Andrea Avery

May 2024: Visiting Composer: a Novella, coming Next Year!

Exciting news! My novella Visiting Composer was named the winner of the 2024 Miami University Press Novella Contest and will be published in 2025.

Visiting Composer is, as you might have guessed, about music. In that way, it’s a sister book to Sonata. But genre-wise, and story-wise, it’s unlike anything else I’ve written. I can’t wait to share it (plus: this novella is only the start of a much bigger story I’m working on. Stay tuned!).

The judge of the contest was Kelcey Parker Ervick, who is the author of many truly dazzling works, across genres. Check out her graphic memoir The Keeper, or her novella Liliane’s Balcony, or her story collection For Sale by Owner, or her The Bitter Life of Božena Nemcová, which is a “biographical collage.” Basically, she’s got like the EGOT of awesome writers.

August 2021: Father/Figure in CRAFT Literary

In the 30-some years I have identified as a writer (thanks, Mrs. Stephens and 9th-grade English!), there has never been a full year when I did not write something new … that is, until 2020. My father’s obituary in Nov. 2019 was the last thing I wrote before the COVID-19 pandemic, and then (I know I’m not alone here) I just didn’t write. For a full year. Until I wrote this piece. I am so honored that it found its home at CRAFT. Read Father/Figure here.

May 2021: New Essay “Father/Figure” a Contest Finalist

I was thrilled to learn that my essay “Father/Figure” was named a short-list finalist in CRAFT Literary’s Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Contest, judged by Joy Castro. Although my essay was not ultimately selected as a winner, CRAFT has accepted it for publication in an upcoming issue. Check out all the contest winners here. Congratulations to all these writers—I can’t wait to read the essays.

January 2021: Essay “Great Falls” in Issue 21 of Barrelhouse

I am so excited to have an essay included in issue 21 of Barrelhouse, available for purchase here. In this 5,000-word lyric essay, I turn my attention on the Indigo Girls' 1994 album "Swamp Ophelia" precisely 25 years after its release—and, more acutely, on myself at 17: a little bit in love and a lot in over my head. The narrative throughline in the essay is a murky, mysterious romance-slash-sexual-awakening with a reticent, inappropriately older, whitewater kayaker (!), set against the sticky backdrop of suburban Maryland. By braiding together multiple texts (my hideously embarrassing journal from 1994, with Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" on its cover, natch; obsessively annotated Indigo Girls lyrics; Mary Pipher's seminal and salacious bestseller Reviving Ophelia, also a product of 1994; highbrow literary criticism and lowbrow music criticism; and Hamlet itself), I explore not only the particular potency of the perfect album at the perfect life moment but also the way "Ophelia" is a cultural shorthand used to both fetishize and diminish girls (Daisy Ridley's latest effort notwithstanding).

July 2020: My poem Appears in Erase the Patriarchy anthology available at all Barnes and Noble Stores

Erase the Patriarchy: An Anthology of Erasure Poetry, edited by Isobel O’Hare and published by University of Hell Press, is available at all Barnes and Noble stores nationwide (or you can order it from B&N here or from UHell Press here). I am proud to have a poem (“The Person Will Decide for Herself”) included.

The piece I made is an erasure from a page of the Supreme Court's 1927 decision in Buck vs. Bell, in which Oliver Wendell Holmes, delivering the decision of the Court, declared that forcibly sterilizing a disabled woman was not a violation of her Constitutional rights. This decision has never been overturned.

To complete my erasure, I printed the document on cotton and "blacked out" the words using iodine tincture of the sort one might use to sterilize an area before a surgery. Then, I framed the erasure in an embroidery hoop to signal the piece's transition from its original textual form to a new object—also its move from a traditionally male realm (sadly, the Supreme Court) to a traditionally female realm. Embroidery hoops of this kind have long been used in embroidery and needlepoint--the kind of piecework that it's easy to imagine Carrie Buck (and other nameless women) doing as they passed the years in the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.

In its new incarnation, the document says simply "The person will decide for herself"--a refrain with perpetual (and renewed) urgency, as the reproductive rights of women are under assault. (Using the pronoun “herself” with the antecedent “person” is deliberate, and a violation of the traditional laws of grammar.) Now, as in Carrie Buck's time, the reproductive rights and bodily agency of disabled women are particularly vulnerable.

Summer 2019 Update:
New Short Fiction, Essays, and Other Works!

I’m happy to report that I have been writing new things and sending them out into the world.

I had a short story chosen as a finalist in the Owl Canyon Press Winter 2018 Hackathon Contest. You can read my story, “All Things Hang on Our Possessing,” in the published volume of winners and finalists, called 27 Stories, available for order here. (Incidentally, submissions are now open for the next Hackathon, and the deadline is Sept. 30. Submit here.)

I have an essay in Vol. 2, Issue 1 of Montana Mouthful. The theme was “Clowning Around,” and I wrote about the time I worked as a costumed character for kids’ birthday parties. My essay is called “Party Animals,” and you can read/download the issue here. (Word to the wise: Montana Mouthful is accepting submissions for the next issue (theme: “Schooling”), and the deadline is Aug. 12. Submit here.)

Watch, too, for an erasure poem (“The Person Will Decide for Herself”) that has been accepted to Isobel O’Hare’s Erase the Patriarchy anthology, an essay called “Tatterhood” in Chaleur Press’s “Bespoke Bones” anthology, and … a really special essay called “Great Falls” which the fine folks at Barrelhouse have accepted for publication next spring!

Paperback Edition of Sonata on Its Way!

The paperback version of Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano is slated for August 2018 publication. It will retain the gorgeous cover/book design but be ever so much more travel-friendly. Pre-order it from Amazon now!

Q: Are you working on something new?

I am! I am happily at work on a novel. I was delighted to learn that an excerpt of it was chosen as a finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books Masters Workshops, which meant that I was able to get the work-in-progress workshopped by an author I admire, Ron Hansen. Stay tuned for more!

Q: Do you Still Play Piano?

I am frequently asked if I still play the piano. This is a tough question, as my arthritis is active and unpredictable. In addition to the effects of 30 years of RA (none of my knuckles bend, my right fingers 4 and 5 lack nerve sensation, and my left fingers 3, 4, and 5 do not extend at all), my hands have been through a lot surgically (multiple tendon reconstructions, wrist fusion). Nevertheless, I can do more than nothing. Here are some samples of what my playing looks and sounds like.