Dead Housekeeping's Pushcart Nominees

With great pleasure, we sent in our nominations to be considered for the Pushcart Prize this year. Every essay in the Dead Housekeeping world of advice is special to us. These six exceptional pieces prove how much we can give the reader to know, see and feel in 250 words or less. We thank all of our contributors for sharing your memories and methods with us.

They are:

How To Be A Racist And Raise Your Granddaughter To Be An Anti-Racist On The Sly by Jennifer Cumby‪

Traveling Pies by Emily DeDakis

How to Make an Introduction by Sarah Grey

How to Name a Daughter by Rowan Beckett Grigsby

How to Make Daal by Saadia Muzaffar

How to Decorate by Jen Selk

photograph by Stefanie Le Jeunesse

If you have a memorial how-to to tell in 250 words or less, read our essays, and check out our submission guidelines.

How to Brag on Writers: Pushcart Nominees

It’s with great pleasure that we announce and re-share the essays we nominated for Pushcart Prizes this year! This writing by our contributors and editorial team, writing that represents the wide scope of memory and memorial and reflects good values for any home.

Our nominees:

Rowan Beckett Grigsby's How to Have Nice Things

Ashley Nicole Black's Sleeping Bags for Two or One

Jacqueline Bryant Campbell's 50 Tickets, or How to be a Good Citizen

Stefanie Le Jeunesse's How to Fry an Egg

Laura Lucas' Nine Kinds of Ice Cream

and How to Make the Coffee, written collaboratively by Dead Housekeeping editors.

In other good news, watch our site or our social media for our first foray into merchandise! Gear featuring the lovely new Dead Housekeeping logo by Jenny Poore.

Good News, Good Reads

Here at Dead Housekeeping we are all volunteers, dedicated to this concept and to the writing we get to share with you, but volunteers nonetheless, each with our own mix of priorities: jobs, studies, kids, international moves (that’s Asha) and our other creative projects.

Here’s the good news and good writing that we keep meaning to share:

Best of the Net nominees Rowan Beckett Grigsby and Laura Lucas!

We’ve nominated two of our favorite piece from the past year: How to Have Nice Things by Rowan Beckett Grigsby and Nine Kinds of Ice Cream by Laura Lucas. Both pieces are stunners, and will be considered for Best of the Net 2016, put together by Sundress Publications.

Artwork by Jenny Poore!

Our talented friend Jenny Poore has given us a gift: a new logo, which we will be unveiling soon!  We also owe Jenny for connecting us with her mother Linda, who taught us How to Properly Dry and Fold Cloth Diapers.

a sneak peek at our new design by Jenny Poore

Dead Housekeeping reading list!

Some of these we’ve shared on our Facebook page, others we’ve shared amongst our team, all we’ve agreed are worth a read and belong with us, on this site, somewhere at the intersection of death and the home:

• In Indonesia, the Torajan people exhume their dead and continue to care for their bodies in an every-three-years festival.
• We love this essay by Mara Wilson in the NYT, about siblings going through their mother’s things on the anniversary of her death. It’s an excerpt from her new book, Where Am I Now?: True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame.
• Jessica Lowe of Shreveport Louisiana wrote How to Gut a House (in 7 Steps). It’s full of practical post-flood instructions and you’ll need extra hankies.
• The remains of Civil War soldier Private Jewett Williams, 20th Maine Infantry, Company H were recently discovered in Oregon, and travelled to be honored at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park in Virginia on their way to his home state of Maine.

In memory: Contributing editor Jennifer Cumby’s friend Thais who left us 25 years ago, and DH friend Jodie Fletcher’s dad, Roy, who died this week.