And in with the new!
Happy New Year! I know I’ve been quiet for a while, but here I am with a year-end report and some expectations for the coming year.
Goals met, goals set
If you’re interested, last year at about this time I posted some goals for 2024, which you can see here. I didn’t meet many of the goals (no poems, no essays, no draft of the new novel, and not much teaching), but I did manage to usher my novel The Last Bird of Paradise into the world (with very positive reactions) and I made two trips to Europe (Ireland in September and Germany in December). Here are a few images from the trip to Leipzig.
My goal for 2025 is to make substantial progress on my new book project. I have written some, but I have a long way to go with it, and I’m in the midst of interesting research that will help guide me as I move forward. (It’s too early to say much about the project, but I was doing research in both Germany and Ireland. That’s as much of a hint as I’ll give at this point.) I’m not committing to finishing a draft of the book, although that’s possible. If I also manage, at long last, to draft a personal essay, that would be great. We’ll see.
2024 Reading
I read more books in 2024 than I did in the prior year, mostly because I was one of the judges for the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction (an award I won in 2013). You can check out brief reviews of some of the books I read here. Here are some of my favorite books from my year’s reading:
For Writers (and Curious Non-writers): The 2025 Literary Magazine Rankings are here!
When I started submitting short stories to literary magazines back in 2003, shortly after I graduated from my MFA program, I had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I developed a tiering strategy: making simultaneous submissions to magazines of roughly equal reputation. But how to evaluate reputation?
Eventually, I created a ranking system for magazines that published fiction, taking data from ten years of anthologies published by the Pushcart Press, an organization that awards prizes to the best short work published in the prior year. It was a useful tool for my tiering strategy, and so I shared that list on my website. It wasn’t long before writers of poetry and nonfiction clamored for similar lists, and I created those.
At the end of each year, when the new Pushcart Prize anthology comes out, I update all three lists, which have become very popular. The lists for 2025, which I posted on Christmas Day, can be found here. Please share with your writer friends!
Social Media
As a Small Press author, I depend on Social Media, in addition to this newsletter, to get the word out about my books. It can be addictive and exhausting, especially when there is so much noise on these platforms. I’ve always enjoyed Twitter/X and have gradually built a following there, but since Elon Musk took it over and turned it into a disinformation machine for his own ambitions, I can no longer support it. I have stopped posting there. I’m also on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads—all owned by Meta—but the best alternative to Twitter/X I’ve found is BlueSky. If you do Social Media, look for me there: @cliffgarstang.bsky.social
Appearances
Since my last newsletter, I’ve made a few appearances promoting The Last Bird of Paradise. In November, I gave an Author Talk at the R.R. Smith Center in Staunton for the UVA Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Because few people know much about Singapore, which is the setting for the novel, I shared a slide presentation about the history and current situation there, as well as talking about the book.
Also in November, I was invited to Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland as part of their Writers Reading series. The College Creative Writing program invites three writers each semester to come to read from their work. I read two excerpts from The Last Bird of Paradise, and a shorter excerpt from Oliver’s Travels because I thought college students would be able to relate to it. The reading was great fun and was well-received.
My next appearance is the Flutes Reading Series at Flutes Wine Lounge in Lynchburg, Virginia, on January 19 at 4:00 pm. I’ll be reading from The Last Bird of Paradise.
That’s it for now. Thank you for reading, and best wishes for a great 2025!
