Thank you to editor Erin Stalcup of Waxwing, a journal I've long admired, for publishing four shorts of mine in the latest issue, February 15. I savor reading each issue of Waxwing, and this latest is just so very good. I'm proud to share pages with writers like Diane Seuss, Brian Komei Dempster, Michael Martone, and oh so many more.  "A Girl Goes Into the Forest" is the title story of my newest manuscript, so naturally, I was very careful about where I'd like the story to appear.

Please read my stories here, and the rest of the publication, too, and you'll understand why I couldn't be happier with this home for all of these pieces.

Very happy to have "Cavern Obscura" published by b(OINK) magazine in the brand new November issue. I'm in great company with Monica Lewis, Kristina Ten, and more. This piece was accepted in less than a record 24 hours and came at such a great time. Huge thanks to the editors at b(OINK).

Since I arrived back home to Sonoma County a few nights ago, I've had to evacuate my home because of the wild fires that are devastating the area. Uncontained, these fires have everyone on edge. Some friends have lost everything. I don't know what the outcome is for my house, for me, yet. The uncertainty is hard.

So I'm happier than ever that this issue of Poets and Writers magazine has come out today. I'm thrilled to be one of the 5 over 50 in this feature. My essay is in the print edition, but you can read an excerpt from the book here.

I had a wonderful afternoon recently visiting the University of Pittsburgh's The Writers' Café and teaching from Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow. The students were engaged and engaging, and wrote some powerful pieces. Tom McWhorter's lesson, following mine, was insightful and I'm looking forward to returning to the writing I started in class that day. My experiences visiting classrooms and writers' groups have reminded me how much I enjoy teaching and talking writing. Do get in contact if you'd like to invite me to your class or workshop!

A few months ago I enjoyed answering questions for Hamline Lit Link about publishing Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow, my first book, and about my work as a publisher and editor with WTAW Press. The Q & A is now published at Hamline Lit Link site, a writers' resource from the Hamline English Department.

Here's a snippet:  My approach to writing very short prose is varied. Sometimes it’s a matter of distilling a much longer story into one substantially shorter in length than the original, through a process of culling and refinement again and again until I’m satisfied that the story can’t be any further pared away at without consequence. I enjoy that challenge of crystallization, which involves thinking deeply about the reader, imagining what she may fill in with her intelligence, intuition, and empathic imagination and invention.

Check it out here.

I'm so pleased with this review from Libby Maxwell and published by Mom Egg Review. MER has long been one of my favorite literary journals, so this is especially thrilling. I could easily quote the entire review, but I'll limit myself to this: "Pursell’s honesty encompasses not only the truths that aren’t told, but the ones that can’t be known, and yet touch our lives all the same." And ask that you check out the astute attention Maxwell focuses on my book at the journal.

Side note: MER is open for submissions. Mom Egg Review seeks your best poetry, fiction, and creative prose for the 16th annual print issue. We publish work by writers who are mothers or by others about motherhood. This is themed issue —the theme is MOTHERS PLAY/MOTHERS WORK— we will only publish work that relates to this theme. Deadline is August 15, 2017.

Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow is now catalogued at WorldCat! Thank you to Rachel Boyd, cataloger in the libraries at Notre Dame, who asked first to catalog it there and was careful about my name. What a thrill to see holdings there,  in Harvard, in Johns Hopkins, Texax A & M, the New York Public Library, and others.

How beautiful is the photograph of  Siel Ju-- author of Cake Time-- of my book with her meal. I'm flattered to have her attention focused on my book. She writes:  Peg’s slim volume of short prose pieces each give a glimpse of a seemingly nondescript yet poignant moment — a girl watching her mother fall while chasing a dog, a chat between strangers at a bus stop, a woman going hiking with a hole in her sock. A poetic read ...  Siel of the poetry of meals: thank you!

Kate Milliken is a writer I'm proud to call a friend. She's a wonderful friend and a wonderful writer. I used to think that friends shouldn't write reviews of other friends' books, but that idea has proven antiquated in this day and age, and after all, I care very much what my friends think about my writing. I love this review of my book from Kate on Goodreads and want others to read what she's said so eloquently. Evidently, Kate can write anything beautifully. The review begins like this:

Full disclosure, I've known Peg for many years...seven, I believe, yet I feel as if I've known her forever. She is that kind of friend, but also that kind of a writer; intimate, timeless, and necessary. In her debut collection, Show Her A Flower, A Bird, A Shadow she transcends the prescribed story forms, getting at the heart of an experience or a feeling with a precision and intensity that leaves you at once breathless and relieved. This book does not sweep you away to another time and place, but instead asks you to bend and look at the shards of glass all of the escapists have left in their wake...

Read the rest here. So many beautiful lines. Huge gratitude to Kate!