Amanda Auchter is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, HuffPost, CNN, Black Warrior Review, Shenandoah, The Massachusetts Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day project, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College and is a book reviewer for the Indianapolis Review and Rhino Poetry. She lives in Houston, TX.
A woman holding a stack of dresses and jeans enters the fitting room and asks if I’m helping out my mom. It’s 1995 and I’m eighteen years old. I’ve been a sales associate at this department store for over a year. I point to my blue name tag, say, “No, I work here.” She smiles and remains by the entrance. … Read more →