New Artifact Story by Anne Valente up at Necessary Fiction

It’s fitting that Anne Valente is one of the first writers featured at my Necessary Fiction Writer in Residence project, because I first fell in love with Anne’s writing when I read a piece of hers at Necessary Fiction last year. The story, “May This Strap Restrain You,” is a beautiful showcase for everything great about Anne’s writing. It’s full of lush descriptive language, haunting and sometimes harrowing settings, and the secret struggle of a person just trying to be, and act, and exist with other people in some meaningful way in the world. Every piece Anne writes is thoughtful and profound; she’s not a writer who tosses off throwaway pieces, ever.

All of these qualities that I so admire in Anne’s fiction grace her story for NF as well. This is a sad piece. (I’m already sensing that most of these pieces will be sad, perhaps because they describe a people no longer living, a place no longer standing? Whatever the reason, the sense of great loss is palpable in many of the pieces I’ve received so far.) But it is also a piece filled with hope born of sadness, with fear overturned by courage, with loss shouldered only through great love. It is, in short, a lovely and poignant story, and I highly recommend you read it right now.