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, and the joys of becoming a parent after enduring an undergraduate degree's worth of infertility and loss (four long years).
Life, even when it hurts like hell, tends to be pretty sweet.
Creative writing
Academic writing
Book reviews
Food writing: Personal essays & restaurant reviews
Interviews
Social media and blogging
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, and the joys of becoming a parent after enduring an undergraduate degree's worth of infertility and loss (four long years).
Life, even when it hurts like hell, tends to be pretty sweet.
Creative writing
- "The Hottest and Longest Lasting Fire," forthcoming in Reckon Review, March 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 (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)
- One of twenty writers nationwide to be 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)
- "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
- "After the Final No," flash fiction, published in Paddle Shots: A River Pretty Anthology, Vol. 2 in April 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"
- 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)
- Top 30 Finalist for Creative Nonfiction's "Waiting" contest (out of 650 submissions), Spring 2015
- 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)
- 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"
- 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