Sandra Gail Lambert

The Fourth River: A Journal of Nature and Environmental Writing

The Fourth River has just published my short story "Marine Biology."  Here's an excerpt. 

Roxanne has lost track of the conversation.  She hates having hot flashes in front of the students.  She imagines the arctic seas, the pool at the hotel where they'll be staying, the beach, and braces for the post-flash anxiety.  This time it is more sadness than anything.  It separates her as if she were in a one-person submarine with a single portal that giant squid bump into and stare at her with their sideways eyes.  She is never going to be a marine biologist.  It's too late.  For the first time Roxanne understands that choices have been made.  There's no longer enough time for everything.  Her knees weaken with the grief of it, and she reaches for the desk.   

Here's how it happened.  In July, 2009 I took a short story workshop with Lauren Groff that produced the beginnings of this story.  By February, 2010 it was done enough to submit to Fourth River.  In June, 2010 they accepted it.  And just now, October, 2011, it was published.  Yep, it takes awhile.   

The North American Review

 
Did you know that the North American Review is the oldest literary journal in the United States?  That it was founded in 1815 by Nathan Hale (the nephew namesake of the "but one life to give" guy)?  And did you know that they want to publish one of my pieces! 

It's the essay about kayaking in the Everglades and looking for lesbian love.  Do you think Mr. Hale is resting easy?   

The Alaska Quarterly Review

Here's the contributors' list for the just-released issue.  Scroll down and yes, right there, that's my name.  "Rolling in the Mud," my essay about Paynes Prairie, has found a home.   

Cream City Review

Aliesa Zoecklein, poet, is now published in Cream City Review !  Do you have a writer friendship where you invest yourselves in each other's work, where it is totally okay to rush over to her house and thrust a revision in her face, where her successes are as important as your own, where when you look at the Cream City Review Table of Contents with her name listed you just want to pee yourself in excitement?  Well, today is a Maxi-Depends day for me.   

Blue Crow Magazine

Yep, this week I'm published.  Blue Crow Magazine's premier issue is out.  Order one now.  Join the Blue Crow Facebook group and leave comments about what you read.  Congratulate me as much as you would like.  It's a good week for a little bit of success.   

Blue Crow Magazine

It won't be available for a week or so, but here's a preview of the cover.  It's beautiful, isn't it?  These Blue Crow guys are doing a great job.  And if you squint, see, there's my name in the list of contributors. 

 

They Love Me in Australia

Blue Crow Magazine, a print journal originating in Australia but through the wonders of POD available everywhere, has accepted a piece of my writing!  It will be out in April.  Do not fear, I will saturate your air waves with the news. 

Here's a link to an article about this phenomenom of "a generation of tech-savvy, culture-minded writers have spawned a wave of DIY [do-it-yourself] presses not unlike the alternative record labels that once energized the music world." 

My reaction was similar to Tayari Jones' tweet on the subject - "So when marginalized ppl do it, it's self-publishing, but when MFAs do it, it's Indie-Lit."   

Whatever.  I have a color-coded chart of all my submissions, and it is way fun to change green (pending submissions) to blue (acceptances) instead of red (rejections).   

Something to Declare - Tooting My Own Horn

The anthology Something to Declare is available from any of your local, independent bookstores.  And on page 72 (not that I have it memorized) is an essay by me about a kayak trip on the Withlacoochee (North) River.  There is just no way it's not fun to see my name in the table of contents. 

I've started reading the other pieces.  Whew, there are some good writers in this anthology.  

And here's an important thing to know if you're a writer sending things out, getting rejected, all that.  This piece was turned down by TWENTY-ONE journals and anthologies before finding a home.  Now, I did revise it a couple of times over the years, but please, keep sending things out there into the world.    

 

Something to Declare

 

This anthology is coming out from the University of Wisconsin Press in September.  Check out the list of contributors!

Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Louise A. Blum, Rebecca Chekouras, Jane Churchon, Tzivia Gover, Kate Lynn Hibbard, Jourdan Imani Keith, Gillian Kendall, Sandra Gail Lambert, Pearlie McNeill, Lesléa Newman, Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Suzanne Parker, Sima Rabinowitz, Ruthann Robson, Lauren Sanders, Patty Smith, Lori Soderlind, and Hannah Tennant-Moore

 

Collective Fallout - Short Story Excerpt

Collective Fallout has published an excerpt of my short story "The Swamp Goddess" on their website.  It appears in it's entirety in Volume One.   

Collective Fallout is out

 

I arrive home after a 14 hour day of tucking my mother's whole life of belongings into one small room and leaving her for her first night in the new place, and in the mailbox there it is - a journal with my name in the table of contents.  It was such good timing.

Collective Fallout, edited by Eric Crapo, is a twice yearly journal "dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery fiction and poetry."  It's available in print or as an e-download.  Just click here to order.  

Now, here's the place where I would talk about the other contributors.  However, I came home that night, my arms full of old papers of my mother's, tired into stupidity, and after flipping through the journal, I fell asleep.  I woke up, went right back to moving chores, and now, I can't find the journal.  I've looked everywhere.  It might be in that box with my dead father's Army Air Corps enlistment records from 1938 or maybe under the stacks of old checks from just decades ago. 

Looking obsessed me for awhile, but I've given up and ordered a replacement copy.  I can tell you my story has lesbians, the Everglades, a swamp goddess, a serial killer, and infidelity with a park ranger.    

First Person Queer Booksigning November 16th

First Person Queer (with my essay "Theories about Bodies and Truth" in it) is shipping from the publisher today!  Which means it will arrive in a warehouse in Tennessee by the end of the week and then, I think, gets sent to many fine bookstores by next week. Yippee! 

And to celebrate, I will be reading and then signing copies at Wild Iris Books on Friday, November 16th, at 7:30pm here in Gainesville.  Please come.