This new year started strong with many community success stories! Grubbies were published in literary journals across the country, won awards and prizes, secured book deals, and so much more. Our community is closing January 2025 out with thirty-three publications, two awards and prizes, two book deals, and eight book publications! Let us celebrate you: submit your good news to GrubStreet’s Department of Congratulations.

Lori Lobenstine’s book will be published by Levine Querido in April. She has been working on this book and its sequel since 2019. She is grateful for her GrubStreet classes, instructors, and fellow students, extending a special thanks to Liz Santiago, Lynne Griffin, Lori Goldstein, and Tina Tocco. Jennifer Beard’s personal essay “The Idea of a Good Daughter” was published in the Narrative Matters section of Health Affairs in December. Health Affairs is the top health policy publication in the US. She is continually inspired by the GrubStreet community.

Jen Hallaman's poem "when we move to a flat place" was published in The Shore. The poem was originally drafted and workshopped in Brionne Janae's “Intro to Poetry” class. Jen thanks Breezy for the wise and thoughtful intro to her now-favorite genre. Eryn Sunnolia's flash creative nonfiction piece "Honeymoon" was recently published in TINGE Magazine. Additionally, their flash essay "Substitute," published in Vast Chasm Magazine, was nominated for Best American Essays 2025.

Cat (C.M.) Green's hybrid memoir chapbook, I Am Never Leaving Williamsburg, comes out on February 4th on Fifth Wheel Press. Cat is grateful to everyone they've worked with at GrubStreet over the last four years, both instructors and peers, but especially for the encouragement of Milo Todd and Zachary Spence. BWOC member Yennifer Pedraza has launched another season of her podcast "Her Own Words,” dedicated to amplifying the voices of everyday women. The show has featured several GrubStreet writers. Women writers with personal essays who'd like to participate in upcoming seasons can submit through the website and you can find it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Essay Incubator instructor Ethan Gilsdorf published “How Dungeons & Dragons Taught Me How To Be Brave In The Real World" in the Huffington Post and published “The Wisdom of My Three-Legged Pooch” in the Boston Globe Magazine. Theresa Prokowiew's nonfiction piece "Ode to a Small Town, an Idyllic Childhood, and my Encounters with Benton MacKaye, the founder of the Appalachian Trail" was published in Wilderness House Literary Review. She extends a special thanks to Nicole Miller and Ethan Gilsdorf for their support. Additionally, "The Numbers of Us," a previously published work of non-fiction, was published on The Manifest Station.

BWOC member Ly Xīnzhèn Zhǎngsūn Brown published a guest essay "Not Just Gus Walz: Understanding the Ableist Logic of Toxic White Masculinity in the New Eugenics Era" for Alice Wong's Disability Visibility Project. Instructor Tim Weed’s new craft essay on the uses of dramatic irony was featured in Writer's Digest. Students in his fiction classes will be familiar with this perspective from him. Viktoria Shulevich's humor piece "Conditions That Must Be Met Before I Can Do My To-Do List" was published in Slackjaw Comedy.

Ash Trebisacci’s essay about growing up in the town where Taylor Swift owns her summer home was published in Memoir Mixtapes Volume 12 and extends a big thank you to E.B. Bartels for believing in it from the very beginning. The Common Hours by Debra Anne LeClair was published by PortalStar Publishing in November. She'd like to thank Colwill Brown and Lynne Griffin for their excellent consultation. She is also grateful for the wisdom of Kate Racculia, Steve Almond, and April Eberhardt. BWOC member Mydalis Vera aka Guerrera Writer is thrilled to share that her poems "El Hurican/The Hurricane," "El Rio/The River," and "La Playa/The Beach" have been accepted for publication in the upcoming Climate Change issue of Wordpeace. These poems explore the intersection of nature, culture, and environmental change.

Memoir Incubator graduate Karen Kirsten’s memoir Irena’s Gift won two Zibby Book Awards for Best Family Drama and Best Story of Overcoming. She thanks Alysia Abbott and her Memoir Incubator class. Steffi Gauguet’s essay "What Cutting My Baby Boy’s Christmas PJ Tags Taught Me About Distorted Worries” was published in the Fall issue of The Intima, a Journal of Narrative Medicine. She would like to thank instructor Colin Corrigan for giving her the courage to start writing essays. Instructor Catherine Parnell's "A Person, a Place, a Possession: A Review of Yuliia Iliukha’s My Women” appeared in Five on the Fifth. My Women is a flash fiction collection translated from Ukrainian by Hanna Leliv. Memoir Incubator graduate Anne Falkowski's flash nonfiction piece “At The One Month Visit" was published by Hippocampus Magazine. She would like to thank Alysia Abbott and her Memoir Incubator class for all their support.

