LYNNE BARRETT

Photo by J. Tomás López

Writer, Editor, Teacher

Books

Now in its second printing:

What Editors Want: A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines covers the steps in the submission process and how to handle them...and stay as sane as a writer can.

Please use this link to order from the publisher Rain Chain Press. and save on shipping. Discounts available for those ordering multiple copies, as many writers' groups have done.

Praise for What Editors Want:

"Chock full of incredible insights. Every writer shold read this to make the most of their lit mag submissions."
—Becky Tuch, Editor, The Review Review

Magpies

My third short story collection, MAGPIES, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, received the Gold Medal for General Fiction in the Florida Book Awards.

Selected by the Center for Literature and Writing at Miami Dade College for their Current Voices In Literature Program.

Publishers Weekly says of Magpies: "Barrett portrays adult lives with minimal flourishes and a powerful command of setting. Florida is electric with the tension of "all that can happen"—hurricanes, sinkholes, and a boom-and-bust history. It becomes as eerie as it is richly imagined, whether stories take place in an Art Deco building or a gas station. One of the year's finer university press offerings..."

In The Rumpus, Joseph Olshan writes: "Sentence for sentence, Barrett is a superb writer. Her work brims with original ideas, questions and philosophical musings, the product of a probing intelligence and a highly literate sensibility. But what separates her from many contemporary short fiction writers is her consummate story-telling ability."

For more reviews and information about the book, please go to the Magpies page.

To see some of the independent bookstores where readers have found or ordered Magpies, check out the Publications Page.

If you would like a signed copy, they are available from Miami's great independent bookseller Books & Books, 305-442-4408.

Signing at the IWWG booth at AWP.

Around the web

I'm among the writers discussing their habits, tastes, and distastes for Monica Uszerowicz's feature in Bon Appétit: "Nine Authors on What They Eat While Writing."

and around town

You can hear me reading my poem "Polylingual" at the start of this short slideshow about the WLRN and O Miami Poetry Festival "That's So Miami" project. Just follow this link and scroll down.

To see some of the independent bookstores where readers have found or ordered Magpies, check out the Publications Page.

If you would like a signed copy, they are available from Miami's great independent bookseller Books & Books, 305-442-4408.

The latest...

short stories, nonfiction, & more

My essay "Scar Tissue," will appear in issue three of The Hong Kong Review, due out this summer. Learn more about this journal, which aims to bring together "literary voices from all over the world."

My short story "Marble" was published in Mystery Tribune, (available in both print and digital form, as are subscriptions) features South Florida penthouses, dive motels, and murder...

... and I'm honored to announce that "Marble" made the list of the year's "Other Distinguished Mystery Stories" in Best American Mysteries 2018. Series editor Otto Penzler's foreword describes the process of reading more than three thousand published stories in print journals, e-zines, and anthologies to cull from 3000-plus short stories, which shows both how strong the interest in short crime fiction is today, and how tough the competition.

My flash essay "Window Vent" is up at River Teeth as part of their Beautiful Things series.

Issue #13 of New Flash Fiction Review includes my very short story "Accordion."

My short story "Texaco on Biscayne," which appears in Magpies, was selected for inclusion in Florida International University's new Lit 1000 textbook: The FIU Introduction to Literature, a collaboration with W.W. Norton and Company that includes some works with a South Florida setting. The book's launch was celebrated at the Green Library on FIU's MMC Campus, with a book cover image-frosted cake. More details here.

2019 Upcoming Events

I'll be teaching at the International Womens Writing Guild's 42nd annual summer conference: to be held at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, July 12-19. The theme is Writing the Body: Voice, Art, and Craft in a Changing World.

My class, "A Path Through the Labyrinth" is an advanced fiction workshop with manuscript feedback and class size limited to ten, so if you are interested in that, please act soon. There is an additional charge for the advanced class. You can register now, and manuscripts are due by June 15th. Registration is open.

This is a great conference, with workshops, critique sessions, readings by participants, and more. You can go for the week or part of it, and stay on campus, off-campus, or commute.

Two of my flash fiction pieces, "Distance" and "Little Red Returns," are included in John Dufresne's Flash! Writing the Very Short Story, published by Norton, which offers a great array of flash writing along with lots of exercises and prompts to try.

Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, from Gutter Books, includes my short story, "A Boy Named Zoé."

Just to Watch Them Die was a 2018 finalist for the Anthony Award for Best Anthology.

S.W. Lauden interviewed several of the contributors to this anthology, including Lynne, about their connections to the music of Johnny Cash and his influence on their crime stories.

I interviewed the dazzling Carmen Maria Machado about the stories in her acclaimed collection Her Body and Other Parties, writers getting paid, haunted malls and motels and other liminal spaces, and much more.

"How the Voice Outlives the Body: A Conversation with Carmen Maria Machado" can be read online in The Miami Rail's summer 2018 issue

To learn about more of my work you can find online or in print, please go to the pages for my books, stories, creative nonfiction, poems, and other projects, all under the Publications menu.

