1st Story Accepted in 2009

I've been actively lobbying to get one of my stories published in the Notre Dame Review, pretty much since the first day I started my MFA at Notre Dame back in 2005. Even before I got into the program, I'd respected the Notre Dame Review for many years now. I think it's one of the top 20-30 literary journals. But the problem was that I just couldn't get a story accepted there and fuck, I had a connection this time. It secretly delighted me in a strange kind of way that I kept getting denied because I realized that William, the Senior Editor, was pretty damn objective and wouldn't sacrifice his standards to help former sutdents. This is a good thing, I think.

Of course William doesn't accept submissions of current students, that I understood then, but I still tried anyway cuz I'm like that. But today, after rejecting five other pieces of mine that spawns four years, starting with the AWP contests in 2005 and 2006, and then several short stories that I'd sent him since I graduated back in 2007, William finally accepted my piece "City of Sand." It's one of my
favorite, more conceptual and older stories. It's about a letter that travels from Mali to Paris, New York and finally, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, and all the different people it affects along the way. I originally wrote this story in the first workshop I ever took (in my life) at Portland State University, back in 2002, and I've revised it probably fifty times since then.

So, I finally have my first publication for 2009. And it only took me four years to get it! But yo, I'm not complaining. It's all about little steps, and this is my first one of 2009 Mashallah.