Samples
Gretel's Dreams | Tin House, Flash Fiction
Excerpt from 'How to Be Eaten' | LitHub, Excerpt
Locked Down in Denmark, Learning a Language and Finishing a Novel | LitHub, Essay
10 Stories About Self-Destructive Women | Electric Lit, List
Novels that Thwart Traditional Narrative Structure | Lit Hub, List
Excerpt from 'How to Be Eaten' | LitHub, Excerpt
Locked Down in Denmark, Learning a Language and Finishing a Novel | LitHub, Essay
10 Stories About Self-Destructive Women | Electric Lit, List
Novels that Thwart Traditional Narrative Structure | Lit Hub, List
Books
How to Be Eaten: A Novel | Little, Brown, 2022
This darkly funny and provocative novel reimagines classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a support group for trauma.
Girls of a Certain Age: Stories | Little, Brown, 2021
A fearless, darkly playful debut exploring the many impossible choices that accompany 21st century femaleness.
This darkly funny and provocative novel reimagines classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a support group for trauma.
Girls of a Certain Age: Stories | Little, Brown, 2021
A fearless, darkly playful debut exploring the many impossible choices that accompany 21st century femaleness.
Selected Fiction Publications
Middlemen | Alaska Quarterly Review, Winter/Spring 2019.
In the morning, we lie skin-to-skin, like spoons stacked in the silverware drawer. With no courtship or aftermath, the exit is peaceful and unembarrassed.
Two Stories: Aftermath: Hansel & Gretel's Dreams | Tin House, Spring 2018.
In some dreams, Gretel is a piece of dark, hollow chocolate...
The Portrait | The Threepenny Review, Spring 2018.
I was born almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education.
Unattached | Carolina Quarterly, Winter 2017
When I saw the world as upside-down—which, indeed, it seemed to be—then the houses and trees were like stalactites hanging from the ceiling of earth above my head, and our little civilization was very small, just the tiniest inhabited layer in a world made up almost entirely of air.
The Wayside | Epoch, Spring 2017.
We had a war going on between ands and buts, or, at least, I had a war going on between ands and buts. James believed but was a negative word that subtracted positive meaning from the first part of the sentence, and therefore he rarely used it.
Elegy | The Southeast Review (SER), Fall 2016.
You take The Pill daily at 4pm, on schedule exactly because—just imagine: your children would have his fire red hair, and your terrible, errored DNA.
Only the Good | Indiana Review, Winter 2015.
In New York, I met Hugh for lunch. Even before leaving the house I felt unwell. No matter what we were or weren’t doing in private, meeting Hugh in public felt like meeting an enemy on a brief and unwieldy truce.
None of these Will Bring Disaster | Michigan Quarterly Review (MQR), Fall 2015.
I often come into work with sunglasses on, having taken the bus. I take the bus when I am still drunk in the morning or when it is snowing or raining because I don’t like to drive in the weather. I know that my coworkers know why I have taken the bus.
Where We Were | Tin House's Open Bar, May 2015
We spent ourselves and each other like pocket change, and we spent that, too.
How to Wait | Bare Fiction, Nov 2014.
Imagine that he is so thoroughly gone that even the depression he leaves when he gets up to use the bathroom is gone, even his toothbrush is gone, stored away in the medicine cabinet, dry bristled, waiting, like you.
Queens | Cicada, May 2012
This was neither a step up in location nor accommodation. The move included a change of school districts without much of a change of scenery, for we still lived in Queens, New York.
Mental Health | Cicada, June 2005
Only the janitors could know how and when exactly Clayton arrived at school. He seemed to be there always, like a ghost. Had he been sitting at brown locker number 4210, on that clean towel, all night?
In the morning, we lie skin-to-skin, like spoons stacked in the silverware drawer. With no courtship or aftermath, the exit is peaceful and unembarrassed.
Two Stories: Aftermath: Hansel & Gretel's Dreams | Tin House, Spring 2018.
In some dreams, Gretel is a piece of dark, hollow chocolate...
The Portrait | The Threepenny Review, Spring 2018.
I was born almost completely deaf, and by the time I was seven I had already become a prisoner to my education.
Unattached | Carolina Quarterly, Winter 2017
When I saw the world as upside-down—which, indeed, it seemed to be—then the houses and trees were like stalactites hanging from the ceiling of earth above my head, and our little civilization was very small, just the tiniest inhabited layer in a world made up almost entirely of air.
The Wayside | Epoch, Spring 2017.
We had a war going on between ands and buts, or, at least, I had a war going on between ands and buts. James believed but was a negative word that subtracted positive meaning from the first part of the sentence, and therefore he rarely used it.
Elegy | The Southeast Review (SER), Fall 2016.
You take The Pill daily at 4pm, on schedule exactly because—just imagine: your children would have his fire red hair, and your terrible, errored DNA.
Only the Good | Indiana Review, Winter 2015.
In New York, I met Hugh for lunch. Even before leaving the house I felt unwell. No matter what we were or weren’t doing in private, meeting Hugh in public felt like meeting an enemy on a brief and unwieldy truce.
