Stories, Essays, & Travel Writing by Michelle Richmond

On this page you will find many of Michelle Richmond’s short stories, essays and travel writing dating back to her first publication in 1995. You’ll find links to literary magazines and anthologies where available. Several of the short stories have been collected in The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress (2001) and Hum (2014).

Short Stories

• “An Object in Orbit,” Boulevard, Volume 35, No. 1, Fall 2019
• “The Last Taco Truck in Silicon Valley,” CNET Technically Literate, 2016. (Read the coverage of Technically Literate and the taco story in The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle).
• “Hum,” The Missouri Review, Summer 2007, reprinted 2015
• “Logorrhea.” Best American Fantasy 2007. Ed. Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer, originally published in Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. Ed. John Klima. Spectra. May 2007.
• “Milk.” Sex for America. Ed. Stephen Elliott. Harper Collins. Spring 2008.
• “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.
• “In Flight.” Vestal Review.
• “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.
• “From Somewhere Down South to South Beach.” (essay)Bookmark Now. Ed. Kevin Smokler. Basic Books 2005.
• “The Hero of Queens Boulevard.” Glimmer Train. 51. Summer 2004.
• “Obedience.” Identity Theory. May 2004.
• “Choose Your Travel Partner Wisely.” Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe 2. Ed. Sonny Brewer. MacAdam/Cage, 2003.
• “Propaganda.” The Writer’s Chronicle. 35th Anniversary Edition. 2002.
• “Down the Shore Everything’s All Right.” Glimmer Train. 41. Winter 2002.
• “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.

Paris is silent and still. A few joggers are out on the streets, a few solo shoppers with groceries. Ambulances race down the wide boulevards, sirens off. There is no need for sirens when the streets are empty. At 8 pm we go on our balconies to applaud. 

Paris Lockdown Diary, The Reluctant Parisian

Travel Writing

• My Paris expat bog, The Reluctant Parisian
• “Search for the Ultimate Winter,” The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2014
• “San Francisco, My Kind of Town,” The Telegraph, June 2009
• “Blackout in Ushuaia.” By the Seat of My Pants. Ed. Don George. Lonely Planet 2005. Argentina
• “Following the Ice Line North.” 7×7 Magazine. Winter 2002. Iceland, Scotland
• “In the Valley of the Beautiful Women.” Adventures in Wine: True Stories of Vineyards and Vintages Around the World. Ed. Them Elkjer. Travelers Tales 2002. Hungary
• “Lost in Beijing.” (essay) Lonely Planet anthology Tales From Nowhere. Ed. Don George. 2006. China

Scotland in winter was startlingly bleak. In tiny Dufftown, home of the Glenfiddich Distillery, the streets were slick with ice. The road leading into town was stacked with barrels of whisky. The whole place smelled fermented. 

Search for the Ultimate Winter, The Wall Street Journal

Essays

• “A Life in Pods.”The Kenyon Review. Spring 2008, reprinted in The Kenyon Review Readings for Writers, Ed. David H. Lynn, 2009
• “I Hope This Letter Finds You.” The Mission, Medium, 2014.
• “Settlers in a New World.” Oxford American, August 2008.
• “Lucky Pierre.” Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex. Ed. Ellen Sussman. Norton, 2008.
• From the Gulf Coast to Ocean Beach, Coastal Living Magazine, June 2013
• “The Strange Case of Brad Vice: In Defense of a Destroyed Treasure.” (essay) The Oxford American. Winter 2006.
• “Tagged.” San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, March 2006.
• “Getting Ready.” The May Queen: Women on Life, Love, Work, & Pulling it All Together in Your 30s. Ed. Nicki Richesin. March 2006.
• “To the Bad Girls Go the Spoils.” Playboy Magazine, May 2007, reprinted in Plaboy Magazine, Singapore
• “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.
• “The Man Who Could Not Forget.” Cream City Review. 30th Anniversary issue.
• “Oh, Baby!” Salon.com. July 21, 2004.
• “Ooooh, Tannenbaum!” Salon.com. December 11, 2003.
• I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Salon.com. June 26, 2002.

I’m not sure if anything better captures the feeling of Northern California than this Kate Wolf original. “Here in California fruit hangs heavy on the vine / There’s no gold, I thought I’d warn you / But the hills turn brown in the summertime.” California is great, really great, but it’s never perfect and, if you’re not from here, it’s never quite what you expect it to be.

Playlist for The Wonder Test, Largehearted Boy

Playlists on Largehearted Boy

Largehearted Boy has kindly published my playlists for several of my novels–linked below.

• The Wonder Test
• Golden State
• No One You Know
• The Year of Fog

On Writing

• “On Accidentally Finding Your Way.” Glimmer Train newsletter, Writers Ask, May 2008. Read an excerpt here.
• “On the Joys of Not Finishing What You Started.” Glimmer Train, Writers Ask
• “How to Write the Multi-Genre Novel,” Writers Digest, July/August 2013
• “In Search of a Beautiful Lie.: (essay) The Writer’s Chronicle, Oct. 2005.
• “The Stories We Tell.” San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. April 2007.

Other

• City Brights Blog for The San Francisco Chronicle
• 5 Companion Books for THE MARRIAGE PACT, WH Smith Blog, 2017
• “My San Francisco,” The Guardian, UK
• A Review of Stray, by Sheri Joseph. The Believer. Feb. 2007.