Molia Dumbleton

Last summer, I wrote my very first personal essay. 

I've never really understood how Creative Nonfiction people did it. Personal essays are so hard. But I was talking a friend's ear off about a road trip my daughter and I had just taken, to see @Harry_Styles in concert, and she finally said, "You really need to write this." 

So, I did. 

As a writer, I think some things you write feel more "important" than others, and I'll be honest: I'm so glad to have this one out there. 

Essay: This Kind of Love 

Looking forward to reading alongside Thomas Burke and CM Burroughs at the Sunday Reading Series at Hungry Brain next weekend! 

Sunday March 15

7pm (doors open 6:30)

Hungry Brain

2319 W. Belmont

Chicago IL 

Facebook event link

I'm very excited to be visiting Medaille College next week to participate in their "Write Thing" literary reading series. 

I'll be offering a reading on Wednesday, November 6th at 7pm (open to the public - details below) and joining an undergraduate Creative Writing class during the day. 

Can't wait! If you're in the area, come introduce yourself. 

Starting November 1, I'll be leaving my readership at The Masters Review and taking on a position as Assistant Fiction Editor at Split Lip Magazine, alongside Anna Cabe.

The fabulous Michele Finn Johnson will be taking over as Fiction Editor for Katie Flynn, who is stepping down after guiding the magazine to incredible new heights.

I'm so excited to join this team and this mag, whom I've admired for so long. Hooray!

After a really perfect, slow summer with just the right amount of teaching and just the right amount of editorial work to keep me going but not enough to get in the way of a brand-new writing project, things are definitely starting to get busy here this fall. Here are some bits of news!

1. So excited to have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Cheap Pop for my tiny micro, Just After Joy. You’ll obviously hear my joy from here if it makes it any farther in the process (!), but I’ll keep you updated. 

2. Also very honored to have been invited to give a reading and a class at Medaille College, as a part of their Write Thing Reading Series. If any of you will happen to be in the Buffalo area on November 6-8, give me a holler! 

3. Mega flattered to have also been invited to offer a reading at the Sunday Reading Series at Hungry Brain in Chicago, March 15, 2020. Only five months away--mark your calendars! 

4. Neither last nor least, I’ve been accepted into an MFA program a...

Two upcoming readings: 

(1) Write Thing Reading Series - Medaille College (Buffalo, NY) - free and open to the public (Thursday November 7th, 2019, 7pm)

(2) Sunday Reading Series (Chicago, IL) - free and open to the public (Sunday March 15th, 2020, 6:30pm)

This is the online course I'm teaching for teens at The Loft Literary Center this summer.

I think/hope it's gonna be a lot of fun. :)

If you know a cool 13- to 17-year-old creative type who's looking for something to do this summer, send them my way! All online/asynchronous so they can be anywhere. :)

Video now available of the DEADLY ICE STORM READING, the audience for which was a room full of die-hards who trekked through - - - well, nothing. The weather was fine, even though a dire ice storm forecast had been issued and we all thought we would probably die on the way home. 

Anyway, we didn't. And the fabulous Tuesday Funk caught it all on video. Thank you, Andrew and Eden! Always the funnest reading in town. 

"When you moved away for college he started scouring thrift stores on weekends for hidden treasures, selling them back to the bookstores in Berkeley for pocket money or store credit. In the heyday of his collection going home for a visit was like living inside a used bookstore curated by someone who loved you, who’d shaped your sensibilities and sense of humor through dinner table puns and drinking-song lullabies, who’d taken you on walks when you were sad or anxious for some forgotten teenage reason."

Continue at Cosmonauts Avenue

"After Sara left, I considered the matter settled. The crowd was unanimously against the unbearable living conditions and no one could point out a plan better than removing the large bins of rubbish altogether. We continued to party. At around 3 am, Tanya and Anita walked in, preoccupied. They sat down on the longer portion of the couch and ignoring everybody, un-paused a previous conversation. I couldn’t hear it but I had a pretty good idea what it was about. Sometimes, having a pretty good idea is much better. Here’s the idea: Anita was gearing up to leave for the US of A. Tanya was obviously not too happy. I get it. She’d miss her. What else is there to do here? What could she do? But Anita had ambitious plans and she wasn’t giving them up just to be realistically happy here with her girlfriend. What if she found something that could increase her happiness exponentially? Isn’t that a “what-if” worth chasing? And by the way, I get THAT too. Chasing is its own happiness, first. Second...