no restrictions

I was asked this week what my choice would be if I could teach anything, and I am thinking about baseball. Perhaps because I visited one of my brothers last weekend, and he took me to Baltimore to see my first Orioles game. Perhaps because I simply love baseball.

The potentials are intriguing.

What's your favorite sports novel?

Reading the Game: Baseball

Sherri Hoffman's favorite books »

"In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

 ~ Vin Scully
          Announcing Kirk Gibson's pinch-hit, walk-off home run
          in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

16 random facts: the shortest stories redux

16. I love the rain, which happens at home throughout the year. In Wisconsin, the rains come mostly late summer-early fall, and then again in spring, mixed with snow. In Rwanda, there are downpour rains off and on in January, which is the end of the rainy season, and on the west shore of the Big Island of Hawai'i, the winter rains can be seen coming from a long way out across the ocean most mornings, and they pass over to leave behind the smell of plants and trees and wet stone.

15. Baking is like prayer in that its ritual grounds me and brings me comfort. I rarely use a recipe anymore unless it's something new. My favorite pie is huckleberry.

14. I learned to play the violin in 4th grade and came to love the used violin my parents purchased for me though I was never very good at playing. The violin disappeared from my parents' house after I wasn't living there—somewhere between moves or spring cleanings—along with my first pair of skis and the saddle I rode with throughout my Junior Posse years. I always hoped those three things ended up in the same place.

13. My only notable vice is good coffee despite the cost of imported small-batch beans or how many times my doctor recommends cutting caffeine. Decaf is for posers.

12. Most movies I watch in the theater are either action-dramas with big explosions and complicated fight scenes or sci-fi with elaborate special effects. Ellen Ripley remains my all-time favorite movie character, followed by John McClane and Wolverine.

11. Graduate school is not the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's up there in the top 20. Or at very least, the top 50.

10. My favorite vegetables are green beans. Second is butternut squash.

9. I learned to play baseball from my dad when I was a kid, and the first pro game I went to was an Angels game in California after we'd moved back to the states. I was probably 11. That year, our family also went to Disneyland, Sea World, Knott's Berry Farm, the San Diego Zoo, and the Hollywood Wax Museum, which contributes perhaps to my ongoing questions about American culture.

8. If I could take up another instrument, it would be the cello.

7. I've had textbook aura migraines since I was about 10 years old, which have increased in frequency over the years to as many as 2-3 per week. I've tried all kinds of remedies, prescribed or not, with varying success. I've also read that migraines become less frequent for women post-menopause, which may be the only medical condition I know of that can be ignored until eventually it goes away.

6. Watching Kirk Gibson's home run to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series makes me cry. Every time.

5. Spending Thanksgiving in Virginia with my cousin and his family has become a cherished holiday tradition for me over the last five years. Plus I get to try out all my latest baking recipes on them, and to date, no one has complained.

4. I love being able to tell people about all five of my daughters.

3. I used to sew most of my own clothes—everything except blue jeans—out of necessity but also because the work of sewing helps me think. Once when two of my daughters were toddlers, I made some fancy ruffled dresses for them out of bedsheets, and the most common question I got about those dresses was where I bought them. Strangely, I could never quite remember.

2. It always amuses me when people ask my husband how he could let me go off to school without him. The second question they ask—also amusing—is how he manages by himself.

1. I have successfully climbed a glaciated peak in the Pacific Northwest, which makes me eligible to become a Mazama, although I've never gotten around to turning in the paperwork. That day, the summit seemed like the top of the world. The horizons seemed to fall away on all sides under the chromatic blues of high altitude. Also, it was covered with ladybugs.

What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.  ~ Willie Mays

new fiction: Fire, Fire

We heard Fire! Fire! and hauled out of bed like it was a real emergency. Pounded out the back door in our boxers and bare feet. Ranger barking. Michael dragging his blanket. The summer was a dark chill on our skins dragged from our blankets. As soon as I guessed it was Lenny, I knew we’d been duped. Pops’ truck wasn’t in the driveway, and mom was still in Indiana keeping her secrets. Saying she needed a real Indiana summer. Even Pops knew it was something else.

from "Fire, Fire," by Sherri H. Hoffman

Read the rest of my short story, "Fire, Fire" in the newest issue of  Potomac Review, Issue 60. This story is a chapter from the novel I am working to finish, The Wildish Boys.

