BIO: Meredith Wadley is an American-Swiss who lives and works in a medieval micro town on the Rhine River. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon, and her writing has been anthologized and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her monthly musings about life and writing plus her publication links appear on her website, www.meredithwadley.com. On social media, find her at BlueSky: @meredithwadley, Twitter: @meredithwadley. Instagram: @meredithkaisi.

Basic – MFA

Meredith Wadley is an American-Swiss living and working in a medieval micro town on the Rhine River. Her writing has been anthologized and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Read her latest work in The Disappointed Housewife, Subnivean, The Woolf, and forthcoming in Across the Margin and The Vincent Brothers Review. Her monthly musings about life and writing plus her publication links appear on her website, www.meredithwadley.com. On social media, find her at BlueSky: @meredithwadley, Twitter: @meredithwadley. Instagram: @meredithkaisi.

Basic – including pubs

Meredith Wadley is an award-winning and anthologized American-Swiss writer who lives in a medieval micro town on the Rhine River. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Find her long-form fiction in publications including As You Were, Collateral, Five on the Fifth, Line of Advance, Litbreak Magazine, Longleaf Review, Subnivean, New World Writing, and upstreet. Her flash fiction has appeared in publications including The Woolf, The Disappointed Housewife, Bandit Fiction, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, Flash Boulevard, Fudoki Magazine, Gone Lawn, JMWW, Lammergeier, Lunate, Reflex Fiction, and Orca Lit. Her monthly musings about life and her publication links appear on her website, www.meredithwadley.com. On social media, find her at BlueSky: @meredithwadley, Twitter: @meredithwadley. Instagram: @meredithkaisi.

Long – including pubs

Meredith Wadley is an American-Swiss who lives and works in a medieval micro town on the Rhine River. Her writing has been anthologized and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Find her short stories in a variety of publications, including As You Were: The Military Review, Five on the Fifth, Line of Advance, Longleaf Review, New World Writing, Subnivean, and upstreet. Her flash fiction appears in Bandit Fiction, Gone Lawn, JMWW, Lammergeier, and Orca Lit. She’s at work on a collection of short stories, a collection of flash fiction, and a campus novel involving misogyny and plagiarism. Her monthly musings about life and writing plus her publication links appear on her website, www.meredithwadley.com. On social media, find her at BlueSky: @meredithwadley, Twitter: @meredithwadley. Instagram: @meredithkaisi.

Long – at work on . . . 

Monthly musings from Switzerland and links to published works.

I'm an American-Swiss writer and military brat who lives and works in a medieval micro town on the Rhine River. My work has been anthologized and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Meredith Writes

A work of fiction which imagines an alternate conclusion to the Myth of Sisyphus…



Sisyphus Becomes Another Person

The boy from the fountain stood in front me, blocking my way. I stepped aside. He followed, his eyes sparking. Something seemed off. 

"Dog"

They took Bella Seràgnoli. They took Lorenzo the Spaniard. A young DJ lasted only
a few days in intensive care before being stacked like wood onto a military vehicle, the
procession of which we watch on the TV; not a priest in sight.

“Outside as a Balcony (Italian: Fuori come un balcone)” (Reprint of rework)

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Several of us crawl against the current for a bit of sport. The river sweeps us along, regardless. We’re helpless against its flow.

Barely Keeping Abreast

Outside as a Balcony (Italian: Fuori come un balcone)

Five Hours After Annie Leibovitz’s Portrait, John’s Shot Dead

At the campsite, not knowing what compelled me to do so, I stared into the crackling fire and said, "You know, Mom, we've just finished smoking a joint, and we're as high as kites."

“Selective Parenting”

Outside, a handful of crows fluttered and cawed in the cherry tree, and avô, despite their commotion above him, snored, chapfallen. Sofia Mariana, ready to laugh at the old man, felt a finger press her lips. Camões. “Sshhh!” he said.

“Go Bother Camões”

The rain fell as thick and straight as a guillotine. It pounded the asphalt shingles of the houses along the Aldrich side of the street. Their drains gurgled meatily, and scallops of water swept down their driveways.

Pepper's Side of the Street

Her daddy’s storytelling always began with the same question and took Janey swimming in irrigation canals, stealing watermelons out of a farmer’s field, shuffling along a dusty road to the West Texas town of Ystleta, or galloping Smokey . . . 

Departure

If the hitchhiker noticed the question’s disapproving tone, she ignored it. “I’m a poet,” she said as breezy as the air flowing through the open windows, the car gaining speed. “I’m walking the poem I write, and I’m writing the poem I walk.”



Walking the Poem

Lend an Ear

Five Are Catching a Flight in the Morning

The subject’s tapped his thighs with stiff fingers. “I’ve played piano,” he said. “I can still tap ‘Greensleeves,’ ‘Für Elise,’ ‘Trois Gymnopedies’ from memory—mais, comme un automates mécaniques.”

