I’m thrilled to say my contributor’s copies of Sou’wester, with my story, Graduation Event, are here. If Graduation Event could talk, it would gush about how much it loves the work featured in this edition by writers like Martha Silano, Sarah Gerkensmeyer, Ajay Vishwanathan, and so many others.
It would definitely mention how long it has dreamed of appearing in a journal already much beloved in our household, such is Sou’wester. Taking a turn for the personal, Graduation Event would thank my family for ordering takeout so that I could work the night it was written, then it would recall the day it was edited while I ate my breakfast, spilled tea on the desk, and nearly ruined it forever when I accidentally dried a function key that apparently exists only to send Word documents down to a watery and irretrievable grave of wingdings . It would say it feels like a survivor.
The music would rise, signalling Graduation Event to shut up and leave the stage, but it would do neither–suddenly remembering the flurry of “Event” stories written in proximity with it, it would become emotional, “Where are they now? Are their files even saved?” The daughters of aging celebrities would have to drag it offstage, still remembering all the reasons it’s so happy, so lucky, so gorgeous (in that adorable way only fiction can get by with) as it reads on the pages of Sou’wester.