Mary Helen Specht’s second novel Mudlark will be released by Penguin Random House Ballantine in 2026. Her first novel, Migratory Animals, was published by Harper Perennial.

Selected Essays

“How Could I Embrace a Village?”
The New York Times, February 5, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07love.html

“Woody Lived Here Too”
The Texas Observer, October 2013
http://www.texasobserver.org/woody-lived/

Selected Fiction

“House of Guns”
The Florida Review
PDF reprint

“In Search of a Bird”
Night Train
http://www.nighttrainmagazine.com/contents/specht_7_1.php

Other Recent Works

“Night Island”
Forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, December 2014

“At the Crossroad: In Search of the Nigerian Abiku”
World Literature Today, Sept./Oct. 2013

“Literary Ibadan”
Bookslut, March 2013

“The Pilot”
Southwestern American Literature, Spring 2013, Issue 38.2

“I’d Give You a True Word”
The Texas Observer, 2012

“The Disappearance of Gertrude Beasley”
The Texas Observer, May 17, 2012

“Who Gets the Dog?”
The Southwest Review, 2011, Vol. 96, No. 1

“Prairie Renaissance”
The Texas Observer, Aug 11, 2010

“Jeweled Betrayal”
The Texas Observer, June 9, 2010

“Border Teens”
The Texas Observer, November 3, 2009

“How’d You Turn a Billion Steers Into Buildings Made of Mirrors”
The Texas Observer, July 10, 2009

“Leda and the Swans”
Blue Mesa, Spring 2009, Issue 22

“Texas Night-Blooming”
The Southwest Review, 2008, Vol. 93, No. 3

“The Living Statue”
Hunger Mountain, Spring 2008, No. 12

“House of Guns”
The Florida Review, Spring 2007, Vol. 32.1

“Contemporary White Fiction on Africa: Is There a Role for White Writers in Post-Colonial Literary Resistance?”
Ibadan Journal of English Studies, 2006, Vol. 3 (published 2007)

“Too Heavy to Carry Home”
Colorado Review, Fall/Winter 2006, Vol. XXXIII, No. 3

“The Emerging Critical Powers of Cool”
Michigan Quarterly Review, Fall 2006, Vol. XLV, No. 4