Lynne Barrett

Photo by J. Tomás López

Writer, Editor, Teacher

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 Books & Books, 305-442-4408.

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 the Current Voices In Literature Program, 2013-14.

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.

Around the web

I was among those who took part in a discussion of "Submitting Etiquette" for The Review Review.

Geoffrey Philp interviewed me for his blog about the writing life and my class in Literary Journalism.

Laura Valeri interviewed me for Bookslut.

Dena Santoro has written an appreciation of the (bad) girls in my short stories, at Like Fire.

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.

"Angles of Belonging," my guest blog about having grown up in NJ, being a "Florida writer," and the many ways characters can connect to place, is at Lisa Romeo Writes.

Dena Santoro has written an appreciation of the (bad) girls in my short stories, at Like Fire.

I was among those who took part in a discussion of "Submitting Etiquette" for The Review Review.

Geoffrey Philp interviewed me for his blog about the writing life and my class in Literary Journalism.
At The Writerly Life, Gerry Wilson and I discuss thinking about a story's edges and the ever-challenging issue of trying to get too many things done.

Necee Regis interviewed me about Magpies (and compared reading the collection to eating Belgian chocolates) at Beyond the Margins.

On Casey Pycior's blog, The Story is the Cure, we discussed, among other things, my story "Links" and unanticipated consequences of writing about the dot com world.

Laura Richardson interviewed me about Magpies, plot, editing, and much more for Sliver of Stone Magazine.

Angela Kelsey has done a four-part (they're short!) interview with me on her blog. Topics covered include how suspense is created in literary stories, and tips for writers.

WLRN Topical Currents Interview

You can hear my conversation with Ariel Gonzalez on WLRN's Topical Currents by going to the About Lynne page or download the full show's MP3 here.

The latest...

What Editors Want: A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines, published by Rain Chain Press, updates and expands on my widely-recommended essay which first appeared in The Review Review, and was republished by Glimmer Train. It covers the steps in the submission process and how to handle them...and stay as sane as a writer can.

Use this link to order from the publisher and save on shipping. Discounts available for those ordering multiple copies.

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."

New stories

Now available:

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

Thomas Carr, "The Path of Solitude," via The Miami Rail

"Quickstep" is in the Summer 2017 issue of The Miami Rail, which is available at many venues in Miami-Dade County, and is also online. Read the story here and you can follow links to explore the rest of the issue.

My crime story "Marble" has been published in the Spring 2017 print issue of Mystery Tribune. South Florida penthouses, plumbing, and murder...

Two of my flash fiction pieces will be in Flash! Writing the Very Short Story, by John Dufresne, coming out from Norton next winter.

Other work online

My magical realist flash story "The Willows" can be found in the Summer 2016 issue of Rose Red Review.

My essay about how I started reading John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels, and what I see in rereading them now, was published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune as one of their "John D. and Me" series of writers' responses to MacDonald's work, part of Sarasota's celebration of MacDonald's centennial year.

Image: Longform.org

My short story "Returning" was published in Necessary Fiction.

And Longform then chose it as their "Fiction Pick of the Week."

2017 Upcoming Events

I'll be among the presenters at the Sanibel Island Writers Conference, November 2-5, 2017. My workshop is on plot and structure, and I'll be on an agent and editors panel, and reading from my work.

Miami Book Fair news: I will be leading a First Draft writing session at 6 PM, Thursday, Nov. 16, at The Porch, where I'll be providing prompts with the theme "Noir Country." And then immediately afterward, I'll be in the line-up of readers for Noir at the Bar, which will also feature murder ballads by Wilson and the Slayers. More details on the line-up soon.

At the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/AWP) Conference, March 8-10, 2018 in Tampa, I will be on two panels:
"Gulf Coast Noir: Dark Sweltering Justice," where I'm moderator and presenting along with Mary Anna Evans, Vicki Hendricks, Jeff Newberry, and Alex Segura.
and
"The Shadow of the Mouse: How Florida Fiction Can Escape Theme Park Culture," with Chris Eder (Moderator), Regina Sakalarios Rogers, Jeff Newberry, Patrick Ryan, Lynne Barrett). More details when the schedule comes out.

Some Recent Events

I taught a six-day workshop, "Plot, Structure, and the Map of Opportunity," as part of the International Women's Writing Guild Summer Conference at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, July 7-14, 2017.

Photo by Sara DiVello

I was among those presenting at Grub Street's Muse & the Marketplace 2017 (recently listed as #1 among the Top Ten Writing Conferences in North America by The Writer magazine). You can see the schedule on their website, and bookmark this conference for next year.

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 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.

With FIU President Mark Rosenberg at the 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.