The Gift of Flight

My essay, We Fly in Planes, was published in Southeast Review on March 30th. I still can’t believe I can say that. It’s been a long time coming.

In addition, the editors at Southeast Review asked me to write up a piece about the writing of the essay, for their “About the Work“ section. That came out on April 18th. You can read it here.

This is all after I was invited to read from the essay at SER’s offsite event in Seattle at AWP in March. I never thought that this piece would bring me so many gifts, but it has. I am truly grateful for the editors at SER and all the opportunities they have provided me to share my work.

I’m continuing to work on my hybrid memoir, but with the heart of the manuscript being the story published in SER, I feel like I’ve made a huge leap. In a few weeks, I’m wrapping up a workshop with Lidia Yuknavitch that began in January. It’s made me realize how much work I have left to do, but it’s been fun and encouraging as well.

I just hope that my next piece doesn’t take 6 years to be published. This time, it was totally worth the wait.

Rachel Paris Wimer