalski and the other editors of the wonderful JMWW, I have a new story published online!

January 2019

Unlike most mothers who lived to nourish their kids (it seemed), my mother never enjoyed feeding me. Cooking, like eating, was a necessity, a job that didn’t call for elaborate hours behind hot skillets. I grew up on instant oatmeal, canned split-pea soup, and frozen pizzas burnt to a crisp. For my mother, taste was beyond the point. Probably because her appetite was equally beyond the point.

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2018 Nominations


I’ve been very fortunate this year in finding great homes for my stories and in receiving nominations.

🌹 Thank you Sally Reno and Doug Mathewson from Blink Ink for nominating “Tabula Rasa” for a Pushcart Prize, the Best Small Fictions, and the Best Microfiction.

🌹Thank you James Tate Hill from Monkeybicycle for nominating “Clean Hands” for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net.

🌹Thank you Michelle N Ross from Atticus Review for nominating “Lost and Found” for Best Microfiction.

🌹Thank you Mary Lynn Reed & Lesley C. Weston from Moon Park Review for nominating “Breathlessness” for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction

I’m very honored and touched. 2018 was a great year of reading, writing, and publishing!

La Chambre Claire 2018

The Best Short Prose Published Online in 2018 According to Claire 

There were stories I loved that I didn’t include. There were probably stories I would have loved, had I read them. So the list below is non-exhaustive and unfinished, which is exactly how I like my lists. 

Thank you, dear authors and editors, for all you have given me. This year of reading has left me enriched.  

“The Less Said” by Jolene Mcilwain in New Orleans Review

“The Whole Girl Detective Thing” by Cathy Ulrich in Black Warrior Review

Five Micros by Kathy Fish in Pidgeon Holes

“Smile, Lisa” by Lynn Mundell in Monkey Bicycle

“New Words for the New World” by Paul Crenshaw in Tin House (Flash Fidelity) 

“Monstrous, Chaotic Things” by Maureen Langloss in Cheap Pop 

“One More Time” by Melissa Goode in Jellyfish Review

“Desert Island Diet” by Megan Giddings in The Adroit Journal

“Checkmate” by Jacqueline Doyle and “Echoes” by Nod Gosh in Blue Fifth Review 

“You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women” by Amber Sparks in The Collagist

 “The Magician” by Kara Oakleaf in Wigleaf

“The Sky Is Just Another Neighborhood” by Lori Sambol Brody in SmokeLong Quarterly

“The Boy with the Glass Eye” by Stacy Trautwein Burns in New Flash Fiction Review 

“Stranded Sea Mammals” by Meg Pokrass in Jellyfish Review

“What Is Left” by Jen Michalski in Heavy Feather Review

“Knock Knock” by Jessica Barksdale in matchbook

“Snow” by Kathryn McMahon in New Delta Review 

“Us” by Leonora Desar in Cheap Pop 

“Subsoil of Memory” by Julie Zuckerman in The Coil 

“Plastic” by Corey Farrenkopf in Lunch Ticket

“After The Fog Come The Hunters” by Jad Josey in Jellyfish Review 

“This Is All We Need” by Jennifer Todhunter in Atticus Review

“We All Know About Margo” by Megan Pillow Davis in SmokeLong Quarterly

“The Woman with a Box at the Church” by Alina Stefanescu in Wigleaf 

“Weather Proverbs, Explained” by Ingrid Jendrzejewski in StreetLight 

“Mother of the Year” by Lindsay Hunter in Kenyon Review Online  

“It’s Called Deception” by Jan Stinchcomb Gone Lawn

“We Knew Not What” by Lisa Ferranti in Spelk Fiction

“And Sometimes We Meet” by Dina Relles in matchbook 

“Out of My Hands” by Jayne Martin in Hippocampus Magazine 

“Melanzane Al Forno” by Jennifer Harvey in Jellyfish Review 

“Chimaera” by Stephanie Hutton & Sophie Van Llewyn in Connotation Press

“Late Bloomers and Perennials” by Dorothy Rice in Brevity 

Winter Publications

Stories printed and stories online: I’m very grateful to the editors of Fiction International, Elm Leaves Journal, The Sunlight Press, Flash Boulevard, and Spelk for publishing my work this season.

The following stories are available to read online:

December 2018

Author Talk: Fact, Fiction, Fantasy

On the challenge of writing a historical novel with a touch of the surreal.

My co-author Daniel Presley and I are invited by Gabrielle Griffis to come to the Wellfleet Library, one of a handful of American libraries that received a five-star rating for more than a decade.

Friends in Massachusetts and beyond, be welcome and meet us for an evening of music and literature on December 13!

A Conversation on Publishing and Editing

My co-author Daniel Presley and I are invited by Corey Farrenkopf to come to one of the oldest libraries in the United States for a conversation on publishing and editing!

Friends in Massachusetts and beyond, be welcome and meet us in the Sturgis Library on Cape Cod on December 12!

American Library in Paris Book Award

On November 8th, my co-author and I attended the American Library in Paris Book Award ceremony 2018.

It was held in the gorgeous Hôtel de Talleyrand where the Marshall plan was signed in 1948. By being there, we felt we inserted ourselves into the history we had written about in “A Whale in Paris.”

Although our novel didn’t win the award, we had a lovely time and are grateful to have been invited. Thank you American Library in Paris for a sparkling soiree and congratulations to Julian Jackson for winning with “A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle!”

Three New Stories

As I’m working hard on two new novels, one for younger readers and one for adults, I sometimes gratify myself by writing flash fiction. It’s such a joy and a great practice and a fabulous genre all by itself.

I’m particularly proud of these three pieces recently published in Atticus Review.

Whether it’s 1940 or now, whether you’re on holiday or going on a stroll with your husband who is slowly losing his mind, we all need to make moral choices. Do we acknowledge or ignore our conscience?

Inspired by real-life stories from my grandmother and friends, please read: “Dutch Neighbors,” “Battle of Brushes,” and “Lost and Found.”

  • update: The story “Lost and Found” has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2018!

October 3, 2018