My Silhouette Portrait Published in Suspended Magazine & Giveaway Reminder 📸🥳

Very pleased to have one of my photos, “Open Space Silhouette Portrait,” published in the current issue of Suspended Magazine. Check out the issue, and consider submitting poems, art, or short fiction to this amazing literary magazine: details here.

More insights from the magazine about my photo: “I’m interested in the numerous exciting permutations portraiture and self-portraiture can take. From precise likenesses to figures that could be a stand-in for almost any character or human form, the possibilities when documenting the self and others are encouraging for photographers who wish to explore. I took this self-portrait using a Nikon 35 mm DSLR, creating a window reflection and then playing with filters that introduced light leaks that offered a compelling interplay between buoyant, yellow warmth and movement against deep, calm shadows of introspection and stillness. I’m intrigued by how the finished photo suggests both anchoring and spaciousness.”

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Also, just a reminder that Women on Writing’s Thankful for Books Giveaway runs up to November 20th! 🍂📚

Copies of my book, From Promising to Published , will be part of the prize packages for three lucky winners.

Read more and enter the contest at: Thankful for Books Giveaway!

Poetry Publication in Songs of Eretz! ✍️

I’m so pleased to announce that a poem I wrote about roller skating was published today in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review’s Spring 2023 issue! The theme is “Growth.” It’s also a great joy to appear in the same issue as my dear friend, Charles. Follow the linky-link to check out the issue, filled with poetry and photography by many talented artists.

A splendid way to start National Poetry Month! To all of the poems we’ll read, write, and celebrate this April!

My Food-Themed Microfiction, "Sunday Dinner," Published Today! 🍋

Super excited that my flash story, “Sunday Dinner,” was featured today at 50 Give or Take. Story No. 582! Woot! Subscribe (it’s free and fun) to give it a read and to get wonderful microfiction delivered to your inbox each day for reading and writing inspiration.

I also enjoyed writing a new one-sentence bio to keep it fresh and accompany my story: “Melanie Faith is a night-owl writer and editor who often moves through the daytime world with her camera and heart-shaped, leopard-print sunglasses.” 😎

Have some 50-word stories or wanna write one? Submissions currently open (details below):

Fifty Give or Take

To microfiction in its storytelling power! #smallbutmighty

Photo courtesy of Marina Grynykha on Unsplash.

Prose Poem Published 🖊📓

Wonderful news! My prose poem, “Return to Beck,” was published at Cerasus Magazine, a fantastic international literary magazine out of the UK. (Props to my fellow Gen Xers and ’90s babies in the house. 😎✨🎸)

Check out the many fantastic artists in Issue #2, submission guidelines here, and read on for a small excerpt from parts of four stanzas in my piece:

“Return to Beck” excerpt:

I look down this very long set of rectangular tables pushed together and there is Beck, dressed like the ’90s, singing along to Beck. And I walk past him, also singing Beck, thinking: “Keep it cool. Pretend this is just a normal thing, Beck sitting here, singing his own song”…

Beck never made eye contact (cool customer); he just went about his business, giving off 100% Beckness. The Beckness was just real-life rolling off of him, down the tables, and people milling around but nobody saying this was any big thing, this was just the same old Beckitude, any day of the week. And I was trying to keep my stuff together. Sure, I could mill around, I could keep it cool…

I took down some fizzled balloons, some soggy streamers wound around my bare arms, outside the party, outside the door, but didn’t see the trash can, didn’t see anybody, so I turned back to Beck, walked back in. There he still was, being all 100% Beck, Beckalicious, Becktastic. He hadn’t moved….

I was trying to keep it together, “just keep it together,” and walking around him at the terribly long tables and him not making eye contact, and the ’90s were back but we had nowhere to take them. So Beck kept singing Beck, Beckifically, and the Beckness was all around, 100% authentic, the ’90s were oozing…

For the entire, much longer prose poem, check out Issue 2.

Great News: Beyond Words Literary Magazine Second Printing

So pleased that this issue of the stellar international literary journal, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, from last June has now gone into a second printing! 😍📸

I have photography in the June 2020 issue as well as in their current May 2021 issue.

Get your copy/subscription today @beyondwordsmagazine . Also, consider submitting your words or art.

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

My Poem, "Aim," Published 🖋📓

So pleased to announce that my poem, “Aim,” was published in the current (December 2020) issue of Songs of Eretz. It has a refreshing “Spring” theme— more on that in the editor’s note.

The issue contains the poems of many very talented poets to savor, including meaningful poems by my dear friend, Charles A. Swanson, who is a featured poet in this and many other issues. Check out his poignant elegy to his beautiful granddaughter, Addi. It is an honor to share this issue as “contributor twins” with this steadfast friend from my grad-school days. Here’s to many more of his publications.

Read the complete issue at: Songs of Eretz.

“Aim”
Melanie Faith 

That was the night we sped barefoot
down the embankment
across the rolling lawn
past the fountain outside the dining hall, past
Diana the huntress

her bow and arrow pointed perpetually
skyward. Her aim: a silvery spattering of almost-
summer stars. Our aim: celebrating the end
of semester. Our aim: disruption. Each shimmer
of water from rotating sprinklers

a world within a world we had yet
to step into, landed light
and wet on our bare
shoulders. We were a spinning
folly before equilibrium, the best kind.

The brick-tower clock struck two. Someone
squealed from the impact of the cold,
another someone shushed, but it was half-
hearted, against the mirth. Diana
and her bow, at the top of the hill, steady

she kept watch, peering the other way,
head tipped upward to her map of constellations:
ever-aiming into the many night spoils.
Enough stars to gather and gather again
in our open arms.

Photo courtesy of Gaimard on Pixabay

Photography Published in Molecule :)

Check out the latest amazing issue of Molecule, which features one of my black-and-white film photographs as well as excellent short poems, prose, and even a play. Here’s to issue #3!

The bottle was a find in my dad’s workshop— it’s glass, with a wonderful heft, and the letters on the bottle are raised/embossed. I love the font and how the bottle’s inscription includes a place on it.

I'm Featured Author at Burningword Literary Journal :)

Super excited to announce that I’m Featured Author this month at Burningword Literary Journal.

• Check out my poetry here: “Clean out” and “First Bite” poems.

• Consider submitting your work  (between now and March 10th), here: Submissions.

• Also, consider supporting the journal and purchasing the issue, jam-packed with wonderful artistic works, here: Issue 93.

Poem Publication : "Lines Composed after Purchasing a 2020 Planner"

Thrilled to announce that my poem, “Lines Composed after Purchasing a 2020 Planner” was published in the current issue of Verse of Silence.

For my fellow poets and writers, the editors accept submissions at Verse of Silence Submissions.

Like this image I made? Prints available at Write Path Productions.

"A Study in Monochrome" Published

Wondrous news: another poem from my Particle manuscript was published at Severine. Check out “A Study in Monochrome.”