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"Diatomaceous Earth" by Sara Schaff on Garo

Garo‘s apropos slogan, “Work that connects people to the land and each other”, did just that with their feature of “Diatomaceous Earth” by Augury’s forthcoming author Sara Schaff last Friday.

“Diatomaceous Earth” is from Schaff’s short story collection, Say Something Nice About Me, our prose selection for 2016 which we will publish this fall.

Like much of Schaff’s prose, “Diatomaceous Earth” is a haunting, naturalistic tale, heavy on dialogue, showcasing the many forms intimacy between two people can take.

After combing through online chat rooms devoted to households plagued by indoor ants, Ella, Stephen, and I finally settled on a remedy that sounded feasible and only mildly dangerous: diatomaceous earth, a powdery, porous substance that occurs naturally, is safe near food preparation, but illegal to sell in Ann Arbor. I purchased a bottle online.

When it arrived, days after my afternoon with Ella and Stephen, Gerry was downstairs with me. He thought we should celebrate me being done with all my papers. Also, he felt hopeful about getting the job in Dearborn. “The interview went great. They responded well to my enthusiasm.”

Gerry’s enthusiasm. My secret, gloomy future. I guess that’s why he and I had ended up in bed again, which is where we were when I heard the mail delivered. I put on a robe to go outside, and when I returned to the bedroom, I held out the package to Gerry. “I’m being proactive about my ant problem, see?”

Together, we laid the trail of diatomaceous earth: behind the toaster, leading from and to the hole Ella had spotted. “That’s where they’re coming from,” I told Gerry. “They’ll come out, gather the powder on their little bodies, and without realizing it, take it back with them to their nest.”

“And then?”

I shuddered, in spite of my new conviction. “Eventually, they all dry out, become little husks of their former selves.”

Sara Schaff’s fiction has appeared in FiveChapters, Southern Indiana Review, Carve Magazine, and elsewhere. A graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at the University of Michigan, she has taught in China, Colombia, and Northern Ireland, where she also studied storytelling. Sara is a visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College. Find links to her work at saraschaff.com.

More of Sara Schaff:

Sara Schaff’s website

Author Page

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Halina Duraj’s The Family Cannon Receives San Diego Book Award

Congratulations to Augury author Halina Duraj, recipient of this year’s San Diego Book Awards! Duraj’s The Family Cannon received the award in the category of best published anthology/short story collection. Other finalists include Matthew Pallamary for A Short Walk to the Other Side (Mystic Ink Publishing) and Bonnie ZoBell for What Happened Here (Press 53).

To view the complete list of winners for 2015, visit the SDBAA website.

Continue reading →

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Diana Spechler Wins Baltimore Review Creative Nonfiction Contest

Diana Spechler, photo by Lyndsey Belle Tyler

Our friend Diana Spechler (Skinny, Harper Perennial, 2011) recently won the Baltimore Review’s “How To” contest, a creative nonfiction contest whose winners are published in full online. Spechler’s piece, “How to Love a Telemarketer,” deals with a familiar but vivid portrait of teenage naivete:

On the days he doesn’t call, wither like a neglected plant. Stay silent, curled on the Salvation Army couch with your new friends. Take sullen bong hits. When he calls, feel watered back to life. On days when you know you’ll see him that night, smile so much, you’ll need Burt’s Bees lip balm, and pay people compliments that land in a unique way because you mean them. You mean them. You have enough love in your heart for all the world.

You are starting to gather intel: There was some muddying of things, a girl he loved fiercely who left him, a father who died while he watched, a dropping out of college in Oregon, a getaway to Colorado. He never sits down to tell you the whole story; he feeds you tiny pellets, plant snacks.

Practice telemarketer telepathy: Sit across from him on your bed and with as much force as you can muster, send the message I love you from your brain into his so he’ll boomerang it back to you. Remind yourself that telepathy takes time.”

Read a short bio of Spechler below, then head over to the Baltimore Review to read it in full!

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Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who by Fire and Skinny. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, Esquire, Glimmer Train Stories, The Paris Review Daily, Slate, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. A seven-time Moth StorySLAM winner, she has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth podcast, and NPR. She teaches writing in New York City and for Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio. Learn more at www.dianaspechler.com.

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Shelly Oria in The Paris Review; New Book Forthcoming

Shelly Oria, photo by T Kira Madden

Friend of Augury and fiction author Shelly Oria, whose short story collection, New York 1, Tel Aviv O, is forthcoming from FSG and Random House Canada (November 2014), appears in this summer’s issue of The Paris Review with her short story, “My Wife, in Converse,” quoted here from TPR’s site:

The last time we had sex, it was cold out and they said a storm was coming. My wife was shivering in fear, making a list to steady herself. For a while I was trying to cross things off—candles, eight gallons of water, move things away from windows. Check, I would say cheerfully at her, check check check. But the more I crossed off, the longer the list got, and the more anxious my wife seemed. She was sitting on our bed, her upper body low like it was trying to reach her knees. I stood close behind her, put my hands on her shoulders. Honey, I said, and she tilted her head back and looked up to meet my eyes. There was such fear in her face, and I hadn’t thought this through; ‘honey’ was all I had.”

Read more here, or you can find the full short story in The Paris Review’s Summer 2014 issue, also featuring new work by Joy Williams, Henri Cole, Zadie Smith, Jane Hirshfield, and more.

For more on Oria and her work, visit her website.

Pre-order the upcoming New York 1, Tel Aviv 0.

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Shelly Oria was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Israel. Her short story collection, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, is forthcoming from FSG and Random House Canada in November. Shelly’s fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, TriQuarterly, and fivechapters, among other places, and has won a number of awards, including the Indiana Review Fiction Prize. Shelly curates the series Sweet! Actors Reading Writers in the East Village and teaches fiction at Pratt Institute, where she also codirects the Writers’ Forum.