When: Saturday, April 24, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Where: Comfortable, private home in Hillsborough, CA, with expansive canyon views. Easily accessible from San Francisco and Palo Alto by 280. Five minutes from Burlingame and downtown San Mateo.

Tuition: $145.00

About the instructor: Michelle Richmond has published four books of fiction, most recently the New York Times and international bestseller The Year of Fog and the critically acclaimed novel No One You Know. Michelle has taught in the MFA programs in creative writing at the University of San Francisco, St. Mary’s College of Moraga, and California College of the Arts. Students from Michelle’s private writing workshops who have gone on to publish books and win prestigious writing awards include Vanessa Hua, winner of the 2008 Atlantic Monthly Student Fiction Contest; Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, author of Midori by Moonlight; Andy Raskin, author of The Ramen King and I; and Anee-E Wood, author of Two if by Sea, which won the 2006 Michael Rubin Award. Michelle’s MFA students have also published widely and have gone on to editorial careers at Salon.com, 7×7 Magazine, and elsewhere. Read more about the instructor here.

What: This intensive one-day course will cover the fundamentals of fiction writing–essential building blocks that are applicable to all forms of fiction, from the increasingly popular short-short story to the novel. Topics covered will include characterization, plot, structure, setting, and dialogue.

Format: Michelle will offer mini-lectures and handouts on each topic, followed by a writing exercise to give students hands-on experience in each technique. Students will have time to read their work aloud and receive feedback from the group. Bring your favorite pen and notebook, or your laptop, and be prepared to write!

Further opportunities to enrich your writing process: Students in this class will receive priority registration for future classes in short-story writing, novel writing, flash fiction, and publishing.

Coffee and tea will be provided throughout the day. We will take a 45-minute lunch break, with a light lunch provided. (While there will be a vegetarian option, other special requests cannot be accommodated, so if you have dietary restrictions please bring a bag lunch.)

Class size is limited to 10.

To register: Please send an email to fogtalk at gmail dot com, and put “Fiction Workshop” in the subject line. Enrollment is offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Full payment is due upon enrollment to ensure your space in the class. Once you receive confirmation that space is available, payment may be made by check or by paypal. To order with paypal, simply click the button below.

Did I mention how much fun we’ll have? Below, Michelle entertains the crowd at a reading in San Francisco.

Judging contestants at the Literary Death Match.

An unusually imaginative novel of family, loss and hope, The Year of Fog tackles mysteries of time, memory and the human heart.” ~South China Morning Post

Buy the book.

A New York Times best seller

A San Francisco Chronicle best seller

A Library Journal “Best Books of 2007″

A San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book

A Kirkus Reviews “Top Pick for Reading Groups”

A Washington Post “A-list book”

In development with Newmarket Films. Details here.

A Target Bookmarked Club Pick, Spring 2008

A featured alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild, the Mystery Guild, and Doubleday Book Club

Photo tour: View a photographer’s take on the places that inspired The Year of Fog.

Interactive map of San Francisco, based upon The Year of Fog.

The Fog Mix. Yo La Tengo, Beulah, Walty, Morrissey, Steve Forbert, Laura Cantrell, Tom Waits, Wilco, Bruce, Chris Isaak, and more. Music for the fog.

For Book Clubs: Reading Group Guide & Discussion Questions

Author Q&A: My advice to an aspiring author? Be the quietest person at the dinner party. Listen. Observe. Tune into the way people behave, their motivations…

The story behind the book:Emma Balfour walked into my life in the summer of 2003. Our paths collided on Ocean Beach, the 3-mile stretch of gray sand and graffiti-spattered seawall marking the western edge of the city…

Listen to an interview with Michelle Richmond about The Year of Fog, from the XM Radio program Writers on Writing, available for free through AudibleWord. Interview by Josephine Reed. Press play and go to minute 7:30. Note: this is a ten-minute excerpt from a half-hour interview.

Purchase here: From the West Coast to the Gulf Coast, a few of my favorite independent bookstores.