You can purchase your copy of Potomac Review, Issue 60, online. Or if you are going to the 2017 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Washington, DC next week, I'm sure you can pick up a copy at their table.
 

new fiction: The Audrey Hepburn

Meredith wills her voice up her dry throat. "It's a famous design, this dress. Did I tell you? The actress who made it famous?" 

The women peer at her, pins held between their lips as their fingers coax the bodice into place. Meredith can't stop talking. Roman Holiday. My Fair Lady. Academy Awards. Lifetime Achievement. She rambles on, sweating and breathless, words spilling out of her in what must be English-gibberish to the women as they move about her in an undulating whirl until the sash neckline lies naturally over her collarbones, darts fitted neatly alongside her breasts, bodice perfect above the flare of the gored skirt.

~ from "The Audrey Hepburn" by Sherri H. Hoffman

More than one of the expatriates in Rwanda encouraged me to have a dress made while I was there. If only for the experience, they said. A culture of dressmakers is something I could only imagine from historic references in the U.S., and I was intrigued.

In Butari, the fabric and textiles vendors held the second floor of the open market, and tucked into the center of the cement stalls, the dressmakers worked in a single open room. The rows of sewing machines were of various age, and the women seemed to work as one body, heads down, all machines buzzing with industry at once.

Prepared with my vision of the iconic dress made famous in Breakfast at Tiffany's, I looped through the fabric shops several times until I'd identified ta pattern I wanted, a small pattern of of blue over a cream backing. The vendors all had access to the same textile production, so it was available in more than one location. The aggressive shopkeepers put me off, and I made my purchase from a woman in a smaller shop with a soft voice and a baby strapped to her back.  She recommended a specific dressmaker and sent me to the galley of seamstresses to ask for her by name. Within minutes of meeting with her, she had my measurements and had sketched a pattern from my photograph. She took my bolt of cloth and instructed me to return in two days for a fitting.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience. The seamstress I engaged along with a bevy of her fellows were boldly attentive and profoundly skilled, their expertise a reflection of a lifetime of professional practice. Within the week, I had a custom fitted replica dress blue-and-cream. I was beyond impressed.

As I left, the women told me that there would be a new market soon with a larger sewing galley. They hoped I would come back soon. Wrote indecipherable phone numbers and addresses into my notebook should I wish to order another dress.

I suppose I was not surprised that none of the women had ever heard of Audrey Hepburn. My hope that the older black-and-white film had circulated as far as Rwanda was overly optimistic. It seems like the closest theater was in Kigali several hours away. And in the end, it didn't matter. The experience became the context for my famous dress. One of a kind.

Tiffany's salesman: Do they still really have prizes in Cracker Jack boxes?
Paul Varjak: Oh yes.
Tiffany's salesman: That's nice to know. It gives one a feeling of solidarity, almost of continuity with the past, that sort of thing.
           ~ from Breakfast at Tiffany's

ghosting reality

In Rwanda, there is an undercurrent of constant motion. Bicycles balancing enormous sacks of potatoes, full sets of furniture, jugs of water. On the road, streams of motos. Children on foot with a goat. Armed men in uniform goosestepping in single file. Women with buckets of wet cement on their heads going up and down the bamboo construction scaffolding. Women with babies tied on their backs. Congolese refugees hawking roasted corn cobs from the gutters. Even at night there is movement, undulation of voices, vehicles, or music from a radio. The entire landscape thrums with a collective breath that tugs at its horizons.

At the bottom of this hill, my father tells me, the local truck drivers claim there is a ghost. We are on our way back to Butare on the wide paved road guided by the reflection of an occasional painted center line. Down the hill, a solitary row of yellow street lamps marks the turn at the bottom. The ghost is said to be a beautiful woman who appears in the middle of the road. The fated drivers are at once captivated and terrorized so that they lose the road, miss the turn, upend their trucks in the tight groves of eucalyptus that hover at the edge of our headlights in the black night. More trucks have crashed here than anywhere else on this road, the only truck access between the country's two largest cities.

Based on a map, Rwanda is 9000 miles from my home state, but in that moment I could have been a child listening to my older cousins tell stories of the ghostly women on the Union Pacific tracks, engineers driven mad by the haunting perfume that lingers in the engine as it hurtles through the phantom shapes toward an uncertain end—tracks washed out or the trestle failed. Or perhaps it is the story of the White Lady of Spring Canyon, her husband or lover lost below in the coal mine, leaving her in perpetual mourning to take revenge on the luck of the living. 