Recent Events

Fairhope Pier, photo by Jeanie Thompson

On April 13th, I taught an intensive class on the revision process for fiction and narrative nonfiction at the second annual Writers Craft Conference of the Florida Keys, held in Marathon, FL. Among my fellow presenters were Chantel Acevedo and John Dufresne. This is a very affordable one-day conference. Learn more here.

I presented two craft classes on plot and structure ("Disentangling Time" and "Crossing Paths: The Map of Opportunity in Story") at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace Conference in Boston, April 5-7th, 2019. The Writer magazine says the Muse is the "#1 Writers' Conference in America."

Photo by Sara DiVello from Muse & the Marketplace. Photos at literary events often include the backs of heads. LB

I was among those participating in the annual conference of the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers in Fairhope, AL, on March 22 and 23, where I spoke on panels about techniques for reading your work aloud and the connections between fiction and song, and participated in an Editors Panel. The GCACWT is a very affordable and friendly conference for those who teach or study creative writing, or are hoping to do so in the future. I have just become president of the organization and will be working on planning for the Spring 2020 conference.

Noir at the Bar readers at Miami Book Fair International. L to R: Lynne Barrett, Lauren Doyle Owens, Alex Segura, Mike Creeden, Jon McGoran , Joe Clifford, and Hector Duarte, Jr. Photo by Melissa Messulam

I was part of Miami Book Fair's Noir at the Bar reading on November 15, 2018. Our emcee Alex Segura, Joe Clifford, Mike Creeden, Hector Duarte Jr., Jon McGoran, and Lauren Doyle Owens and I served up slices of crime fictionand Gold Dust Lounge provided live noir lounge music, at MBFI's The Porch at Miami-Dade College's Wolfson Campus in Downtown Miami.

I also ran The Florida Book Review's annual Book Fair blog, which takes you to many of the readings and panels as well as giving a sense of the amazing street fair. Check it out here.

To see other recent events and to get more details about upcoming book group meetings, workshops, and conferences, please go to the Events page.

Women of Florida Fiction:

Women of Florida Fiction, Essays on 12 Sunshine State Writers, edited by Tammy Powley and April Van Camp, is available from McFarland. "Florida as symbol and myth is the subject of this collection of new critical essays exploring fiction written by female Floridian authors."

Scholar Claudia Slate contributes a chapter on the stories in Magpies, and the book’s final section includes interviews with Florida authors Lynne Barrett, Jeannine Capó Cruz, Vicki Hendricks, and Angela Hunt.

At the 2015 Florida College English Association conference in St. Petersburg, Vicki Hendricks and I spoke about what it's like to write in and about Florida at a plenary session and a panel of critics and teachers discussed Magpies. The conference theme was "Turn Back the Page: Discovering Florida's History through Texts"

More work in journals and anthologies

"Dancing in the Dark" appears in Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. (Part of the proceeds benefit the Bob Woodruff Foundation.) Trouble in the Heartland was a finalist for the Anthony Award for Best Anthology or Collection. Read more about the project from editor Joe Clifford. (Cover by Chuck Regan of Zelmer Pulp.)

"Morning Glories" is in Fifteen Views of Miami, a collection of lightly linked stories edited by Jaquira Diaz and published by Burrow Press.

Connie Ogle discusses the collection and interviews the editor and some of the contributors in a great piece in the Miami Herald. And Tina Egnoski reviews it for the Florida Book Review.

Miami New Times has named Fifteen Views of Miami to its list of "The Seven Best Books About Miami."

"Millinery," a memoir piece about my first landlady, storytelling, and hats as essential clues to character, is in the Southern Women's Review.

The issue (which has a needlework theme) can be downloaded as a pdf.

"The Tree Man" was published in Wraparound South. Read it here.

A brief excerpt from the story was used as the text for a broadsheet Pip Brandt and I did for the Sweat Broadsheet project. You can see the broadsheet on the Stories, Essays, Poems, page

The Editors of Wraparound South nominated "The Tree Man" for Sundress Publications' Best of the Net anthology, the Million Writers Prize, and for a Pushcart Prize.

Illustration for "Mary Anne's Tan," Fort Lauderdale Magazine

"Mary Anne's Tan" was featured in Fort Lauderdale Magazine. Read the story online here.

Teaching

I
I teach in the Creative Writing program in FIU's English Dept, and often speak at writers' conferences around the country. I'm immensely proud of my students, and you can read about some of their many achievements on my Teaching Page.

I was honored to be chosen as a Florida International University Top Scholar in 2012, and to be featured in a full-page ad for the university in the Miami Herald.

In 2011 I received an FIU Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentorship, and I previously received one for Excellence in Research. In addition, I have received an award for Service from CASE and for Teaching from the Department of English.

With FIU President Mark Rosenberg, 2012 Top Scholars Reception, April 2012.

Florida Flash:

As editor of Tigertail, A South Florida Annual: Florida Flash, I looked for very short prose works to explore the edges and overlaps between lyrical and narrative approaches. Fifty-four authors with connections to Florida contributed prose poetry, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction of no more than 305 words—a number representing the original South Florida area code.

More about the collection, and the radio contest it inspired, on the Anthologies page.