This was my first and only piece of nonfiction. It's been a couple years since I wrote it, and I've had a lot of time to reflect back about those events. It was selected for an anthology of DC-based stories published annually by Politics and Prose, an awesome independent bookstore which is an establishment in this city. I do feel this was the best home for this story and am pleased to be included in a collection with other DC writers. They held a reading for the rollout of the anthology and I attended it with Sarah (the one mentioned in the piece.)
If you're curious about the pandas, it really was a stupid big deal..
Becky Malinsky/Smithsonian's National Zoo
Pandas are so stupid. Exception:
Number of submissions: 8. Ratio of positive feedback to number of submissions: 25%. Time from completing story until publication: 1 year, 4 months. I make absolutely no apologies for the pun in the title.