Our world is not so large if we dare to look, our shared stories moving through similar shadows and spaces of reality, specters of story nuanced by universal circumstance or chance. The motion of reality captured in story, fiction undercut with truth, offers up a reflection of ourselves that reaches, at the very least, 9000 miles in either direction.

If you enjoyed my Rwanda story that was published earlier this year in Cimarron Review, "Stained with Lime," you may be interested to read the next story in the connected series. "The Audrey Hepburn" will premier in Delmarva Review Vol 9 on November 1, available in print and online. Watch this site for more information once the issue launches.

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."  ― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

news: cimarron review announces release

Cimarron Review announces the release of Issue 195:
https://cimarronreview.com/2016/06/23/our-issue-195/

I am honored to be included in this issue alongside these fine poets and writers.  My copies arrived yesterday, and the issue is lovely and full of amazing writing.

new fiction: where she stands

Gold-capped Mason jars filled with cut green beans line the kitchen countertop in orderly rows. On the table, a crate of new peaches, the irrigation schedule, and a stack of pink flyers: Resurrection Rummage Sale. July 14-15 Friday and Saturday at Our Holy Redeemer. Bernadette finishes the breakfast dishes and starts packing the decent hand-me-downs into paper bags. Her mother takes up the kettle to pour water through the coffee funnel.

"Marsha Neederman has some books for the sale," her mother says. "But leave me the truck so I can pick up another load of hay. Jay will be here inside the hour." Her cup full, she stirs in some sugar. "And drop those flyers by the grocery. They’re going to hand them out at the register.”

"Mom!" Ginny's wooden clogs bang down the hallway. "Where's my red notebook?" She swoops the cup out of her mother's hand, holds it to her lips, hands it back. "Hot, hot, hot."

"Not in that skimpy thing, Ginny Lynn Walters." Their mother adds milk, takes a sip, sets the cup on the sideboard. "We're not those girls," she says. With a basket of clean wet sheets on her hip, she heads out back to the clothesline.

Ginny rolls her eyes at Bernadette. Her lashes are dark with mascara. "Shoulders are the new vagina," she says.

Bernadette hands her a red spiral notebook marked American History. "Don't be crude."

~ from Where She Stands by Sherri H. Hoffman. Available online at The Columbia Review, Vol 97, Issue 2, Spring 2016.

I find it interesting timing for this story to make its way into the world just as the Stanford swimmer’s rape conviction and mediated sentence are in the news, followed by the pleas from his family to dismiss and excuse his crimes. Reassign guilt and/or consequences to his victim. While my story,“Where She Stands,” isn't specifically about rape, it shares at its roots some of the assumptions that empower and institutionalize sexism and male privilege.

The story’s setting is intentional. I moved to a small rural town as a teenager and lived there through high school. From the cities and military bases of my childhood, I arrived with idyllic visions of a place in the country where you could swim or fish in the local river, or raise horses and a garden in your own backyard. Those parts of my naive vision became true, and during those years, the good times were really good.

But rural isolation doesn’t protect girls from being bullied, intimidated, shamed, and/or assaulted by boys secure in a culture in which they are privileged. Whether it's the kid who always sits next to you to cheat off your work or the bully on the bus. The boy who inspired the character of Lane once told me that he would often watch me ride my bay mare in the surrounding fields through the scope of his rifle. Said it as if that was a good thing. As if I should be flattered.

 No matter the setting, it remains for #everywoman to find her voice in truth. Draw the line against even the smallest forms of oppression, prejudice, and inequality in order to make a difference. 

 The unnamed woman who survived the sexual assault by the Stanford swimmer chose to address her statement at his sentencing directly to him. Her complete statement is long and powerful, and I expect the repercussions will continue in the days and weeks to come. Responding to the light sentence, the woman said, “I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder.” (Buzzfeed News)

Hit it out of the park, as it were. With a vengeance.

