Author. Editor. Michigander.
Back on earth, shock and awe: planted,
the seeds germinate; there’s no discernable
difference in their make-up. So they’re given
away as gifts by the President, planted
on college campuses, in city centers,
affixed with plaques to mark their terrible
cosmic journey.
I’ve long wanted to be published in Hobart, so this is a dream. I’m grateful to the editors there for publishing this poem.
(And you do, you do, fight the urge when you’re in the pet store buying dog food to buy the birds, too, to set them free, to let them find their kin and nest and live long, live well with them.)
Grateful that my essay “Blue Raspberry”—about working for years at Abercrombie & Fitch and my own bodily insecurities—was nominated for the Best of the Net by The Boiler!
What an incredible cohort to be nominated with. A huge thanks to Sebastian Paramo for being so gracious and nominating this piece.
You can read “Blue Raspberry” online here.
Grateful beyond measure to have collaborated my art with David Armstrong’s beautiful words on a piece for 7×7 called “Advanced Studies in Cryptozoology.”
If you’re not familiar, 7×7 is a collaborative journal, pairing artists and writers, asking them to create back-and-forth narratives. In our case, I started with a drawing (at random), and David continued the narrative. Where he left off, I took it in another direction with another piece of art. And so on. It was an incredibly fresh way to tell a story, and I’m so happy with how the piece came out.
A few of my illustrations from the project are below. Click here to read the whole story.
To us, it moves senselessly, has no internal life, keeps up with some revolting job that’s easy to deride. But oh, oh, these purple-green shimmering insects can see the world better than us—and they know their place in it, wherever they are. They know.
I wrote a poem about vasectomies and apocalyptic flooding and estranged brothers and it’s in the September issue of Ghost City Review. It has a long title:
A huge thanks to GCR editor Justin Karcher for taking this piece. I’m grateful to be included among such talent in this issue.
I recently made three illustrations to go along with Melissa Matthewson’s “Pirate Radio, Like Desire” in The Rumpus—check it out, it’s a fantastic piece of writing.
My course, titled Human Topography: Sculpting Surprising, Broken—and Real—Characters for more Compelling Stories, will look at how we approach creating characters in fiction, and how we can dig deep within ourselves to craft lingering, noteworthy characterizations that make our pieces really pack a punch.
For more information on my workshop (including pricing and registration), and information on all the IWH workshops, click here.
My workshop last year sold out FAST, so if you’re interested, check it out now!
My art—leaning into it, being proud & public about it—is still all so new to me, but I’m taking a big, kinda cool step this week: I have my own Redbubble store!
If you’re not familiar with Redbubble, it’s an online marketplace where artists can upload their work and decide what products it’s available on, effectively helping us create easy-to-use online stores.
Grateful to have my flash CNF piece “Woodson” — about tall tales we tell ourselves and forest myths and all the ways we are lost—and found—in the woods in the flash nonfiction issue at Little Fiction/Big Truths:
Now I’ve come, with a backpack full of crackers, having told my parents I was at a friend’s house, to see how much nighttime I can take in. I stand, let the blue-black come for me, and it’s quiet, once the birds sound off: I hear trees creaking, branches cracking, evening animals I don’t know the names of emerge from their daylight slumbers.
Grateful to Troy Palmer and everyone at Little Fiction/Big Truths for publishing this piece; the issue is chock-a-block full of incredible work, and I can’t recommend it enough.