Read an excerpt. Here the truth, this is what I know: we were walking on Ocean Beach, hand in hand. It was a summer morning, cold, July in San Francisco…

Publishers of The Year of Fog in translation: Random House Germany/Diana, Archipel (Netherlands), Tericum Kiado (Hungary), Videograf ii(Poland), AST (Russia), Editorial Presenca (Portugal), Buchet-Chastel (France), La Esfera De Los Libros (Spain), Musa Knyga (Lithuania)

Also soon to be available from Ebury in England.

About the Book:
Six-year-old Emma vanished into the thick San Francisco mist. Or into the heaving Pacific. Or somewhere just beyond: to a parking lot, a stranger’s van, or a road with traffic flashing by. Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a stepmother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. And so she searches her mind for clues about what happened that morning—and cannot stop the flood of memories reaching from her own childhood to illuminate that irreversible moment on the beach.

Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma’s father finds solace in his faith–but Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the life and the little girl that she lost. With her hope fading and her life at a crossroads, she will leave San Francisco for a country thousands of miles away. And it is there, by the side of another sea, on a journey that has taken her into a strange subculture of wanderers and surfers, that Abby will make the most astounding discovery of all—as the truth of Emma’s disappearance unravels with stunning force.

A profoundly original novel of family, loss, and hope, THE YEAR OF FOG beguiles with its window into the mysteries of time and memory even as it lays bare the deep and wondrous workings of the human heart. The result is a mesmerizing drama that will touch anyone who knows what it means to love a child.

To schedule an author chat, please contact me at fogtalk at gmail dot com.

Reviews & Advance Praise:
“A mesmerizing novel of loss and grief, hope and redemption, and the endurance of love.” Library Journal, starred review

“In this spare page-turner, Richmond draws complex tensions from the setup of a child gone missing… The book is beautifully paced—one feels Abby’s clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout.” Publishers Weekly

“Richmond gracefully explores the nature of memory and perception in key passages that never slow the suspense of the search…a page-turner with a philosophical bent.” Booklist

Grade: A. “Gripping…Richmond makes the reader feel the gamut of emotions, from the initial disbelief and blind hope to the nagging guilt and gnawing despair.” ~Alexis Burling,The Washington Post

“What marks us, and how do we react to our impressions, both large and small, of life? These are the questions asked by San Francisco author Michelle Richmond in her wonderful second novel, “The Year of the Fog. Despite all its drama — and this heart-wrenching tale does ratchet up the tension — this is primarily a story of echoes and repercussions…spare, moving…it’s all done delicately, in almost poetic terms.” Clea Simon, The San Francisco Chronicle (read the review here)

“Richmond’s second novel is a startlingly original take on every parent’s worst nightmare…An unsettling and powerful punch of a book, The Year of Fog unfolds as a waking dream about the persistence of memory and the extraordinary force of love.” Cookie Magazine

“A good part of what makes “The Year of Fog” compulsively readable is the voice of its narrator. Abby’s tone is quietly conversational, almost as though she is sitting across the table and, over a cup of coffee, calmly telling her tale. The dispassionate tone reveals a brutally honest teller, and only serves to heighten the tension of the story…both believable and bittersweet.” Robin Vidimos, The Denver Post

“A harrowing, beautifully written story of a photographer and soon-to-be stepmom whose momentary lapse in attention results in the disappearance of her fiancé’s little girl on a foggy beach in San Francisco. What happened to 6-year-old Emma? The answer, and its implications, will keep you on the edge of your beach chair.” Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times.

“[The Year of Fog] manages to have both the high-velocity pace of a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller and nuanced insights into the nature of memory, love, family, and guilt…Richmond burros into the details of San Francisco’s geogaphy and neighborhoods…Like all good mysteries, The Year of Fog twists the reader’s expectations, turning some of what we think we know about missing child cases on its head and providing a surprising and satisfying ending that manages to retain the complexity of real life. It is, in the end, a very memorable book.” ~Samantha Berry, Marin Magazine

“Much more than a tale of a woman looking for a child who’s lost. It’s also about the nature of passion, guilt, and most of all, memory…The Year of Fog also serves as a real-life guidebook of sorts to some of San Francisco’s lesser known neighborhoods and sites…Richmond captures the spirit of life in The City.” ~Leslie Katz, The San Francisco Examiner

