Becky Mushko's former website
My new website is http://www.beckymushko.com.
This site will remain for a while. Meanwhile, visit the new site.
Where I'm coming from: I'm a retired teacher/freelance writer/children's writer who lives in Franklin County, Virginia, where I'm close to—but not on—Smith Mountain Lake. I live 15 miles from the town of Rocky Mount, which made national headlines in the summer of 2004 when a bear wandered into Franklin Memorial Hospital. In June 2007, a guy drove his F-150 into the Confederate soldier statue in front of the court house and demolished the entire statue. In November 2007, my tombstone was stolen from my family cemetery.
In mid-May, I appeared on "Cover to Cover," the Blue Ridge Regional Library's cable show on BTW21. My episode (#98) is here. On May 11, three of my Virginia Writers Club colleagues and I presented "The Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing" at the Roanoke City Library.
In June, my short story "Rat-Killing" placed second at the Wytheville Chautauqua Literary Festival.
On August 1, 2009, I presented a workshop at the Hanover Book Festival: "What Your English Teacher Never Told You But Should Have."
In October 2009, my manuscript was runner-up in the Smith Mountain Arts Council Novel Contest.
On January 23, 2010, my three Virginia Writers Club colleagues and I will appear on a self-publishing panel at the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference at Hollins University. On February 16, 2010, we will conduct a self-publishing workshop for the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge.
Read my blog or a sample of "Peevish Advice."
The view from my study window: the Peaks of Otter
NEWS
On August 7, 2008, I learned that I won the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest's "Vile Pun" Division with this dreadful sentence:
Vowing to get revenge on his English teacher for making him memorize Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality,” Warren decided to pour sugar in her gas tank, but he inadvertently grabbed a sugar substitute so it was actually Splenda in the gas.
