We have a winner!

Thanks to all of you who entered the Forgetting English giveaway (and also to those Kindle readers who enjoyed Forgetting English at only 99 cents) in honor of Short Story Month.

To enter the giveaway, readers contacted me with their favorite travel destinations — and I absolutely loved reading about your favorite places (many of which, like Maui and Tokyo) appear in Forgetting English and are favorites of mine as well).

On June 1, I randomly chose a winner: Julia Cousineau, who has graciously given me permission to share with all of you what she shared with me. Julia’s favorite travel memory was a ten-day stay in Tokyo during the early 1907s, when she was a flight attendant for Flying Tiger Airline; on this particular trip, she injured her knee and had a long stay in Japan, which inspired this poem:

The pickles were purple

the puppies were plump

the frog legs were stir fried

the peanut sauce spicy

the produce perfectly strange

murky air, gray pallor

sharp smells I know

nothing about…

a market place in Tokyo

Am I ready for this

much unfamiliar?

–Julia Cousineau

Thanks to Julia for letting me share her memory and poem … and thanks again to all who entered the giveaway.

Here’s to every month being Short Story Month!