Published Works and Awards

Nonfiction

“I Never Gave Up and Now Have Joy” CPTSD Foundation blog https://cptsdfoundation.org/2024/10/01/i-never-gave-up-and-now-have-joy/

“I Hated Myself for What I Did — Then Realized I was a Victim” Newsweek.com https://www.newsweek.com/i-hated-myself-what-i-did-then-realized-i-was-victim-1933281

Readers Write The Sun magazine https://www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/583-shaving

“Moving Day” (excerpt from A Minor, Unaccompanied: Memoir of a Teen Musician’s Odyssey) https://www.grandedameliterary.com/post/moving-day

“Spilled Beans” (excerpt from A Minor, Unaccompanied: Memoir of a Teen Musician’s Odyssey) https://www.quibblelit.com/spilled-beans-by-polly-hansen [Trigger warning: sexually explicit material. Today I would spare the reader some passages, but it’s been published.]

“Take Me, Mommy” (excerpt from A Minor, Unaccompanied: Memoir of a Teen Musician’s Odyssey) https://45thparallellitmag.com/polly-hansen

“Cosmic Farm” (excerpt from A Minor, Unaccompanied, A Teen Musician’s Odyssey) Fall 2024 print issue of Midwest Review and online.

“Learning Not to Interfere as an Act of Love” personal essay https://pollyhansen.com/learning-not-to-interfere-as-an-act-of-love (first published in Vol. XI, Metonym Literary Journal, Spring 2023 issue)

Fiction

“Frances Awakes” fiction, Fall 2023 print issue of The Heartland Review.

“Milk” fiction published in Meaningful Conflicts: The Art of Friction, The Off-Campus Writers Workshop anthology, available from Amazon.

“The Green Monster” fiction published in Bright Flash Literary Review.

Awards:

Finalist in 2023 Doris Betts Fiction Prize for “Journey to the Center.”

Winner of the 2022 Coming-of-Age Memoir Magazine Prize for Books for A Minor, Unaccompanied: A Teen Musician’s Odyssey (former title Nasty Girl) https://memoirmag.com/nonfiction/2022-memoir-prize-for-books-winners/