“French,” she murmured. Language fluency, she noted

"TAKE HOLD OF THE HAIR (SPANISH: TOMAR EL PELO)"


In 1939, war loomed. We, Switzerland’s able young men, cleaned our K31s, edged their bayonets, and polished our black leather boots. We buttoned into our green wool uniforms and reported for duty.

"The Bells on Her Hem Are Ringing (Turkish: Etekleri zil çalıyor)" "The Clever One Yields; the Donkey Stays Firm (Swiss-German: De Gschiider git nah, de Esel bliebt stah)"

We were a military family, so the logistics of Dad getting into ranching didn’t figure. Engineer, pilot, and instructor during that Denver stint in 1973, could he be ready to go civilian? Settle us in one place? Finally?

Crossing the Great Divide

Water trickled and gushed through the Swiss Valley of Müstair as if the whole world were melting.

Blackbird Flies

Martin, a widower, doesn’t realize that he’s dying. He sits in his daughter’s living room, wrapped in quilts despite a woodstove throwing heat. His bones ache despite the coziness of the reading chair he occupies.

Snow

Stevie’s thighs burned from the steep descent. She stopped to drink from her water bottle. This news she needed to share with Peter – she didn’t know how, or when, or even if.



Figs

On our canal, in the absence of trade and the din of tourists, we’re left to listen to the slap of waves, the clicks of loose rooftiles, and for the stealth of a silent predator. Beyond the city, there’s only water and the horizon, no sailboats . . .

“Outside as a Balcony (Italian: Fuori come un balcone)”  “Ride as a Hare (Russian: Ехать зайцем)”

In a basement apartment on a dead-end street, Quarantined Man sits on a piano stool at a makeshift desk and writes odes to an erstwhile lover, a player of timpani. From concrete floor to concrete ceiling, books sandbag the walls . . . 

"I See Black for You (German: Ich sehe Schwartz für Sie)" "Heading for a Cliff"

I sent you photos: my desk against fifteenth-century stone walls, my balcony’s view of ornamental herb beds, sunbathers by the pool, vineyards, olive orchards, and the medieval towers of distant hilltop towns. I recorded the sound of bells ringing...

"Not in Front What Is Behind (Texasdeutsch: Nicht vorne wie hinten sein)" "Single Grass, Single Dewdrop (Chinese: 一枝草，一點露)" "To Get There by Four Paths (French: Y aller par quatre chemins)"

Candlelight flickers. Near the izba’s sooty pech lies wee Alexander Stefanóvich. Soon,the babe will walk.Already, he can say “ax” and “knife,” and he’ll reach for scissors. For a bit longer still, Stefan Stefanóvich will work only as his son sleeps.

"You Can Sharpen an Ax on top of his Head (Russian: Хоть кол на голове теши)" "To Steal the German’s Pipe (Romanian: A Fura Luleaua Neamțului)" "Go Bother Camões (Portuguese: Vai Chatear o Camões)"

One afternoon, traces of mortal fear plaited the air above the den like strips of tattered silk. Fox yipped the alarm, and the rhythmic chaos of bellowing hounds stilled Vixen. The kits dropped their squirrel's tail tussle.

Ten People, Ten colors (Japanese: Juunin Toiro)

One day, a few dark fibers appeared in one of Basia’s glossy white fleeces. Over time, dark fibers tainted several staples. The birth year of Luka’s youngest son, an ewe produced a dark-fleeced lamb. Perhaps it’d come with a sullied pedigree?



"We See Whose Mother Is Spinning Black Wool. (Croatian: Da vidimo čija majka crnu vunu prede)" and "To Have a Stick in One’s Ear (Danish: At Have en Pind i Øret)"

Each village hen-turner had his own style. Ricardo witnessed a fellow in Alto Douro flipping his birds completely over . . . 

He’s Spent Many Years Turning Chickens (Portuguese: Ele já passou muitos anos a virar frangos)

“Bitte schön,” the gallerist said. The room’s parsimony amplified her soft voice, and she added that this hour was her favorite in the gallery; the evening light. She moved to the front of the table and half-sat upon it. 

The Favorite Hour

A border station on the radio played its early-bird program, new albums in their entirety. Gloria rocked her hips to Barbara Lynn’s bluesy “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.”

Runaway

The air carried hints of warm, wet earth, the scents as trace as the smell of pond on skin after a summer swim. Insects rasped. Out past the control tower, a mirage shimmied the runway. Brahman cattle grazed between grass-covered Quonset huts . . .

Mr. Allen's Long Visit

Imagine the cold and heaving Atlantic reaching Southern Portugal's coastline of honeycomb cliffs.

Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

meredithwadley

Selected work

Projects