~ sherri

new fiction: stained with lime

Nothing in Kigali is what I expect. The city is a swell of hills thick with lights, strings of fog, traffic, and streams of voices. Along the tree-lined street near the hospital, every block is under construction. Bamboo scaffolds cling to the new structures, steel cranes poised between towers of concrete and blue glass. Schools of motos dart to the curb with passengers, helmets over hairnets. Men in dark jeans. Women side-saddle in long skirts and heels. I am forbidden by my husband Dean to take the motos, and when the American doctors arrive, we wait for a cab at the foot of an enormous billboard lit with tungsten lights: RwandAir. Daily flights from Nairobi to Entebbe.

~ from "Stained with Lime" by Sherri H. Hoffman. Available now in Cimarron Review, Issue 195, Spring 2016. 

Late on New Year's Eve, 2015, I land in Kigali, Rwanda to visit my parents. My father and brother pick me up at the airport, and we stop for ice cream and wifi cards on our way to a guest house for the night. It's still a couple hours drive to Butare from the capital city. After a day and a half of international travel, I am buzzed and beaten.

I lay awake under the mosquito nets until dawn. The hotel next door partys in the new year with a karaoke mix of 70s disco and rap. I make no resolutions. These days, everything seems insurmountable, and yet, here I am, asking myself what the hell. Again.

By the time I return to the U.S., the memory cards in my cameras and phone are full of photos. My notebooks full of details and descriptions: places, people, drawings—the start of stories. 

"Stained with Lime" is the first in what is coming together as a collection of connected stories, and I'm over the moon to have it appear in Cimarron Review. Rwanda has an enormous story. It is a paradox of change—people, politics, history, future. Big finance and high-tech surrounded by hills terraced in rice paddies, corn, sugar cane, and potatoes. High-rises in metal and glass. Wide asphalt roads covered in red dirt. Rolling blackouts and high-speed internet. Water is a commodity. Plastic bags and bare feet are forbidden. To write about any of it is to offer only a glimpse.

~ sherri

"V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky—that word again—have even further ranging consequences and meaning."

~ Raymond Carver, from Call If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose.

writing the river

Over the last six months, I've been everywhere but home, which has made writing an interesting endeavor at times. I like my coffee just so, like I like my writing space. Being on the road for so long has given me some insight into what it takes to be adaptable. Not that the journey hasn't been lovely, this long strange trip. Makes me feel lucky.

To acknowledge that it has been challenging isn't a complaint. It's taught me a few things:

1. Be warm. Granted, it's winter. But I've discovered that whether I'm at a busy coffee shop or the quiet space of the Cardinal Stafford Library at the theological seminary, it's easier to focus if the space is warm. Noise and movement aren't huge factors, but give me a cold draft, and out goes my creative process.

Word cloud made with WordItOut

2. Spread out. My life is less of a linear outline and more of a word cloud. Whether I'm at a big desk or tall bistro table, my books and notes roam around as if they have a life of their own. I need space for my Black Warrior pencils-of-choice and whatever inspirational books I'm packing at the moment, Willa Cather to Philip K. Dick. And a good cuppa coffee.

3. Make time. I've heard other writers talk about needing time to get their head in the current work, and in practice, I've discovered that's true for me. I need time to get in, and once there, I need a enough time to stay in. Especially working with the complexities of multiple characters on multiple levels of awareness, from the character to the narration to the story consciousness. The process reminds me of doing geometric proofs--get in and stay until the solution reveals itself. Let's me work in cohesive arcs of story.

4. Activate the Omega 13. Every writer gets stuck, and I am no exception. When it happens, I've learned to switch writing projects. Sometimes working on an unrelated piece is exactly what I need to be able to come back to my stuck-point with new eyes and ears, and the writing opens up before me. From story to poem. Novel to flash. It can feel frenetic, but perhaps that's my brain-skill (see #2). Plus it guarantees that I'm always working on something, which keeps the writing reflexes engaged. Pretty sure I'll always need an Omega 13 or three in my back pocket.

One of my writing heroes Jim Harrison once said in an interview for the Paris Review, "In a life properly lived, you’re a river. You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it." (read the full article). I remind myself that it wouldn't matter if I was away from home or not, life carries me forward. My joy is that I can write it back to itself along the way.

On this day, April 1, I remain grateful. No foolin'.

  ~ sherri 

road trip: NEXUS conference

Grateful for the opportunity to present a paper at the NEXUS 2016 Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference: ALT + Shift: Unlocking Alternative Methodologies and Marginal Positions.  This is the 7th biennial graduate conference sponsored by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The conference is March 3-5. My presentation is scheduled for Friday: "The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Using Affect to Map Global Potentialities." Full schedule: http://web.utk.edu/~nexus/#Schedule.

