Writing

Cross-stitch pattern from Craft mag.
"The sound of the story comes first." -Grace Paley
I've been writing since third grade, when a short story about squirrels overtaking a slumber party won third prize in a local writing contest. These days I tend to write about loss, love, lust, loneliness, and the joys of becoming a parent after enduring an undergraduate degree's worth of infertility (four long years).
Life, even when it hurts like hell, tends to be pretty sweet.
Fiction
- "Explaining Divorce to My Three-Year-Old," in Fractured Lit, September 2021. *Nominated for Best Microfiction 2022*
- "The Hottest and Longest Lasting Fire," in Reckon Review, March 2021. *Nominated for Best of the Net 2021*
- "After the Final No," flash fiction, published in Paddle Shots: A River Pretty Anthology, Vol. 2 in April 2016
- One of five finalists for The Southeast Review's World's Best Short-Short Story Contest 2015; judged by Robert Olen Butler: publication of "Man Lace" in Volume 34.1 (2016)
- One of five finalists for The Southeast Review's World's Best Short-Short Story Contest 2014; judged by Robert Olen Butler: publication of "Donna" in Volume 33.1 (2015)
Creative nonfiction
- "Why A Mother Teaches Her Daughter to Shovel Snow," forthcoming in Moon City Review, Spring 2023.
- "The Pie Was a Final Draft: Good Grief," in Reckon Review, February 2023.
- "Text to My Daughter's Daisy Troop Leader," in Pithead Chapel, February 2023.
- "The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls and the Root of All Suffering," in Reckon Review, November 2022.
- "With All the Other Lonely-Hearts of South Grand," in Ruby, November 2022.
- "Beginnings: An Interview with Lyndsey Ellis," in Reckon Review, August 2022.
- "What Comes to Mind When You Call Me A Goddess," in The Citron Review: A Journal of Brief Literature, Summer 2022 issue (June 2022).
- "The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Baking a Bad Cake," in Reckon Review, May 2022.
- "Cuffing Season in Your 40s," in Complete Sentence, March 5, 2022. *Nominated for Best of the Net 2022*
- "The Pie Was the Final Draft: Scraps" in Reckon Review, January 2022.
- "On Loving Wayne's World from 1992 to 2022" in The Daily Drunk, January 2022.
- "The Dead Jar," in the anthology, And If That Mockingbird Don't Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative (Alternating Current Press), January 2022.
- "Double Feature" co-written with Jillian Luft, in Final Girl Bulletin Board, November 2021. *Nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2022*
- "To the Teeth," online series "Dispatches from the Valley" in Schuylkill Valley Journal Online, October 2021.
- "For Miranda, Who Waxes," in HAD (Hobart After Dark), August 2021. *Nominated for Best of the Net 2022*
- "For Molly Young," in Bending Genres, June 2021 [Issue 21].
- "Stopping to Get Ice Cream on the Trail of Tears," in Essay Daily, May 2021.
- "Middle-aged Midwestern Moms Writing Memoir," (mac)ro(mic), February 2021
- "My Desire is George Costanza Eating a Sandwich in Bed," The Daily Drunk (January 2021)
- "Altar XII: A Eulogy 18 Years Late," Versification's Day of the Dead series (November 2020)
- "Kate Chopin," in "Literary Landscapes" for The New Territory Magazine (October 2020)
- "You Think About Gorgons and Rosebushes and Resurrection" in Apple in the Dark (September 2020)
- "Something Borrowed, Something Blue" in Complete Sentence (August 2020)
- "December 18, 2009" in Past Ten (December 2019)
- "My One, My Only" in Brevity (May 2019) and Creative Nonfiction's "Sunday Short Reads" (July 2019)
- "Before the House Stirs" for the "Life in 10 Minutes Project" (May 2019)
- Staff writer for The Common Reader: A Journal of the Essay (August 2018-August 2019); two pieces nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2018): "Everyday Wilderness" and "Try to Praise the Mutilated World"
- "Moms and Dads" for The Story Collider, "true, personal stories about science" (March 2018)
- "The Origins of Hunger" in New South - flash creative nonfiction (January 2018)
- "What Does It Mean to Heart This?" creative nonfiction in Issue 23 of Midwestern Gothic (October 2016)
- "The Terrible Beauty of Midwestern Road Rage" lyric essay in Issue 02 of The New Territory Magazine (September 2016)
- "What Blue Tastes Like," micro-essay, published in "EAT: A Literature + Photography Installation" at Centre College's Norton Center for the Arts in Danville, Kentucky, mid-May 2016
- Contributing writer to the University of Missouri Press / Missouri School of Journalism anthology, Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference (April 2016): personal essay, "Soul Train on Mute"
- Tiny Truth via Twitter, Creative Nonfiction, Fall/Winter 2011, Issue 43 (Reviewed in New Pages): "No pants on, hollers the 86-year-old landlord to his tenant from the faded blue La-Z-Boy. "Just leave the check at the door."
- Tiny Truth via Twitter, Creative Nonfiction, Summer 2011, Issue 42: "The tornado was selectively cruel: Maggie's yellow dahlias and peonies bloomed. Yet lingerie & bedsheets swayed in the branches."
- The Rant Issue of the Tucson Weekly: "Tubas, The Absence of, in Pop Music"
Conferences, writing retreats, close calls
- One of twenty writers nationwide accepted into Iota: the conference of short prose (August 16-19, 2016) on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, just outside of Lubec, Maine (studied with Dinty Moore and Mark Doty)
- Top 30 Finalist for Creative Nonfiction's "Waiting" contest (out of 650 submissions), Spring 2015
- Honorable Mention for Chusma House Publication's First Annual Short Story Contest (2004): "Gretel Grows Up"
- Top 20 Finalist for New Letters' Dorothy Capon Prize for Best Essay (2004)
Academic writing
- Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Fall 2013, Issue 18.1, An Interview with Dr. William Endres
- Midwest Writing Centers Association Newsletter, Spring 2011, Wanting a Scooter, Drinking Root Beer, and Writing Center Praxis
Book reviews
- Tucson Weekly, March 16, 2006: Review of Christine Granados' collection of short stories, Brides and Sinners in El Chuco (University of Arizona Press)
- Tucson Weekly, June 15, 2006: Review of Demetria Martínez' essay collection, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana (University of Oklahoma Press)
Food writing: Personal essays & restaurant reviews
- Sauce Magazine, March 1, 2009, The Procrastinator's Guide to Baking - personal essay nominated by then managing editor of Sauce Magazine, Katie O'Connor, for a 2010 James Beard Award in writing
- Sauce Magazine, October 2008, Very Sharp Knives (essay)
- Tucson Weekly, February 9, 2006, Bread Hunt! (review)
Interviews
- Tucson Weekly, April 20, 2006, T Q&A with Spring Ulmer
- Tucson Weekly, March 30, 2006, T Q&A with Dr. Gary E. Schwartz
- Tucson Weekly, May 4, 2006, T Q&A with author and journalist Alan Weisman
Social media and blogging
- 140-character microessay via Twitter, Creative Nonfiction, Fall/Winter 2011, Issue 43 (Reviewed in New Pages)
- 140-character microessay via Twitter, Creative Nonfiction, Summer 2011, Issue 42
- When Mom Was My Age, #39, media professor and speaker Jane Friedman's website, July 18, 2011