Jen Michalski is author of the novel The Tide King, winner of the 2012 Big Moose Prize. She is the author of two collections of fiction, From Here and Close Encounters, and a collection of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now. In 2013 she was named one of “50 Women to Watch” by The Baltimore Sun and won a “Best of Baltimore” for Best Writer from Baltimore Magazine. She is the founding editor of the literary quarterly jmww and host of The Starts Here! Reading Series and the biannual Lit Show. She lives in Baltimore, MD
 

“Beautiful Ashes,” An Introduction by Jen Michalski

The new year is always a time of renewal, but February to me always feels like the dark before the dawn– the salt- and snow-stained streets, pale and stark trees and skies like Wyeth paintings. There is a bareness of life, an aching loss of hope, a string of sleepless nights, and yet, there is beauty in its skeletal symmetry, its promise of rebirth. Beautiful ashes, from which the phoenix will rise. Continue reading →