I am especially excited to have this particular paper accepted for presentation. It is the result of the work I did during a very challenging class in the last semester of my PhD coursework, "After Postmodernism: Literature and Literary Study in the 21st Century" taught by Prof. Theodore Martin. I was privileged to have taken two classes from Dr. Martin, and both proved invaluable to my academic progress.  I remain personally grateful to Martin for his professionalism and ability as a teacher and mentor.

Tennessee, anyone?

poetry + coffee = heaven

What could be better than your favorite cuppa coffee and a poem? Nothing! says the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Literary Circular campaign. This week, The Grind, UWM coffeeshop, will wrap your delicious beverage of choice in select poems by authors Alessandra Rolffs, Franklin K.R. Cline, Jenni Moody, Noel Mariano, Mark Brand, and yours truly, Sherri H. Hoffman.

Come in and warm your literary heart with a poetic espresso.

seven authors, seven mysteries

My new story, "Little Secrets" is included in a new collection, Tudor Close: A Mystery Anthology. You'll never guess the location of this mysterious, small-town story.

PREORDER for $20 before November 30th to receive a print copy, ebook, and an audio recording of the story of your choice from the collection!

In December, the book will be available for $20 (includes print and ebook), $5 for ebook only. Audio files will be available, $1 for single stories or $5 for the audio book. Visit The Apiary website for details and shipping costs.

Authors include: H.E. Bilinski, Tabitha Blankenbiller, Leigh Camacho Rourks, Stephen Cox, Sherri H. Hoffman, Moye Ishimoto, and Gina Mulligan.

"One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day."
~ Albert Einstein, from "Old Man's Advice to Youth: Never Lose a Holy Curiosity." LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955).

out in the world: tanzania

Over winter break, I traveled to Rwanda to visit some family, and we took a side-trip to Tanzania. The Ngorongoro Area is a protected reserve that includes the Ngorongoro crater and the Serengeti National Park, stretching all the way to the border of Kenya. I came to understand why there are so many ocean metaphors for this part of the world: the English language lacks descriptors for such vastness, sky and rolling grasslands. The Maasai word for this place is siringet, which translates roughly to "the place where the land runs on forever."

In the Rift Valley, we visited one of the Leakey archeological sites where that same vastness moves temporally. The experience shifted so much for me, even months later, I am feeling its effects.

Asante sana. Thank you. I remain grateful for the opportunity.

 ~ sherri

announcing utah lit for august

Co-editors Kase Johnstun, Sherri Hoffman, Mary Johnstun

I am thrilled to announce that Utah Reflections has been selected by the Salt Lake Tribune as the Utah Lit for August. The Tribune book club will discuss the essays and poetry this month, publish a feature piece on August 24, and host an online TribTalk on August 29 at 12:15pm, moderated by Jennifer Napier-Pearce.

This is some exciting attention to the terrific writers collected in our book, all of whom have personal connections to the Wasatch Front, including Utah's poet laureate Lance Larson, poet Katharine Coles, and authors Terry Tempest Williams, Pam Houston, and Stevan Allred. I know I speak for all of the editors when I say it has been a joy to work with each and every one of our contributors, including some stunning images of the Wasatch Front by photograhers such as Danel W. Bachman, Jason Chacon, Ben Steiner, Aric Russom, and Kathryn Hale.

You can participate in the book club reading and discussions. Post comments and questions about the book at Facebook/UtahLit or send them in email to ellenf@sltrib.com or jnpearce@sltrib.com.

"Like" our Utah Reflections Facebook page for ongoing updates and details about all the monthly happenings for the book, including some upcoming reading events with our authors.

all roads lead to utah

Since school at UWM let out in May, I've not stopped in any one place for more than three weeks at a time. Utah, Washington, California, and Colorado with a second round of Utah, California, and Washington left to go before I return to Wisconsin. It's a classic summer road trip.

Part of the circle back to Salt Lake City is for the launch of Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front. This has been such an exciting project. I have enjoyed working with my fellow editors, Kase Johnstun and Mary Johnstun, and I have been so impressed by each of our contributors. The reach of these writers touches and inspires me. As well, the quality of photography captures the unique range and scope of the Wasatch Front.

