The Interior Passage

Fiction samples

The Interior Passage Sort of a mystical story, weaving together dreams, light and darkness, the fourth-century hagiography The Life of Antony ... and a colonoscopy.

In the Middle of Nowhere was long-listed for the Fish One-Page Prize in 2008. Didn't win, but there are a lot of entries to that contest, so I guess the long list is something.

The Demon Speak carefully. You never know who might be listening.

Fark Those Takkloving Aliens Published October 2009 on the online magazine Every Day Fiction, which is devoted to flash fiction (under 1,000 words). The title makes sense when you read the story.

Going through the Motions This one appeared on Every Day Fiction August 31, 2010. (Perfect timing for a story about the end of summer.) It was chosen to appear in the anthology The Best of Every Day Fiction Three, published in 2011.

The Barrier, chapbook, 66 pages, $5.95 (Back Channel Press, 2011). Composed of three short stories: "The Barrier," "The Fulfillment," and "The Wedding Party."

Nonfiction samples

These all ran in a newspaper called the National Catholic Reporter, where I worked for five years, and all but the last were published under the name "Antonia Ryan." (I was a nun, or more specifically a nun-in-training, for nearly seven years. That was my religious name.)

I wrote scads of stuff for the NCR, but these are among my favorites of the bunch. You can also link to several more reviews and articles at the end of my resume.

I shall see wonders enough A personal column I wrote for the NCR website reflecting on my lifelong desire to be a writer and on the Grimm’s fairy tale “The King’s Son Who Feared Nothing.” (This one offers proof that Antonia and Erin are the same person!)

Poe's role in the story of American literature There's nothing particularly remarkable about this book review. I just thought it was cool that I got to write about Poe. I picked the book out of the slush pile myself.

Longing for an unseen future I wrote this review of Alice McDermott's novel After This during a year away from the NCR, when I taught mass comm classes at a Kansas college (as noted in the bio line to this piece). I liked the book because of its mystical sense of the transience of things, what Japanese poets call mono no aware.

The noonday demon casting its shadow over time My review of the book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, by Kathleen Norris.