M. M. De Voe

I write Short Stories, Novels, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Poetry.
Originally from College Station, TX, I currently live in New York, NY. I am also a parent.

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Author’s Bio

M. M. DeVoe is a Manhattan-based fiction writer who has won awards and published short fiction in nearly every genre. She holds an MFA from Columbia University where she was a Writing Fellow and where she studied under Michael Cunningham, Helen Schulman, Joyce Johnson, and thesis advisor Matthew Sharpe. She has also won multiple Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grants for her work with the Pen Parentis Literary Salons, which she started with her friend Arlaina Tibensky in 2009 as a platform for writers who are also parents.

With stories from dozens of prize-winning, eminent writers like Min Jin Lee and Marcy Dermansky, DeVoe wrote BOOK&BABY for the 10th anniversary of Pen Parentis. It is the definitive guide to staying on creative track after having kids. Includes fact-driven data analysis (by Mary Harpin) and plenty of MM’s commentary. And some great illustrations by Pen Parentis Title Member June Gervais! The book won first prize at the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for books on writing/publishing. It has tips for writers who have kids from infant to grown-and-flown and is arranged by the age of the child to save you time!

Book & Baby: The Complete Guide to Managing Chaos & Becoming a Wildly Successful Writer-Parent

Under DeVoe’s leadership, the organization Pen Parentis, Ltd, was incorporated in 2013 as a 501c3 nonprofit to provide resources to authors who are parents to help keep them on creative track. She continues to serve as founding director, while working on a novel and raising two ingenious city-kids and their urban rabbit.

In addition to co-hosting the monthly literary salons since 2009, she has served as one of the Team Leaders in the Pen Parentis Cycle of Support since 2018.

Sign up for her weekly newsletter at mmdevoe.substack.com and watch for her frequent articles/essays on mmdevoe.medium.com

Short Fiction:

• “A House on Baltic Avenue,” Ellipsis Zine (Birmingham, England), October 26, 2020.

• “Needs Milk,” The Ilanot Review: Toxic, (Israel) Fall, 2020.

• “The Mayor of Flashback,” Santa Barbara Literary Review, Vol 5. August 2020. (Pushcart nominated)

• “Shutter,” Santa Barbara Literary Review, Vol 3. June 2019. Reposted October 28, 2020.

  ​more fiction:

  “Seven Reasons Why You May Not Have a Rhinocerous as a Pet,” Daily Science Fiction, August 25, 2015.

• “Remember?” on the site PeopleHolding.com – March 23, 2015
• “Attention Passengers,” Transitions, Winter 2014 Saskatchewan, Canada.
• “Tastemakers,” The Brooklyn Rail, Summer 2014
• “Cineplex,” BuzzyMag, August 1, 2014
• “Cooked,” SpeckLit, June 6, 2014
• “Latte,” SpeckLit, April 23, 2014
• “Shadows,” St. Petersburg Review #6, 2013.
•  “Leave Me,” Stone Voices: a Journal for the Visual Arts, Fall, 2012.
• “Fuerte Marejada,” JERRY MAGAZINE, issue 2, spring 2011.
• “Empty,” New Millenium Writings (issue 20) 2011.
• “See You Later,” Black Static #18, August-September 2010.
• “Treasure,” Green Mountains Review, Vol. XXIII, no. 1, 2010.
• “The Champion,” Bellevue Literary Review, Vol. 10, no. 1, Spring 2010.
• “Audition” and “Virgin Flight 244, Chicago to Heathrow,” Literal Latte, November 2009.
• “Keep Watch,” Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts, August 2007.
• “From the Leaf Lore,” Fickle Muses: an online journal of myth and legend, February 2007.
• “Ants,” THEMA, Just Describe Them to Me, Autumn 2006.
• “Down Below,” The Oklahoma Review, Fall 2006.
• “Dulce Domum,” The First Line, Autumn 2006.
• “Susie’s Song,” Triplopia, Vol.V, Issue 1, Memory, Jan/Feb 2006.
• “An Annual Checkup,” Ladyfriend #8, the Health Issue, Winter 2004.
• “Riding Off,” Intersections, Columbia Daily Spectator: Arts Issue, May 5, 2004.
• “Sigita Washes,” Bee Museum, the journal of Baltic Writers in English, vol. 1, no. 2, Summer 2002.
• “The View,” Bee Museum, the journal of Baltic Writers in English, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 2002.
• “Family,” Slant, vol. 11, no. 1, Spring, 2000.
• “Family,” PRISM: international, vol. 38, no. 1, Fall 1999.

