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Back on pilgrimage

Good news, fellow humans! My short story A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places, which appeared last year in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, is a finalist for the WSFA Small Press Award for short fiction.

I am seriously chuffed about this for a number of reasons. One, you know how everyone always says it’s an honor just to be a finalist? You know why they say that? Because it is in fact an honor just to be a finalist. So many wonderful stories come out in this field every year that–well, you’ve seen my yearly recommendation lists. They’re quite long. Winnowing them to any smaller group? Amazing, thank you, could easily have been a number of other highly qualified stories by wonderful writers, I am literally just glad to be on the team and hope I can help the ball club. Er, programming staff.

But here’s another reason: if you’ve read that story–which you can do! please do! it’s free, and it turns out people like it!–you will immediately see that it is a story about a disabled person. That disabled person is not me, does not have my family or my career or anything like that. But it is my disability. I put my own disability into this story. I gave someone with my disability a story in which they do not have to be “fixed” to be the hero. And…this is not a disability-focused award. This is just an award for genre short fiction. So I particularly appreciate that the people who were selecting stories looked a story with a disabled protagonist whose disability is inherent to the story without being the problem that needs solving and said, yeah, we appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate you too.

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A bridge too far

New story out today in Clarkesworld: A Shaky Bridge ! This one is more directly referential to current events than most of my science fiction, while also drawing on my experience with my dad having strokes. So this is not the most happy-clappy upbeat story I’ve ever written…but it is one that I feel good about having out there, and I hope you’ll like it too.

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SFWA Poetry Open Mic

I’ve been reading my own prose in public for audiences for more than 25 years now, and I’ve even thrown in a poem or two as spice. But this Saturday is the first time I will be doing a dedicated poetry reading! If you’re a Nebula attendee or a SFWA member, please join us on Saturday, June 28th, at 11 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Central).

A microphone with sparkles provides the information for the SFWA Poetry Open Mic, June 28th, 11 AM Pacific, Featuring: Marissa Lingen, Host: Gwynne Garfinkle, events.sfwa.org/upcoming-events

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more than all the courage I can muster up inside

New story out! “If the Weather Holds” appears in the Mar/Apr 2025 issue of Analog. For all the work we have ahead, we’ll need a big team…and just the reasonable people won’t do. Analog is available for order here.

Yes, I wrote this because the Indigo Girls left this title lying on the table when they called their song “The Wood Song.” The ways of creativity are mysterious and here we are.