The Best Small Fictions 2015 - Available Now

Today is the official publication day for The Best Small Fictions 2015. I’m honored that Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Olen Butler has selected my story “The Boy and the Bear” for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions 2015, an anthology that includes stories from Ron Carlson, Diane Williams, Stuart Dybek, Bobbie Ann Mason, Michael Martone, Hiromi Kawakami, Kelly Cherry, and many other amazing writers. I am beyond thrilled at this news! The anthology is available to purchase now if you'd like a copy. Thanks as well to series editor Tara L. Masih!

By way of recognition, "The Boy and the Bear" first appeared in The Masters Review, and I can't thank Kim Winternheimer enough for originally publishing this story. I also want to thank Black Lawrence Press Executive Editor Diane Goettel and Chapbook Editor Kit Frick because "The Boy and the Bear" is collected in my chapbook Families Among Us, winner of the 2013 Black River Chapbook Competition and published by BLP in September 2014. More news to come! Thanks for reading!

Writing Out of the Wilderness - Speaking at the NLC Arts & Literary Festival

I was invited to be a guest speaker at the North Lake College Arts & Literary Festival. I'll be giving my talk "Writing Out of the Wilderness: How to Survive Rejection and Forge a Path to Publication."

I'm scheduled to speak Monday, 10/12 at 12:30. More details can be found here. I'd like to thank Dr. Brett Bodily for extending the invitation to come speak. I'm really excited to share what I know about writing, revising, and submitting your work for publication. I hope to see you there!

Families Among Us: Great Review in Green Mountains Review

Thank you to Natalie Mesnard and Green Mountains Review for this great review of my chapbook, Families Among Us.

Here is a short excerpt:

I’m happy to say, in all cases, that Families Among Us takes my defenses apart. Without ever resorting to one-to-one symbolic resonances, or hyperbolic strangeness, these stories strike a balance that leaves me feeling both recognized, and impossibly far from home. I also end up wondering how Kimzey walks this line so well. Even as the book remains, start to finish, at a pleasingly odd level of partial-resolution, engaging me with unnamed characters and situations that feel near to allegorical, for me it delivers this simple truth: though the forest is always possible, the town is, and always will be, what we have.

You can read the rest of the review here. And if you'd like to buy a copy of Families Among Us, an Indie Bestseller now in its second printing, you can do so here. Thanks for reading!