I've had a few new publications come out in recent weeks, and the week ahead promises to be an exciting one: it will take me down the road to Fargo, back to Grand Forks, and then across the country to Washington, DC. First, I'll be reading from my work on Tuesday, March 19th, at 6:30... Continue Reading →
News: New Micro-Fiction in CHEAP POP
Today, CHEAP POP published my micro-fiction "Polaroid Snapshot: Skinny Dipping in the Little Juniata River." You can read the story here. It's a quick read, so I hope you'll spend some time on their site and check out some of the other excellent micro and flash pieces over at CHEAP POP. It's an exciting way to kick... Continue Reading →
News and Website Updates
The first half of 2018 has gone at a breakneck pace, and it's brought a few bits of exciting news. With all those updates, it seemed like a good time to overhaul the website. Since I last wrote here, I've published a couple of new pieces of literary criticism, along with a new short story.... Continue Reading →
Favorite Fiction, Essays, and Poetry of 2017
Throughout the year, I had the best intentions to actually generate some material here on my blog. As a penance for missed time, I thought I'd close out the year by pointing to some favorite reads from 2017. There are two rules here: instead of the traditional "best of" lists that float around, everything on... Continue Reading →
News: “Lucky Strikes” and “Waking the Dreamer”
I'm excited to announce some recent publications! I'm excited to see both of these pieces out in the world. One is a short story, "Lucky Strikes," which you can find over at Souvenir Lit. (While you're there, be sure to check out the other fantastic work in the issue!) You can read "Lucky Strikes" here. The... Continue Reading →
News: Sidebar Podcast ep. 1: BK Fischer
I'm excited to announce that a project-in-development is now live! At the Modern Language Studies website, you can find our new fiction and poetry podcast, The Sidebar. For our inaugural episode, I met the poet, editor, and critic BK Fischer at the New York Public Library. Fischer and I talked about her poems in MLS, which perform a feminist... Continue Reading →
Parody, Play, and the Dark Knight Detective
I was at a dim sum restaurant with my wife and a few friends yesterday when I learned that Adam West had passed away after a short battle with leukemia. I felt a strange jolt when I heard the news. It wasn't a surprise, necessarily: West was 88 years old, after all. So I didn't... Continue Reading →
News: Review of Minae Mizumura’s INHERITANCE FROM MOTHER at Necessary Fiction!
My review of Minae Mizumura's Inheritance from Mother is now up at Necessary Fiction! You can catch the review here. Small teaser: Mizumura's heartrending novel about mothers, daughters, and familial duty comes to us in Juliet Carpenter Winters' breathtaking translation. The book was released by Other Press this May. And just as important: you can order Inheritance from... Continue Reading →
The Book We Need Isn’t Orwell’s 1984
Orwell's 1984 may provide us with a vocabulary for critiquing the Trump administration. "Double speak," "thought police": these and other turns of phrase explain the peculiar and insidious ways in which Trump is gaslighting America. (This is a phenomenon that Lauren Duca has explained, incisively, in Teen Vogue.) And while we need 1984's lexicon of authoritarianism, it's not... Continue Reading →
News: Review of Dinitia Smith’s THE HONEYMOON at Necessary Fiction
My review of Dinitia Smith's The Honeymoon has gone live in Necessary Fiction! You can read my review of this novel here. This novel, published by Other Press, meditates on the life and work of the Victorian novelist George Eliot, and it's a mesmerizing work of biographical/historical fiction. You can find this book online at Barnes &... Continue Reading →