"Junco and Wolf"

Exciting pub news.

The original junco. Wassaic, NY. Photo Credit: Ilya Nikhamin

I am thrilled to share that my story, "Junco and Wolf," has been published in A Public Space No. 33! This is my first published story.

"Junco and Wolf" was inspired by my time in Russia – 2005-06, my junior year of college studying. I started writing the story in 2021, in a workshop taught by novelist Debra Jo Immergut. Debra gave us this portal: write about a difficult topic using animals or a fable structure.

"Junco and Wolf" went through many incarnations until it won the 2025 A Public Space Fellowship, and it truly began to sing after far-reaching nurturing and inspiring conversations with editors Brigid Hughes and Robert Sullivan.

Thank you so much, Brigid and Bob, as well as everyone at A Public Space, Ilya, my husband, and the many wonderful writer friends who read drafts and gave me notes – Liz, Meredith, Ava, Carly, Jenny, Norah, Angela, Rachel, I'm sure I'm forgetting someone.

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine happened soon after I started writing this story, and for a long time I had a disclaimer at the beginning of the text, saying that the author supported Ukrainian sovereignty.

I was wrestling with questions. Could I write a love story set in an imperial capital, without endorsing that empire? Could I write a love story where I was a junco, and the wolf was a composite of many people? Could I feel nostalgia for my time in Moscow, even while being critical of it?

“В русской столицы полночь,” the DJ would say on the radio in Moscow. “It’s midnight in the Russian capital.” Like anywhere in the world, people would call in song dedications. I loved one in particular, where instead of calling out his friends’ names, the man said: “Приветы всем, кто меня узнал.”

“Hi to those who recognize me.”

Hope you'll order a print ($15) or digital copy ($9) of the magazine, or both ($21)

Order APS No. 33

At one point I imagined "Junco and Wolf" would be a picture book for adults. Here's an early illustration by Graydon Kolk

NEWSY STUFF

As if that weren't enough excitement, Jordan White and I are reading from SEARCH WORK at the Brooklyn Public Library on Thursday, May 14!

We'll be in conversation with Rachel Meade Smith, creator and editor of the anthology and Words of Mouth. Come out, say hi, buy a book, maybe then I'll stop talking about this project for a while. See you Thursday!

RSVP