“A hauntingly written novel of two people dealing with loss in their own ways… Richmond’s dream-like prose lends to an eerie atmosphere, and the solving [of] the mystery of Emma’s disappearance will leave you breathless.” Parkersburg News & Sentinel

“A child’s disappearance is at the heart of this riveting read that follows photographer, fiancée and soon-to-be-stepmother Abby Mason. Once the drama starts, prepare to race to the last page.” Hallmark Magazine

“Grab your beach bag and call your book club, The Year of Fog probably will be the best new novel of the summer…vivid environmental descriptions and psychologically sound character development. As with all good novels that border on great literature, the plot is multilayered. The Year of Fog will leave the reader both perplexed and enlightened.” Reba McMellon, The Mississippi Press

“A book I just finished this morning – reading while I was making breakfast because I absolutely could not put it down- is The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond. Every single word in this book was worth reading. There are parts of this book that are heartbreaking, but I truly believe it deserves to be a best seller…” Tina Ristau, Des Moines Register

“Richmond artfully combines Abby’s research on memory and a sensitive depiction of her relationship with fiance Jake, resulting in a compelling, smart novel that you truly will find difficult to put down.” Birmingham Magazine

“While The Year of Fog is structured around the search for Emma, it offers a deeper meditation on the fragility of love. Which is the stronger loyalty, to child or lover? How can we relieve someone else’s despair? These sometimes unanswerable questions form the heart of Richmond’s book…The Year of Fog works well as both a literary mystery and a poignant portrait of a family ripped apart by random circumstance.” Frances Dinkelspiel, Culture Vulture

“The Year of Fog [is] written so movingly that an experience that is far from universal becomes immediate and personal… the vignettes throughout create a larger poetica in which it is the reader who becomes, happily, lost.” Santa Fe Reporter

“The dilemma with Michelle Richmond’s newest novel is this: the plot is so compelling you can’t read fast enough, but the writing is so crisp and exact you want to savor every word…Nothing is sugar-coated in these pages, which makes Abby’s self-realizations all the more honest, satisfying, and true. ” Anita Garner, Alabama Writers’ Forum

“Beautifully written, with deep insights into the human soul.” Willow Glen Books, San Jose, CA

“In The Year of Fog, Richmond gives us both a mystery and a meditation on memory. Profound, deeply moving, endlessly gripping; you will devour it in a weekend and turn it over to begin again.” ~Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“From the very first chapter The Year of Fog grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go. Michelle Richmond is that marvelous thing, a writer who can craft a gorgeous sentence and also create a plot so propulsive that it hurts to put the book down, even for a minute. And forget about sleeping. You won’t do that until you’re finished.” ~Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

“Michelle Richmond’s The Year of Fog is a harrowing and unputdownable novel. A moving account of one woman’s ardous journey from an ordinary day to nightmare to, ultimately, redemption. Few novelists put their characters through harder paces than Richmond. And readers have no choice but to carried away by the enduring beauty of this story.” ~Peter Orner, author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo & Esther Stories

“Suspenseful, richly imagined, and ultimately hopeful, The Year of Fog is a keeper. Michelle Richmond is a talent to watch.” ~Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia

“Michelle Richmond crafts an addictive, haunting story, filled with brainy tidbits and a local’s love of landscape.” ~Michelle Tea, author of Valencia, Rent Girl, Rose of No Man’s Land

“The Year of Fog is impossible to stop reading. Even as I savored Michelle Richmond’s rich prose and fascinating passages on photography and the nature of memory, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. A missing child, a haunting neighborhood, a search for love, The Year of Fog has it all. Make a sandwich now: you won’t stop reading for hours.”~Amanda Eyre Ward, author of How to Be Lost and Sleep Toward Heaven

“In The Year of Fog, Michelle Richmond has performed something of a magic act. From the first few pages I was hooked. As though she knows the ride she is is taking us on is harrowing, Richmond peppers the story with mischievous humor and unexpected insights, all layered over a gorgeous love letter to San Francisco.” ~Heather Juergensen, co-writer, actor, Kissing Jessica Stein

