Grit, true

My first magazine piece has been published! I received two copies of the magazine in the mail today. I was so excited and happy I nearly cried.

The magazine is called Grit. According to the letterhead, it's been America's Rural Lifestyle Magazine for 124 years! Now, what is a suburban girl like me doing contributing to a farming magazine, you ask?

It's kind of a long story. Grit actually started out as a newspaper published in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, not too far from where my grandmother lived and my parents grew up. My grandmother used to subscribe, and I would read it when visiting her as a child.

Fast-forward to last year. Sometime last summer, I wrote a nostalgia piece called "Blackberry Memories," about picking blackberries with my dad near my grandma's house, and helping my mom and grandma prepare the berries for jams and pies and cobblers. The whole thing was very wrapped up in my love for my grandmother, who died in September of 2001, shortly after Abby was born.

A few months ago, I hit on the idea of looking up Grit. I wondered if it were even still in publication, and if they accepted manuscripts. Turns out the magazine has a regular department called "Looking Back," a nostalgia column. I decided to send in the piece, along with a cover letter explaining how I knew of Grit when it was a newspaper (it's now a bi-monthly magazine published by Ogden Publishing out of Topeka, Kansas.)

Lo and behold, I got a bite from the editors in the form of an email in February. I wrote back and hadn't heard anything since then, so I was wondering what was going on. Then the contract came last week, and the magazines (with a check) today!

And it looks great. They assigned an illustrator, who really did a beautiful job (Dad, you never looked so good!) They did some light editing, which I think made the piece better, too.

So it's the May-June issue of Grit, America's Rural Lifestyle Magazine for 124 years. Big purple flowers and a larger-than-life honeybee on the front. Look for it on your newsstands soon!

Grandma, this one's for you. XXOO