None of these Will Bring Disaster | Michigan Quarterly Review (MQR), Fall 2015.
I often come into work with sunglasses on, having taken the bus. I take the bus when I am still drunk in the morning or when it is snowing or raining because I don’t like to drive in the weather. I know that my coworkers know why I have taken the bus.
Where We Were | Tin House's Open Bar, May 2015
We spent ourselves and each other like pocket change, and we spent that, too.
How to Wait | Bare Fiction, Nov 2014.
Imagine that he is so thoroughly gone that even the depression he leaves when he gets up to use the bathroom is gone, even his toothbrush is gone, stored away in the medicine cabinet, dry bristled, waiting, like you.
Queens | Cicada, May 2012
This was neither a step up in location nor accommodation. The move included a change of school districts without much of a change of scenery, for we still lived in Queens, New York.
Mental Health | Cicada, June 2005
Only the janitors could know how and when exactly Clayton arrived at school. He seemed to be there always, like a ghost. Had he been sitting at brown locker number 4210, on that clean towel, all night?
Selected Nonfiction Publications
Novels that Thwart Traditional Narrative Structure | Lit Hub, June 2022
A novel is not airline luggage, there are no strict rules, no arbitrary size and weight regulations that you must contemptuously squeeze your story into.
True Crime Beyond the Genre | CrimeReads, June 2022
True crime is so ubiquitous that it has sprawled out beyond its own borders, into other genres that engage with its tropes while also questioning them, turning them on their head, or showing them in a new light.
10 Stories About Self-Destructive Women | Electric Literature, April 2021
No matter what the women in these stories and novels do—no matter how blatantly they lie, how many mind-altering substances they consume, how easily they turn on their loved ones—I find I am rooting for them, holding out hope that they might change.
Locked Down in Denmark, Learning a Language and Finishing a Novel | LitHub, Feb 2021
I was living in a new country, during a lockdown, and my life had whittled itself down to mainly one thing: the frustrating endeavor of writing a novel.
In Defense of Millennial Politics | Common Dreams, Fall 2017
Read it enough, and it starts to seem true: Millennials are too wracked by fear and anxiety, too fragile, too self-absorbed, too distracted by their smartphones, to be politically engaged. (co-written with Derek Denman)
Basket Weaving 101 | MFA VS NYC, n+1/Faber and Faber
Yes, many of us MFA-ers were rounding into our thirties while making 10pm IHOP runs for dinner, eating eggs that didn't look quite right, as if they came from some other kind of bird, maybe a pigeon.
Fitness Magazine Has Some Questions for You | McSweeney's Internet Tendency
Trying to lose weight? The trick? Counting calories? Sound familiar? How do you know it’s working? Does your partner care about the cellulite on your left thigh or the flabby inch you can pinch on your right arm? Is he getting an erection?
Not Waving But Drowning: A Found Biography of David Hasselhoff | The Adroit Journal, Winter 2017
Captain Ned, one of the parrots, tried to give me a kiss and bit out a chunk of my lip. I spent a lot of time looking out of my window at my avocado tree. Success means nothing if you have no one to share it with.
A novel is not airline luggage, there are no strict rules, no arbitrary size and weight regulations that you must contemptuously squeeze your story into.
True Crime Beyond the Genre | CrimeReads, June 2022
True crime is so ubiquitous that it has sprawled out beyond its own borders, into other genres that engage with its tropes while also questioning them, turning them on their head, or showing them in a new light.
10 Stories About Self-Destructive Women | Electric Literature, April 2021
No matter what the women in these stories and novels do—no matter how blatantly they lie, how many mind-altering substances they consume, how easily they turn on their loved ones—I find I am rooting for them, holding out hope that they might change.
Locked Down in Denmark, Learning a Language and Finishing a Novel | LitHub, Feb 2021
I was living in a new country, during a lockdown, and my life had whittled itself down to mainly one thing: the frustrating endeavor of writing a novel.
In Defense of Millennial Politics | Common Dreams, Fall 2017
Read it enough, and it starts to seem true: Millennials are too wracked by fear and anxiety, too fragile, too self-absorbed, too distracted by their smartphones, to be politically engaged. (co-written with Derek Denman)
Basket Weaving 101 | MFA VS NYC, n+1/Faber and Faber
Yes, many of us MFA-ers were rounding into our thirties while making 10pm IHOP runs for dinner, eating eggs that didn't look quite right, as if they came from some other kind of bird, maybe a pigeon.
Fitness Magazine Has Some Questions for You | McSweeney's Internet Tendency
Trying to lose weight? The trick? Counting calories? Sound familiar? How do you know it’s working? Does your partner care about the cellulite on your left thigh or the flabby inch you can pinch on your right arm? Is he getting an erection?
Not Waving But Drowning: A Found Biography of David Hasselhoff | The Adroit Journal, Winter 2017
Captain Ned, one of the parrots, tried to give me a kiss and bit out a chunk of my lip. I spent a lot of time looking out of my window at my avocado tree. Success means nothing if you have no one to share it with.