“Michelle Richmond gives us a fascinating look into the mind of an artist. Richmond’s prose is sensual, her images fresh, her writing, lyrical and lovely.” ~Ann Cummins, author of Red Ant House and Yellowcake

German Reviews
“Michelle Richmonds “Ein einziger Blick” ist psychologisch raffinierte Hochspannung.” FREUNDIN

“Großartiges Psychogramm einer Frau, die durch eine Entführung die Lügen ihres eigenen Lebens aufarbeitet.” PETRA

“Dass aus dieser schlichten Idee ein richtig guter Roman wird, liegt daran, dass Michelle Richmond eine blendende Erzählerin ist. Mit einem literarisch ansprechenden Stil, melancholischen Tönen. Einem ruhigen, sicheren Erzählfluss und intensiven Charakteren. (…) Ein dramatischer Stoff, aus dem die Autorin eine Erzählung gestaltet hat, die bezaubert.” WDR 5: SERVICE BÜCHER + NEUGIER GENÜGT

“Ich musste mich noch nie so beherrschen, nicht vorab zum Schluss zu blättern.” Angela Wittmann, BRIGITTE

“Psychologisch raffinierte Hochspannung.” Freundin

“Es ist die sensible Beschreibung menschlicher Beziehungen und der darin verstrickten Personen, die diesen Roman zu einer aufregenden Lektüre machen.” WIENERIN

“Wenn ein Kind verschwindet, mutmaßlich entführt oder gar ermordet wird, dann lässt sich daraus ein Thriller stricken – oder ein Roman wie dieser: nicht reißerisch, sondern verträumt. Richmond findet zarte, poetische Töne, erzählt die dramatische Handlung in einer Kette subtil berührender Momente. Richmond glänzt dabei mit einem literarisch ansprechenden Stil, einem ruhigen, sicheren Erzählfluss und intensiven Charakteren.” WDR5

The nominees in the Fiction category are:
* Lady Lazarus, Andrew Foster Altschul, Harcourt
* Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain, Kirsten Menger-Anderson, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
* The Delivery Room, Sylvia Brownrigg, Counterpoint
* Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein , Molly Dwyer, Lost Coast Press
* No One You Know, Michelle Richmond, Delacorte Press

What an honor to be included in this list.

Awards are also given in nonfiction and poetry, and I’ll put those lists up as soon as I have the info.

The 28th Annual Northern California Book Awards will be held Sunday, April 19, at Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin at Grove, at 1:00 p.m. Immediately following the awards, a reception with book signing will begin in the Latino/Hispanic Room at the Library. The ceremony and reception are free and open to the public.

Signed, 1st edition books

No One You Know $20.00 The Year of Fog $20.00 Dream of the Blue Room (out of print, very limited quantities) $35.00 No One You Know + The Year of Fog $38.00 The Year of Fog, No One You Know, & Dream of the Blue Room $70.00

You can also purchase signed copies of No One You Know and The Year of Fog by emailing my neighborhood independent bookstore, the Booksmith: orders@booksmith.com, or calling 800-493-7323. You can also pick up signed copies in the store at 1644 Haight Street.

Buy The Year of Fog ebook instantly from your favorite independent bookseller for just $5.99.

Go here to read about how I got my start as a writer, circa 1993, in a small, cold duplex in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“On the Joys of Not Finishing What You Started”: a piece I wrote for Glimmer Train about the proverbial novel in the bottom drawer

Meredith Maran interviewed me for Family Circle a couple of years ago, about writing with child. Read the interview here.

In my opinion, four things are important for a successful book club meeting: good company, a thought-provoking book, excellent libations, and some terrific background music. So grab a few friends, mix up some Vodka Espressos or Brazilian Coffee (see recipes below), rev up your itunes, and get started.

1. Warren Zevon, “Carmelita,” from the original album, entitled Warren Zevon.

At the book launch for No One You Know, legendary rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres showed up and sang a few lines of this song, just as he does in the book.

