“A month after Prince died, my son, George, changed his name to Rocket and started wearing the kind of tank tops you buy in the drugstore.”
My latest short story, “Sexy Motherfucker’s Mom,” appears in the May/June 2021 issue of Kenyon Review. I started working on this story shortly after Prince died, and now here it is already: the fifth anniversary of his death. I received my first rejection from Kenyon Review in 2005 and have been sending work to them ever since. Sixteen years of learning and growing as a writer. It is hard to express how emotional and grateful I am to find myself in their pages at last along with so many authors I admire, including Marianne Chan, Gina Chung, and Rita Dove. RITA DOVE!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!
I am so thankful to Fiction Editor Kirsten Reach, Director of Print and Web Production John Picard, Associate Editor Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, and the entire staff of KR for extending me so much kindness and support and for publishing me both online and in print. You can buy the print issue or listen to me read the entire story, horrible British accent and all, online.
Also, please read Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky’s wonderful post, “Why We Chose It,” about my story. I was incredibly touched by Sergei’s energetic and thoughtful review of my story. His final paragraph made me cry: “Don’t let the title fool you. It turns out that sometimes even a Sexy Motherfucker needs his mom, but that simple truth doesn’t do justice to this story’s big, unyielding heart. Behind all the black eyeliner and “I Would Die 4U” lies a gentler, more profound story about what it takes to raise a son when it’s hard to tell the music from the screaming or the waves from the flames.”
Photo credit for Prince photo: Theo Wargo of Stylecaster.