The Salt Lake valley is my birthplace. To some extent, it will always be a touchstone wherever I may roam.

Here are the details for the launch party:

Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front.
Tuesday, July 22
The King's English Bookstore
1511 South 1500 East
 Salt Lake City,  Utah 84105

Reading: 7:00 - 9:00pm (MDT)
Authors attending: Jana Richman, Chadd VanZanten, Sylvia Torti, Joni Haws, Phyllis Barber, Jeff McCarthy, and Stevan Allred.

You can RSVP on our Facebook event page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1513196785569867/

And stay updated on upcoming readings:
https://www.facebook.com/WasatchFrontReflections

Hope to see you there!

~ sherri

Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will

~ from "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica, written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich

2014 uwm english departmental awards

I am pleased and honored to have received three awards at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2014 English Departmental Annual Awards Ceremony alongside some talented and esteemed graduate students in the English PhD and MA programs.  It is an honor to be recognized for my writing as well as my academic work at UWM, and I am deeply grateful to the donors who endow these awards. 

Ellen Hunnicut Prize
Guest Judge: Christine Sneed
for an excerpt from The Wildish Boys - a novel

The contest recognizes an unpublished novel or novella by a UWM student. Excerpt is submitted anonymously. Judge's comments:

"The author's panoramic rendering of the characters and the two communities where these opening sections take place, as well as the vivid sensory detail on each page, were impressive and exciting."

Wladyslaw Cieszynski Literary Prize
Guest Judge: Christine Sneed
for "Seemingly Unrelated Events" published in december, V24, Dec. 2013

Contest recognizes a previously published work, poetry, fiction, or nonfiction by a UWM student. Submitted anonymously.

James A. Sappenfield Fellowship
The award recognizes academic excellence; recipients are selected by department faculty within each graduate plan: Literature and Cultural Theory; Rhetoric and Composition; Creative Writing; Professional Writing; and Media, Cinema and Digital Studies.

I have just completed my first year of coursework in the PhD Creative Writing program. My thanks to the department faculty for their recognition and enduring support.

~ sherri

Getting it Right

Lying in front of the house all
afternoon, trying to write a poem.
Falling asleep.
Waking up under the stars.

~ by Jack Gilbert (1925-2012), from The Dance Most of All

gathering up the wasatch front

One of my projects for 2014 is an anthology about the Wasatch Front in Utah. I am co-editing this project with my friends Kase Johnstun and Mary Johnstun. In a random coincidence of place and interest, Kase and I are alumni of both Weber State University and Pacific University.

The book will be called Wasatch Front Reflections and is scheduled to be published by the History Press later this year.

My Utah connection begins with family that were early settlers in the Salt Lake valley. I was born at Holy Cross Hospital while my parents were both students at the University of Utah. Even as I traveled around the world with my family as my father served in the U.S. Air Force, Utah was a big part of  my childhood. As far back as I can remember, my grandparents lived near Hill Air Force Base, the blue peak of Mt. Ogden rising up at the back of their house. While some of my best adventures took place further north in Cache Valley on my uncle's dairy farm in Benson.

With a rush of memories, I've enjoyed working on this book. The early submissions have been terrific, and I'm excited to see how it's coming together.

Last Call for Submissions 

For the anthology, we are seeking place-based essay, creative non-fiction narrative, memoir, research-based history, or immersion journalism pieces from 1500-2500 words in length. The collective works will provide a broad overview of the area, honor all aspects of culture, challenge the stereotypes, and explore the confluence of community, culture, and identity in the Wasatch Front. Pieces may be new or previously published (with appropriate permissions). The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2014.

Submit online at wasatchfrontreflections.submittable.com.

Follow the progress of the book on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WasatchFrontReflections.

commencement essay

The combination of Thanksgiving holiday weekend and celebration of the Hanukkah Festival of Lights feels like just the right time for the publication release of my essay "Seemingly Unrelated Events" in the newest issue of December literary magazine, the Revival Issue (Vol 24) December 1, 2013. This is a version of the commencement speech I gave as the student speaker for the Pacific University MFA commencement ceremonies in June of this year.

I am honored to be included in this magazine alongside some terrific writers and friends from Pacific University, such as Marvin Bell, Peter Sears, Dawn Robinson, Jeanne Morel, Jaydn DeWald, and Karen Holman, among others. Another amazing and wonderful opportunity. 

