I Have a Story to Tell

Dear Family and Friends,

I have another story to tell.

Last month, I was accepted to the Writer's Studio, a year-long writing workshop at Simon Fraser University here in Vancouver. The instructors, award-winning writers in various genres, choose from among the applicants to form small cohorts that will work together for the year. I was selected in the first round, for the fiction group.

This was my second year of applying to graduate programs for writing, and I had begun to wonder whether the subject matter I write about would be able to find a place in academia. SFU is an excellent university with a progressive mandate. Leanne Dunic, the writer-professor who chose me—a woman, lyric memoirist, and short story writer who publishes with one of Canada's preeminent independent publishing houses, Talonbooks—is apparently just the type of writer who reads a portfolio with short story titles like, "Watching Pretty Woman With My Sugar Daddy," and "Smegma," and decides, this chick is with me.

I believe I will find a community there who wants to hear my voice.

To know me, as you all do, has been to know my long struggle to place my writing front and center in my life. Committing to this continuing studies program ensures that I will spend a year living as a full-time writer, find the mentorship, structure, and accountability I need to identify my strongest projects and work on them, and forge connections that can provide a path to publication. This is my dream. You all know it.

So, my friends, if, over these years, you have enjoyed reading the writing I've shared, or have heard me perform, or have merely been curious or amused by the arc of my goings-on, and feel like it's high time for the Meredith Lingerfelt story to drop—if you think a book by me is something you would eventually like to read—I would be dearly grateful if you decided to support my entry into this writing program. Tuition is $5500 CAD, and to have help with any portion of that amount I would consider a real blessing, and a loving gesture of belief in my ability.

I would be in touch to thank every single one of you, and I am offering live tarot card readings on Zoom in exchange to anyone who donates $40.

If you aren't in the position to offer a donation, yet you are thinking of me and wish me well, please Like, share, or comment below. You really can't underestimate how your support—your reading, your laughter, and your love—have already gotten me this far.