2. Rod Stewart, “Reason to Believe,” an old Tim Hardin tune which appeared on Rod Stewart’s classic 1971 album, Every Picture Tells a Story. It was the B-side to this single, “Maggie May,” which initially turned Rod Stewart into a household name.

3. Cat Stevens, “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” This song also originally appeared in 1971. It was featured in the great movie Harold & Maude, which, like No One You Know, celebrated the foggier side of the San Francisco Bay Area.

4. Cowboy Junkies, “A Horse In the Country” The original version appeared on the Black-Eyed Man album. It’s about a girl whose life isn’t so great, but she has a horse in the country, and she gets to see him “every second Sunday.” She dreams of getting on her horse and riding away.

5. Townes Van Zant, “To Live’s to Fly” This can be found on the soundtrack to the great Townes Van Zandt documentary, Be Here to Love Me, which was directed by Margaret Brown, a classmate of mine from Murphy High School in Mobile, Alabama. Guy Clark did a beautiful version of this song a few years back on the tribute disc “Poet.”

6. Bob Dylan, “Most of the Time,” from Dylan’s 1989 album, “Oh, Mercy.”

When people talk about their favorite Dylan songs, they tend to go back to his earliest albums. For me, though, this mid-career gem is one of his best.

7. Journey, “Lights.” This song first appeared on Journey’s breakthrough album, Infinity, and has been playing ever since on San Francisco radio stations. As with “Sweet Home Alabama” in my home state, and anything by Billy Joel in New York City, you can rarely turn on a car radio in the Bay Area and not eventually hear “Lights.” At the most basic level, you have to admire a song that works so hard to rhyme the words “city” and “bay.” Years ago, my husband and I put it an offer on an old, red, three-story house in the Outer Richmond district of San Francisco, where the band lived during their heyday. We didn’t get the house, but we ended up in the same neighborhood, a setting that has deeply influenced my novels.

8. Kings of Convenience, “Cayman Islands,” from the underappreciated 2004 gem Riot on an Empty Street. This is a song about memory, how single moments can seem so insignificant, only to be invested with meaning years later.

9. Lloyd Cole, “Rattlesnakes,” from the album of the same title.

My husband and I saw several Lloyd Cole shows when we were living in New York City, and we see him every time he comes out to San Francisco. In No One You Know, Ellie is reminded of a line from this song while wandering around a Paris graveyard with Lila.

10. Lucinda Williams, “Here in California,” from the 1998 Kate Wolf tribute album, Treasures Left Behind. A melancholy song about my adopted state, where “the hills turn brown in the summertime.”

11. . Billy Bragg and Wilco, “California Stars,” from Mermaid Avenue. An antidote to number 10: this one will make you feel good about California.

12. Nick Cave, “Into My Arms,” from the 1997 Nick Cave disc The Boatman’s Call. This song has a special place in my heart, as my husband played it for me many times on our cross-country road trip from Arkansas to New York City the same year it was released. On that trip we ran into a blizzard, got stuck in motel called The Bucksnort Inn on the opening day of hunting season in Bucksnort, Tennessee, and kept my husband’s Mitsubishi pickup truck running on love and hot chocolate.

13. Ron Sexsmith, “April After All, from the 1997 disc Other Songs.

I have a thing for Sexsmith’s voice, and I think more people should listen to him.

14. Richard Hawley, “Just Like the Rain,” from the wonderful 2005 disc, Coles Corner.

Although this song came out just a few years ago, it conjures a musical world from another time.

15. Mountain Goats, “This Year,” from The Sunset Tree

“I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” Haven’t we all felt that way?

16. Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Put Your Hands Up” Sakamoto’s 2000 album “BTTB” includes this and two of my other all-time favorite piano instrumentals, “Energy Flow” and “Railroad Man.”

17. Walty, “Traveling Salesman Blues,” from Let it Out. Walty is a great a San Francisco musician who will actually respond to your emails. A song about feeling twenty-one years old, and waking up one morning only to discover that you’re forty-three. I’ve noticed that as I age, so do my narrators: Gracie in the The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress is twenty-something, Jenny in Dream of the Blue Room is 31, Abby in The Year of Fog is 32, Ellie in No One You Know is in her mid-thirties, and the narrator of my novel-in-progress is coming up on 40. I don’t keep a diary, but I suppose my novels comprise a fictionalized journal of female protagonists, growing up and growing older.

