Literary Hub: Escaping Into Books About the Middle Ages is My Self-Therapy
In Style: Of Course Gen X is Doing Menopause Differently
The Masters Review: A Horror Story is a Fairy Tale Turned Into Out
Gay Magazine: Magical Thinking for Girls
Bright Wall, Dark Room: Heartburn: Heat as Catalyst in Adaptation of Tennessee Williams
The Cut: Rediscovering Vanity as a Mom
The Paris Review: The Original Little Mermaid: On Kay Nielsen, Disney, and the Sanitizing of the Modern Fairy Tale
Literary Hub: The Useful Dangers of Fairy Tales
Tin House: Don't Sleep on the Side Project
Fanzine: Where Wonder Lives Online: Why Instagram is the New Cabinet of Curiosities
Real Pants: (I Always Wanted) To Be a Star
Powell’s Blog: The Scrambled Clock: My Favorite Books That Screw Around With Time
Real Pants: What Work is and Why it Matters: Mourning Phillip Levine
Real Pants: The Internet is a Hard Place to Be Human: Towards a Better Internet Discourse
Electric Literature: “Melville Never Wrote Me a Choose Your Own Adventure Book”; or Writers on Their Lowbrow Influences
Real Pants: On Becoming a Metaphor: The Writer on Pregnancy
Burnaway: A Vivid Craving: Art and Writing Around Color
Electric Literature – NEW GENRES: Domestic Fabulism; or, Kansas with a Difference
Real Pants: Hi, My Name is Amber Sparks and I am a Failure
Fanzine - Body Map Series: Mouth Cave
Press Play – How I came to Love Godzilla
Press Play – Viva Los Hijos de la Noche: On the 1931 Spanish Dracula
Literary Mothers – What Isak Dineson Taught Me About Storytelling
Press Play – Guillermo del Toro: The Unlikely Auteur
Press Play – Awake in a Sea of Sleepers: How Insomnia Made Me Love Horror Films
The Rumpus – Seeking Grace in Strange Places
HTMLGIANT – How NOT to Put A Short Story Collection Together
Big Other – Get Jobs in Offices and Wake up for the Morning Commute: On Wallace Stevens, Writing, and Work
Big Other – Thank You, Diana Wynne Jones
Big Other – Tell It Slant: Vendler on Dickinson
(For a full list of Big Other posts, click here.)
Essays
“Let’s coin a phrase: let’s name a certain kind of fiction that creeps and crawls and sometimes does backflips among its respected realistic brethren. Let’s call it domestic fabulism.”
Published Short Fiction
“In this story, red means nothing. In this story, rope is for climbing, not falling. Here there are no signifiers, no associations, as if everything were happening for the first time. As if sensations were like the closed cells of monks and gardenia perfume didn’t smell like anything but gardenias.”
The Washingtonian: How to Share Your Home with a Ghost
Smokelong Quarterly: Everything is Terrible But You Should Read This Story
Split Lip Magazine: The Language of the Stars
The Collagist: You Won’t Believe What Really Happened to the Sabine Women
Matchbook: Mildly Unhappy, With Moments of Joy
Wigleaf: In Which Athena Designs a Video Game for the Express Purpose of Trolling Her Father
Smokelong Quarterly: The Noises from the Neighbors Upstairs
Great Jones Street - The Gardener and the Children
People Holding - A Wholly New And Novel Act, With Monsters
Gamut Magazine - We Destroy the Moon
Granta - We Were Holy Once
American Short Fiction – The Janitor in Space
Moon City Review – Two Uncommon Prayers
Barrelhouse Mag– The Fires of Western Heaven (print)
The Fiddleback – The Kingdom of July
The Collagist – Birds with Teeth (also a 2013 Best of the Net fiction selection)
Corium Magazine – This Circus the World
Journal of Compressed Creative Arts – And the World Was Crowded with Things That Meant Love
Stymie Magazine – Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter
The Good Man Project – Study for the New Fictional Science
Dark Sky Magazine – We Were a Storybook Back Then
Unsaid – The Effect of all that Light Upon You
Fawlt Magazine – We Would Like to Boil You in Oil
elimae – The Only Story in the World
Smokelong Quarterly – Never Never
Gargoyle – The Woman Across the Water Wore the Shape of Love (print)
Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens – Death and the People
Big Lucks – Five Kinds of Human History (print)
Thunderclap (Spring ’11 Issue) – The Man Remembers How to be a Person (print)
Stoked Journal – Some of Our More Useful Planets
trnsfr – The World After This One (print)
PANKonline – A Bright Brief Fire to Sweep the World Clean
PANK 5 – How to be Modern (print)
Zine Scene Reprint – You Will be the Living Equation & Tour of the Cities We’ve Lost
Necessary Fiction (co-author: Robert Kloss) – What we Dream About the Fathers
Dark Sky – Until Your Carcass Hits the Canvas
Corium – All the Imaginary People are Better at Life
Used Furniture Review – This is a Door
Barrelhouse Online – Most of Them Would Follow Wandering Fires (nominated for Pushcart Prize)
Wigleaf – Vesuvius
Bluestem Magazine – The Poet in Convalescence
Annalemma – You Will Be the Living Equation (print only, reprinted here in Z.S.)
Unsaid – Tour of the Cities We’ve Lost (print only, reprinted here in Zine Scene)
Lamination Colony – Our Father Of Nerve Gas Sends His Best
HTMLGiant – For Those Humans Who Cannot Fly
For Every Year – Henry III is Crowned King of France at Rheims
New York Tyrant – These are Broken, Funny Days (print)
Buffalo’s Art Voice – May We Shed These Human Bodies (nominated for Dzanc BOTW)
New Dead Families – To Make Us Whole
Necessary Fiction – Be Like Us and We Will Like You Maybe
> kill author – What Happened to the Bishop’s Daughter
Everyday Genius – The City Outside of Itself
Dark Sky (read by Mel Bosworth) – The Wives Are Turning Into Animals
Splinter Generation – Gone and Gone Already (nominated for Dzanc BOTW)
Grist: A Journal for Writers – Everyone’s a Winner at Meadow Park (print also available)
matchbook – The Monstrous Sadness of Mythical Creatures
A capella Zoo Issue 4 – When the Weather Changes You (print also available)
Monkeybicycle (web) – Four Feet Eleven Inches
Midway Journal – How to Dispose of a Chorus Girl
The Collagist – Feral Children: A Collective History
PANK – Storage Space
TripleQuick Fiction– Morning Blank
decomP – When Other People’s Lives Fall into Your Lap (nominated for Pushcart Prize)
Wigleaf – A History of Heart Disease
Monkeybicycle (web)- To a Young British Soldier in the Trenches at Ypres
Annalemma (web)- The Dictator is Drinking Alone
JMWW – Notions, Childish and True
Mud Luscious – Our Mechanically Separated Story
Titular – Cocoon
Storyglossia – If You Don’t Believe, They Go Away
Necessary Fiction – The Chemistry of Objects
Cell Stories – Beautiful Baby
Lumberyard Magazine – On Profanity (print)
Audio Interviews and Podcasts
“She sent maps made of clay, locks with no key, books with words cut out, fantastical animals and landscapes. He sent puzzle boxes, lacquered bangles engraved with kanji, bright yellow Dutch clogs. They sent maps of where they’d been and circled where they were going. And the world was crowded with things that meant love. ”
The Dinner Party Download: And the World Was Crowded with Things That Meant Love
WAMU Interview and Reading : Amber Sparks and the Unfinished World