Poets & Writers

Why We Write

NANCY MÉNDEZ-BOOTH is a fiction writer. She teaches writing and Latina/o literature and culture at colleges and universities in New York and New Jersey. Her work has appeared in print and online, including in the Jet Fuel Review, KGB Bar Literary Magazine, Latina, OZY Media, Philadelphia Stories, and Salon. She is currently completing a second fiction manuscript and developing a one-woman show with support from the New Jersey Women Playwrights Program. She is looking for representation and a publisher for her work. She posts regularly at www.nancymendezbooth.com/blog.

BETWEEN February and May 2008 I wrote 230 thank-you notes. They acknowledged gifts and extraordinary kindnesses received, but not for a happy occasion. I wrote the notes after we lost our baby boy, a stillbirth at eight months of pregnancy, after five years of trying to conceive and as

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Poets & Writers

Poets & Writers2 min read
Small Press Points
Size matters to Bull City Press (bullcitypress.com). The publisher in Durham, North Carolina, has managed to keep what executive director Ross White calls its “commitment to compression” for nearly twenty years. Initially founded in 2006 to publish I
Poets & Writers3 min read
Reactions
Poets & Writers Magazine welcomes feedback from its readers. Please post a comment on select articles at pw.org, e-mail editor@pw.org, or write to Editor, Poets & Writers Magazine, 90 Broad Street, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10004. Letters accepted for
Poets & Writers10 min read
Ghosted
IN OCTOBER 2020, I received an e-mail from a literary agent named A. who I believed would transform my life as a writer. Her message arrived after I’d spent two months querying literary agents regarding an autobiographical middle-grade novel about a

Related Books & Audiobooks