18. Young Marble Giants, “A Brand New Life,” which appears on the stripped-down classic 1980 album Colossal Youth. Just a guitar, bass, and a voice–simple, sublime, and timeless.

19. Sugar dePalma, “I Was in Love.” I met Joe Costa, the bassist and vocalist for this San Francisco band, at his wonderful shoe store in the Castro, de la Sole. I’d bought several pairs of dangerously tall shoes from him before I discovered that he was a musician.

20. Gram Parsons, “Return of the Grievous Angel.” This one takes me right back to my Southern roots. “I remember something you once told me, and I’ll be damned if it did not come true…” Perfect accompaniment to road trips, whiskey, and memories of all the boys you really shouldn’t have had anything to do with.

21. Young Marble Giants, “Brand New Life,” from Colossal Youth. A song about starting over, with a beat–just in case you want to dance at your book club meeting.

22. Barbary Coasters: “The Cruel Sea.” This is a surf instrumental by a terrific local band. I included it for double-header book clubs, as a segue into The Year of Fog.

Radio Podcasts:
With Ben Fong-Torres on KFRC, 2008
With Sedge Thompson for West Coast Live, May 5, 2007
Jim Foster for Conversations on the Coast, May 2007
Random House author’s podcast, 2008, about No One You Know
With Don George & Simon Winchester on Talk of the Nation, Nov. 2005
With the Bad Girls posse at the San Francisco JCC, aired on KALW, 2008. (Wherein a few of my more disastrously misbehaved moments are revealed) Click here and scroll down to Bad Girls
For KQED’s Writer’s Block, May 2006, reading an essay on MFA debauchery
With Ed Champion for the Bat Segundo Show, August 2007
With Nicki Richesin & contributors to The May Queen anthology on the Bat Segundo Show
Jordan Rosenfeld for The California Report, April 2007 (on The Year of Fog)

Online:
Lynn Carey for Diablo Valley Magazine, Sept. 2009
Mark Pritchard for SF Metblogs

Margaret Cardillo for The Rumpus

Gina Holmes for Novel Journey, Dec. 2007

Leonardo Cuellar for Mary

Nicki Richesin for The Happy Booker

Gayle Brandeis for Fruitful, the blog

Joshilyn Jackson for Faster Than Kudzu

Michelle Roberts Matthews for the Mobile Register

Pam Kingsbury for Southern Scribe

Read the story behind the novel at Backstory.

“A dreamy, haunting work with a deeply personal feel. Any time a work of fiction raises our sights to higher truths, as this one does, the writer has done her job.” Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Some childhood relationships are so fulfilling they shape our lives and leave us wondering why they didn’t last longer. Richmond captures, explores, and intertwines these bonds so elegantly, you might even think the relationships are your own.” USA Today

“Intelligent, original, complex.” The San Francisco Chronicle

“A complex and nimbly fashioned first novel.” Kirkus Reviews

“The book is finely crafted and compelling, and its emotions resonate true and clear.” Booklist

“With the slow build-up of a mystery, the exquisite pain of a coming-of-age novel, the masterful images of a travel writer, and a darkness that is true to the Southern Gothic, Dream of a Blue Room is a work of wonderfully chimeric form. ” Joanna Pearson, Small Spiral Notebook

Dream of the Blue Room was also published in Germany in 2004, and is forthcoming in a new paperback edition from Bantam.

2008
“Logorrhea.” Best American Fantasy 2007. Ed. Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer
“Settlers in a New World.” Oxford American, August 2008.
“On Accidentally Finding Your Way.” Glimmer Train newsletter, Writers Ask, May 2008. Read an excerpt here.
“A Life in Pods.”The Kenyon Review. Spring 2008.
“Milk.” Sex for America. Ed. Stephen Elliott. Harper Collins. Spring 2008.
“Lucky Pierre.” Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex. Ed. Ellen Sussman. Norton, 2008.

