Selected Essays & Publications

“My Mom Rage is a Response to the Avalanch of Worry That Comes with Parenting”

Electric Lit, January 4, 2024

“Three Moms and a rage room”

Insider, June 12, 2023

“Write When the Baby Writes”

Mutha Magazine, April 27, 2023

“How to Hug a Lion"

The Palisades Review, March 15, 2023

“The Mundane as Maximalism of the Mind: Reclaiming the Quotidian"

Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, 9.2

“Holy Shit: A Love Letter to Bidets"

Insider, November 26, 2022

To Do or Not To Do:

On the comfort of list essays"

Brevity blog, November 5, 2021

“Atmospheric River"

Essay Daily’s #midwessay project, July 29, 2021

“This is Dynamite and I'm Not Tapping Out: Pandemic TV Guide"

The Coachella Review Daily, April 2, 2021

“This is Orange”

River Teeth, “Beautiful Things,” March 15, 2021

“What Belongs”

Waxwing Magazine, Issue 23, spring 2021

“Apology”

Complete Sentence Lit, September 12, 2020

Timeline, Flattening: Everyday life in a pandemic

Los Angeles Review of Books, June 28, 2020

"160 Things That Scare Me”

Brevity Magazine, Issue 63, January 2020

"June 21"

Essay Daily, summer 2018

“Gravity”

Parks and Points, spring 2017

“Drought, Tuesday Afternoon”

Sweet: A Literary Confection, Issue 9.1, September 2016

“The Cactus is a Very Independent Plant”

Vinyl Magazine, February 2016

“Luck: An Annotated History”

Winner of Sundog Lit's first annual contest series, published in issue 8

“Forty-Two Measures of Rest”

Winner of Lunch Ticket magazine's Diana Woods Memorial Prize, Winter/Spring 2014

 

 

Praise

 

I found myself coming back to this essay for its impressive command of language. Word by word, the author pulls me through the minutiae of a quiet experience—quiet in that she seems to keep to herself as she undergoes it, only sharing the rising details of her ordeal with medical professionals— with an arresting clarity and force. But she is not alone in this re-telling, of course: I’m in the room with her; I’m looking back in time with her; I’m feeling the vertigo as time slows with her; and, in a bold choice, I’m wasting no time with her overt fear or outward feelings as an ultrasound technician spreads cold goo over her chest. And as I’m right there with this writer, I’m jealous of how much every word in this piece counts. Jealous, too, of the wry and repressive persona that these sharp and exact words manage to create in so efficient a space. “Luck: An Annotated History” is a dazzling piece of short nonfiction, and I feel lucky to have read it.

— Elena Passarello, creative nonfiction judge, says of “Luck: An Annotated History”

 

 

‘Forty-Two Measures of Rest’ reads like the language of music from which it takes its title–rhythmic, urgent, but also full of pauses and grace notes that makes this relatively brief essay a mini-symphony about life and the attempt to make it matter. From the first word, it raises the very biggest questions with intimacy, brutal honesty and a healthy sense of humor and appreciation of the absurd that keep life (relatively) manageable for all of us. Its often startling insights and images are told in prose that is clean and sharp, but simultaneously rich and provocative.

— Erin Aubry Kaplan, Author of Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line and DWM Award Special Guest Judge