My thanks to all who made this possible, my family, teachers, mentors and friends. And my husband who's talked me down from the metaphorical ledge more than once whenever I am faced with a writing or speaking challenge.

Subscribe to December for the current issue and much more. My opinion: literary works are always a good investment of the mind. 

~ sherri

"Exactly 444 years before the day of my birth, Hernando Cortes set fire to the
Aztec aviaries of the besieged city of Tenochtitlan, the story written in Crossing OpenGround by Barry Lopez. It is 1989. Lopez is already a renowned author and National Book Award recipient, writing about human culture in the context of the natural
world. I am a 23-year-old English undergrad at Weber State University with two small
children, living on welfare in a trailer park under the runway flight path of nearby Hill
Air Force Base, painfully aware that my marriage of three years is failing. I am instantly
connected to the images of the birds burning in their cages. Connected by my own
despair. By my birth date there on the page." [subscribe to read more]
                                                ~Sherri Hoffman, from "Seemingly Unrelated Events"

reading in milwaukee

Outside of Tokyo, our family lived in a house with a sunroom that looked out over the garden, and that was our playroom. Maybe I was five. In that sunroom, my brother, sister, and I would listen to records, 33s or 45s, and one of our favorites was the 1946 Disney rendition of Sergei Prokofiev's Op. 67: Peter and the Wolf.  You know the one: Peter is represented by the strings; Sasha the bird by the flute; Sonja the duck by the oboe; and the wolf. . . . We must have listened to that record a hundred times, and every time the wolf first appears—all brass and drums—we'd leap, screaming, over the high, arched back of the green couch to hide.

Reading in public is sometimes like that for me. Not that I'll be leaping over any couches anytime soon, but the clench of fear in my chest as I approach the microphone is the same. Every time.

Nerves aside, I am privileged to be reading with some fine faculty and grad students from my new digs at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee: Creative Writing Professor Mauricio Kilwein Guevara, and graduate students Tobias Wray and Elisa Karbin.

Meet me there:
Friday, October 25
7:00pm
Boswell Book Company
2559 N Downer Ave
Milwaukee, WI
 
~ sherri

new fiction: looking to land

Sometimes I tell stories from my real life—maybe even from those old, bad days—and people don't believe me. Some of my best rejection letters disclaim the believability of my personal stories.

It's fine, really. I'm grateful that my life manifests in a different space these days. Plus, I can't ever imagine running out of material, if that's all to be said for some of my past.

I've learned to mix it up, the real and the imagined. Bank back the fantastic real; expand the fabulist fiction. But every once in awhile, a kernel of raw truth might surface in one of my stories. I leave it up to the reader to guess, as I'm certain I  don't have to say which it is.

That's the beauty of writing fiction.

My short story, "Looking to Land," is published in the newest issue of Spilt Infinitive. My thanks to the editors for including me—I feel like I got to eat lunch at the cool kids' table today.

 ~ sherri

upending the cart

Ten years ago, if someone had told me what I'd be doing this year, I would have laughed in their face. Or cried. Or both. But certainly not believed anything like this could happen to me in real life. Since January, it has been an ongoing series of amazing, life-changing, cart-upending moments, so much so that the only way to keep myself grounded throughout has been to remain focused on one event at a time; the cumulative whole has been overwhelming to consider.

The results are these. In January, I completed my MFA in Writing at Pacific University. In June, I was privileged to be the student speaker at the Pacific MFA commencement ceremonies. Then for the 2013-14 school year, I was accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee into the PhD in Creative Writing program and additionally honored with a Chancellor's Award and a teaching assistantship.

So in August, I said fond and difficult farewells to my family, dear friends, and all the supportive communities of home, left my marketing career of 25-years, and moved to Milwaukee, WI for the next phase of my development that begins at UWM. More than a shift of geography, it is a fundamental re-direction of psyche and purpose.

And finally, on a deeply personal note, this summer I also met with my first-born daughter, whom I had relinquished for adoption 28 years ago when she was only 10-days old. It was a reunion that exceeded all imagined expectations for being so sweet and full of joy.

Once again, my life is changed forever.

I remain grateful for the opportunity.

 ~ Sherri

Digging
By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.