2007
“Hum.” The Missouri Review. Summer 2007.
A Review of Stray, by Sheri Joseph. The Believer. Feb. 2007.
“To the Bad Girls Go the Spoils.” Playboy, May 2007.
“An Open Letter to Mark Burnett’s Production Assistant.” Bad Girls. Ed. Ellen Sussman. Norton 2007.
“Putting Out” When I Was a Loser: True Stories of Barely Surviving High School. Ed. John McNally. Free Press. May 2007.
“Logorrhea.” Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. Ed. John Klima. Spectra. May 2007.
“The Stories We Tell.” San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. April 2007.

2006
“An Exciting New Career in Medicine.” Playboy, Feb. 2006
“The Boulevard of Heroes.” Glimmer Train. Issue 60, Fall 2006.
“The Great Amphibian.” Winner of the Mississippi Review Prize in Fiction. Mississippi Review, Summer 2006. Special mention in the 2007 Pushcart Prize anthology.
“A Graceful Exit.” Blow. Issue One. Fall 2006.
“The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress.” The National Literary Review. Summer 2006.
“The Strange Case of Brad Vice: In Defense of a Destroyed Treasure.” (essay) The Oxford American. Winter 2006.
“Lost in Beijing.” (essay) Lonely Planet anthology Tales From Nowhere. Ed. Don George. 2006.
“Tagged.” (essay) San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, March 2006.
“Getting Ready.” (essay) The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, & Pulling it All Together in Your 30s. Ed. Nicki Richesin. March 2006.
“In Flight.” Vestal Review.
“The Man Who Could Not Forget.” Cream City Review. 30th Anniversary issue.

2005
“Hospitality.” Mid-American Review, Fall 2005.
“P.S. You’re Mine.” Kudzu Christmas: Twelve Mysterious Tales. Ed. Jim Gilbert, River City Publishing 2005.
“P.S. You’re Mine.” Mississippi Review.com 2005.
“In Search of a Beautiful Lie.” (essay) The Writers’ Chronicle, Oct. 2005.
“Blackout in Ushuaia.” (essay)By the Seat of My Pants. Ed. Don George. Lonely Planet 2005.
“From Somewhere Down South to South Beach.” (essay)Bookmark Now. Ed. Kevin Smokler. Basic Books 2005.

2004
“The Hero of Queens Boulevard.” Glimmer Train. 51. Summer 2004.
“Obedience.” Identity Theory. May 2004.
“Oh, Baby!” Salon.com. July 21, 2004.

2003
“Choose Your Travel Partner Wisely.” Stories from the Blue Moon Café 2. Ed. Sonny Brewer. MacAdam/Cage, 2003.
“Ooooh, Tannenbaum!” Salon.com. December 11, 2003.

2002
“The Valley of Beautiful Women.” (essay) Adventures in Wine: True Stories of Vintages Around the World. Ed.Thom Elkjer. Travelers’ Tales, 2002.
“Propaganda.” The Writer’s Chronicle. 35th Anniversary Edition. 2002.
“Down the Shore Everything’s All Right.” Glimmer Train. 41. Winter 2002.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Salon.com. June 26, 2002.
“Following the Ice Line North.” (essay) 7×7 Magazine. Winter 2002.

etc.
“The Girl in the Fall Away Dress.” Other Voices. 33. 2000.
“The Colonists.” Exquisite Corpse. 10. Winter 2001.
“Satellite.” CutBank. 52. 1999.
“Fifth Grade: A Criminal History.” Virgin Fiction. Ed. Eugene Stein. William Morrow and Co., 1999.
“Curvature.” Brevity. Spring 1999.
“Mosque.” Belles’ Letters. Ed. Joe Taylor. Livingston University Press, 1999.
“Propaganda.” The Florida Review 23.2. 1999.
“This Is Not a Love Story.” Fish Stories: Collective Two. 1996.
“The Last Bad Thing.” Gulf Coast 8.2. 1996.
“The Sound of Them.” Alabama Bound. Ed. James E. Colquitt. Livingston University Press, 1995.

Click here to view/order anthologies containing Michelle Richmond’s essays and stories.