Session Notes: Noah [Biblical figure, dates unknown]

“You think, because it’s God, oh it will be thunderous all the time. Great buckets of rain! But some days it was just a drizzle, a little wind, barely moved the boat. Like it would stop any minute. That became the strange thing, that was a lesson I suppose: that what made it wrathful was that it just didn’t stop. And that meant that the storm could be patient. That God could be gentle, for a time.”

Cosmo Mag in Let’s Talk

Here’s a long story about a short essay: At the beginning of 2016, I wrote an essay about Cosmopolitan magazine for my upper-division composition class. My professor, David Masiel, nominated it for Prized Writing, UC Davis’s magazine for undergraduate writing, and Amy Clarke, the faculty editor at the time, selected it and gave me some […]

Meet Your Heroes: Interview with Carmen Maria Machado

In November 2019, I had the opportunity to interview literary genius Carmen Maria Machado about her incredible memoir In the Dream House for Foglifter, and they recently posted it online to celebrate the new paperback edition. It was a dream come true to talk with Carmen, who is brilliant and gracious and funny and also […]

Misconduct at Cosmonauts Avenue

The apology was platinum. The publicist hit all the right notes: the contrite acceptance of responsibility, the head-hanging, the hand-wringing, the self-flagellation, the commitment to listening and learning and striving to change. The reminder of daughter, the apology to wife, the reassurance of positive work for womankind in other areas. The subtle denial of the […]

How August Could Have Gone at Bodega Mag

There are so many bees in the wall that the outlets are leaking honey. Ants come looking for sweetness, marking black streaks like sesame seeds up the molding. When I stand near, I can hear the buzzing, a deep vibration like the hum of a car radio out on the street. I can feel the […]

Best of the Net nomination from Jellyfish Review

Well, it’s all there in the title, folks–Jellyfish Review graciously nominated my piece “The Ghost Story” for one of their 4 Best of the Net fiction slots for 2018. That’s wild to me! They publish so much high-caliber work. You can read this haunting story here.

Whatshisname at Drunk Monkeys

We walked during the days while the sand got into our packs and our shoes and we slept in a circle at night. It was safer to travel together through the desert. It was safer to travel together everywhere, but we only agreed to walk together until Vegas. Then we’d split. We wouldn’t miss Whatshisname. […]

My Queer Syllabus Selection: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

The Queer Syllabus

Here is something of which I am immensely proud: the Queer Syllabus. It’s a project that allows writers to nominate works for a new canon of queer literature, and a collaboration between Foglifter and The Rumpus, a journal I’ve admired for years. It’s filled with incredible queer writers giving love to wonderful queer books and […]

Reading through the Season

It’s that time of year again: the season of literary pub crawls and plentiful reading series. As it happens, I’ve been invited to read at three different events in the coming months! If you’re in the Bay Area and would like to hear me read aloud, here’s where to go. Hazel Reading Series: August 2018 […]