In Anthologies

• “Orran’s Music Emporium” The Lane of Unusual Traders, ed. Sue Wright (Tiny Owl Workshop, 2015) 
• “Ants,” A Woman’s Touch: 11 stories of murder and misdemeanors, ed. Anne Steussy (Kindle Edition, 2011).
• “Leave Me,”  The Wordstock Ten: finalists from the 2009 Wordstock Short Fiction Competition (Franklin, Beedle & Associates, Inc., 2009).
• “Dulce Domum,” Best of The First Line II: Editors’ Choice 2002 – 2006 (Blue Cubicle Press, March 2008).
• “Overheard,” Stirring up a Storm: tales of the sexual, the sensual, and the erotic, (Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 2005) ed. Marilyn Jaye Lewis.
• “A Rose,” PEN Anthology: Lithuania: In Her Own Words, an anthology of contemporary Lithuanian writing, (Tyto Alba, Vilnius, 1997) ed. Laima Sruoginis.

Prizes:

M. M. De Voe has won awards, mention, or been shortlisted for the following awards:

• 2014 #NYCPoetweet winner
• 2013 Bridport Prize (shortlisted: top 100 of 5800 entries)
• The Wake, five-word poetry contest (2012, winner)
• Carve Magazine Fiction contest (2011, short story, finalist)
• 2010 NMW short-short fiction award (first prize, $500)
• The Campaign for Real Fear (2010, one of 20 winners)
• 2009 Literal Latte Short-Short Fiction Contest (first prize, $1,000)
• 2009 Wordstock Short Fiction Award (top ten anthologized)
• 2008 Eric Hoffer Award for Best New Writing (short story, finalist)
• Sojourn’s 2007 Editor’s Choice Award (Work in Fiction, winner)
• Best of the First Line 2006 (short story, winner)
• The 2004 Dana Awards (unpublished novel, top ten shortlist)
• The 2004 Bellwether Prize (unpublished novel, honorable mention)
• Fish Publishing’s 2003 Short Story Prize (short list)
• H. E. Francis Short Story Competition 2002 (finalist)
• Phoebe’s 2001 Short Story Contest (second prize)
• PRISM: international 1999 Short Fiction Competition (honorable mention)
• nowCulture.com’s 1998 Annual Poetry Contest (second prize)
• The 1997 Raymond Carver Short Fiction Competition (second prize)
• The Lyric’s 1990 National Poetry Contest (first prize, $1,000)

Additionally her fiction has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes, as well as Best of the Net and Best of the Web short fiction prizes.

She won the inaugural Regina Russo Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from the University of Notre Dame of Maryland in June 1999, and won Sigma Tau Delta’s Alpha-Alpha chapter’s inaugural Distinguished Alumnae Award in 2014.

De Voe is also the recipient of the following fellowships and grants:

• 2012 The Fund for Creative Communities (for her work with Pen Parentis)
• 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant (for her work with Pen Parentis)
• Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation Grants for Gay-Positive Historical Fiction
• Fiction Fellowship: Summer Literary Seminars, St. Petersburg, Russia
• Columbia Writing Fellowship
• 2019 Lithuanian Writers of the Diaspora Forum (inaugural) in Vilnius

Photo Credit: Luba Grosman