So I got strapped into the little car alone. Of course she couldn’t join me on the rollercoaster she had to watch over that inanimate bovine and treat it as though it were a thing of value. Mir was watching me and I couldn’t back out. By the time I realized I was queued up for the rollercoaster, it was too late for me to change my decision. I stood in the first line I found, huffy, just to look as though I had somewhere more important to be. “Mo,” she said, fidgeting with the multiple cow legs wrapped absurdly around her neck, trying to get me to wait up. A bell went off, a cowbell, I guess, and the barker handed over the stuffed cow to her. Your arrival is uncertain.” The card was still in my pocket.Īnd then, at the beanbag throw, I’d barely hit the lever, but Mir positively smashed it. A moving mannequin behind the glass-bald, unisex-had wagged its waxy finger at me, and the machine spit out a little card. They only give you two throws, and neither of mine had been strong enough.īefore the beanbag throw, I’d had my fortune told from a coin-operated machine. I was mad because I’d tried to win the cow, too, but my beanbag hadn’t plopped against the lever hard enough. It had giant plastic eyes, half-lidded, as though it were surprised yet not at all enthused to find itself at the fair. The toy was almost as big as she was, and she had draped it over her body and was parading it over the fairground.

Drop me a message.Mir had actually won the cow, the stuffed yellow monstrosity, all floppy shoulders and hips. For other reasons.) In 2023, my feet are in recovery. I ran my first 5k in November 2015, and three months later I ran my first half-marathon. I have been to Europe (Italy, Greece, England, and Iceland), the Middle East (Israel), Asia (India) and Africa (South Africa). Within the Americas, I’ve also traveled to Canada, Mexico, and Paraguay. I’ve lived in the US, where I was born, and Colombia, where I moved as an adult.

My husband, Arturo Serrano, is the author of the alternate history novel To Climates Unknown (2021), reviewed in the magazine Strange Horizons.

I came to AWP in Philadelphia in March 2022 (check out my book haul!) and a month later visited Brown University for the 20th annual Casey Shearer Memorial Award event. I read my short story by invitation at Inkberry Books in Colorado in 2018 advocated for human rights in Massachusetts before the 2018 midterm elections traveled to Reykjavík, Iceland to represent Colombia at the 2019 Humanists International conference and spent a month journeying through India by train in 2019.

Painting Dragons by Tucker Lieberman