Mesa Refuge

By virtue of my work with the West Marin Review, the journal’s staff awarded me with a nomination for a writer’s retreat at the Mesa Refuge, which I received shortly afterward in February 2016.

The retreat loomed over me at first, as I’d never had so much time to devote solely to writing my own work, but after a day or two of wrestling with the possibilities, I relented to their power and began formulating my first novel.

During the retreat I lived with two incredible writers—a poet and a former-drag-queen turned rabbi—and fell into my work.

Coming out the other end I had the first 20,000 words of the novel’s first draft, as well as three short stories.

The novel is still alive, and nearly through its adolescence, while the short stories have been joined by many others, all of whom receive daily touch ups in preparation for near-countless submissions this Spring.