Manuscript consultant Jessamyn Hope's short story “Watch this Topic,” a tale told entirely through Tripadvisor reviews, was published in Write-Haus. Essay Incubator and Writing to Heal Immersive graduate Jennifer Dines's essay "When My Grandmother Died, I Raided Her Beauty Products...and now I look better than ever!" was published on Another Jane Pratt Thing. Memoir Incubator graduate Julie Brill's memoir Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia will be published by Amsterdam Publishing in April. She thanks the many Grub instructors and students who helped with this project during the seven years she worked on it. Memoir Incubator graduate Nadia Ghent's essay "The School for Musical Education" was published in Solstice Magazine’s winter issue. She wishes to thank her Memoir Incubator classmates and Alysia Abbott for all their support.

Memoir Incubator graduate Nadia Ghent's review of Mavis Gallant's final collection of short stories was published in The Los Angeles Review of Books. Cathie Desjardins's poem "Solstice Lights" was published in the current edition of Sweet Auburn Magazine, a publication of the Friends of Mt. Auburn Cemetery. Paulette Stout’s fourth novel, What We Give Away, launches on February 4th. It explores anti-fat bias and centers on two strong Puerto Rican main characters. GrubStreet's "Writing the Provocative" seminar gave her useful tips for this book. Jackie Herbach’s essay "Legacy" was recently published in the Tangled Locks Journal. She is enjoying her first class at GrubStreet, “Writing to Heal” with Jennifer Crystal.

Amy Johnson is pleased to become a 2025 Writer-in-Residence at Porter Square Books, and they are hosting a welcome reading on February 7th at the Cambridge location. Giulietta Nardone's tiny tale "I Miss You" appeared in 50-Word Stories. Instructor Deborah Sosin's essay "A Macro Micro-Memoir Challenge" appeared on the Brevity Blog. It details the conception and construction of her book of 70 micro-memoirs of 70 words each for her 70th birthday year. A flash fiction story by Sylvia Baedorf Kassis entitled "Birch Trees in Autumn" was published in The Bookends Review.

Lynda Rushing's flash nonfiction essay "Fifteen Facts About Zebras" was published in Brevity. She is grateful to Dorian Fox for his insightful comments about her piece and his superb coaching. Ronald-Stéphane Gilbert shares that Vermont-based Rootstock Publishing has released his first book, Conversations With My Mother, A Novel of Dementia on the Maine Coast. An excerpt from the book received an honorable mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Memoir Incubator graduate Karen Kirsten's memoir was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She is indebted to her Incubator instructor Alysia Abbott.

Instructor Nicole Galland’s ninth novel, Boy, is coming out from William Morrow on February 25th. Celebrate the launch at Porter Square Books in Cambridge on March 12th. The novel is "a vibrant and thought-provoking tale of love, political intrigue, and gender-swapping set in the theatre world of Elizabethan London." Remington Review published Priscilla Bourgoine’s memoir essay “The Inn” in their Winter 2025 issue. She thanks her former Memoir Incubator instructor Alex Marzano- Lesnevich and the fellow memoirists who were in Memoir Incubator (Year 3) with her. Amy Asherah's poem "Germination" was published in Tiny Seed Literary Journal.

Memoir and Essay Incubator graduate Theresa Okokon’s book Who I Always Was launches on Feb 4th. The launch event is free to attend and book sales are by RozzieBound Books (which was started by another Incubator graduate). Beth Brown Preston's third collection of poetry, Oxygen II, will be published by the Aquarius Press/Willow Books this year. She is working on her second novel, Faith and the Good Thing, in the “Novel in Progress” workshop at GrubStreet. Carol Steinberg told a story at Stories From the Stage at WGBH and her story is now available to watch on YouTube. She would like to thank Helen, Michelle Seaton and Alysia Abbott, Aimee Seif Christian, Theresa Okokon and others for keeping her writing.