This story, entitled Slither, is the first ‘magining I’m recording for this podcast. There’s a reason for that.

I wrote it in a class I took with Maureen Ryan Griffin in 2007. It was one of my earliest conjuring.

When Ruth Moose, a professor of Creative Writing at UNC Chapel Hill, sponsored a Flash Fiction Contest through the Charlotte Writer’s Club in 2012, I shaped and edited Slither and submitted it.

Ruth judged my story to be the first place winner. This contest spurred me to continue dreaming and writing and since then I’ve won the contest three other times, twice more as first place, once in third. (You’ll hear those other stories down the road.)

Thank you Ruth for the acknowledgment, and thank you Maureen for being my writing coach and teacher for the past fifteen luscious years.