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.

Anthologies

Forthcoming: featured essay in The Past Ten: an Anthology (Cornerstone Press), edited by Donald Quist, Kali White VanBaale, and Bailey Gaylin Moore, 2025.
Forthcoming: featured essay in Middle Ground: Personal Stories about the Places of Midwestern Literature (University of Illinois Press), 2025.
Forthcoming: "Text to My Daughter's Daisy Troop Leader" will feature as a supplemental reading in the Epistolary chapter for Dr. Jill Talbot's forthcoming craft book, The Essay Form(s) (Columbia University Press), 2024.
"The Dead Jar," in the anthology, And If That Mockingbird Don't Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative (Alternating Current Press), January 2022.
Contributing writer to the Missouri School of Journalism anthology, Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference (University of Missouri Press), April 2016, personal essay, "Soul Train on Mute"

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

"The Pie Was a Final Draft: Homecoming," in Reckon Review, March 2024.
"The Pie Was a Final Draft: On Bourbon Pecan Pie & Rediscovering Love," in Reckon Review, January 2024.
"Smoke & Mirrors with Emily O. Gravett," in SmokeLong Quarterly, March 2023.
"Why A Mother Teaches Her Daughter to Shovel Snow," 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.
"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, May 2016
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

Casperia, Italy - flash writing retreat with writers Kathy Fish and Nancy Stohlman, September 2024
Prague Summer Program for Writers participant, July 2023 (studied with Rebecca Rukeyeser, Patricia Hampl)
The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow resident in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, May 2023
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