2024 Awards Eligibility Post

Somehow it’s time for another awards eligibility post already! 2024 has been another year of health-related setbacks and challenges for me, so time has really flown by. Even so, I’ve been quite fortunate to have a number of stories, poems, and translations published this year. (This will be a living post, so I’ll update it if any of my pending pieces come out this calendar year!)

Fiction & Translations

• “The Meter’s Jammed, So I Left You Some Quarters” (ORIGINAL STORY – 2,429 words; March 2024)
  Published in Scrawl Place, the protagonist of this surreal mystery is a meter maid in Cape May, New Jersey. To create this story, I blended historical research and personal anecdotes with the Cape May’s centuries-long tradition of ghost stories. (They say to write what you know, and Cape May is a town I know like the back of my hand — my family is inextricably tied to it.) BONUS: The cover photo that goes along with this story on Scrawl Place‘s website is one I took!
  
• “SEVEN” by Gisela Lupiañez (ORIGINAL TRANSLATION – 1,387 words; May 2024)
  Published in Dark Dead Things #3, “SEVEN” answers the question of, what if Snow White didn’t wake up when the prince kissed her, so the seven dwarves held him hostage? I first discovered Gisela’s work because someone in Pórtico, Spain’s SFWA equivalent, recommended her anthology Estamos llegando: Relatos para viajeros insomnes (2020). When I read “SEVEN”, I immediately wanted to translate it because I knew English-speaking fans of horror-fantasy crossovers and fairy tale retellings would enjoy it.
  
• “An Interview with the Heroine of the Marianas” by David Mancera (ORIGINAL TRANSLATION – 4,479 words; June 2024)
  Published in Cosmorama, this story blends science fiction and fantasy. The narrative focuses on a reporter who visits a space station—which her her father designed—in order to interview the woman who discovered the Celestial Dragon hiding at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. In the story, David addresses themes of classism, tribalism, and free will. The original Spanish-language version of this story appeared in the anthology Misterios entre las olas (2022). This is my second published translation for David.
  
• “The Train” by Isis Aquino (ORIGINAL TRANSLATION – 647 words; July 2024)
  Published in the anthology Extrasensory Overload: An Anthology of Speculative Excess from Angry Gable Press, Isis’s story “The Train” is a surreal tale about folk tales and paranormal phenomena surrounding a train one wintry night. The original Spanish-language version of this story appeared in a collection of Isis’s speculative short fiction: Relatos de la Tierra y sus Colonias (2020). This is my second published translation for Isis. BONUS: I did a short interview about sensory overload & translating Isis’s story! You can read it here –> https://angrygablepress.com/2024/10/18/monica-louzon-translator/
  
• “The Word Thief” by Silvina Palmiero (ORIGINAL TRANSLATION – 1,936 words; December 2024)
  Published in the anthology OTHER: the 2024 speculative fiction story anthology from Bannister Press, Silvina’s cozy fantasy story explores what happens to those words that go missing from the tip of your tongue. It’s a semi-surreal tale set in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The original Spanish-language version of this story appeared in Revista Mordedor #4 (2022), and I fell in love with it immediately.
  

Poetry

• “[used]” in Dreams and Nightmares #128, p. 14 (4 lines; 10 words – September 2024)
  A surreal little erasure poem about a sign that finally has the chance to do something more.
  
• “[about the data lake]” in Star*Line #47.3, p. 43 (4 lines; 16 words – Summer 2024)
  An erasure poem about big data and overwork.
  
• “Haiku #1 / [the county came by]” in Pen In Hand, p. 60 (3 lines; 11 words – January 2024)
  A haiku inspired by graffiti under local highway bridges.
  [Direct link to the January 2024 Pen In Hand PDF: https://marylandwriters.starchapter.com/images/PIH_January2024_WebVersion3.pdf]