Creative Writing
Essays, Short Stories, and Flash
Animal Moments
The Sun, Nov 2023
“Outside the window the trees are sunlit, and the leaves stutter in the breeze. I try to forget that I took a shit in front of Dave.
They call this experience “beautiful.” Best day of your life, they say.” [read more]
Swimming Lessons
TriQuarterly, Jan 2023
"It’s a hellish place, the swimming room. Astonishing that anyone chooses to attend." [read more]
Your Mother Imagines You Dead
Fractured Literary, July 2022 (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
"She imagines you dead when she sees it in her mind only: her foot, cushioned in a sock, slips on the edge, and the two of you tumble down." [read more]
My Year of Nocturnal Panic
Catapult, Aug 2021
"I stood staring at my bed. You’re not scary, I thought. You’re a bed." [read more]
How to Tell a Trauma Story - featured essay, Longreads
Midnight Breakfast, May 2021 (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net)
"This story begins with a punch in the face. My face. The woman’s fist." [read more]
Bulletproof
The Normal School, May 2021
"Monica didn’t want to live in a world where people put butter in their coffee. It made her want to kill herself." [read more]
He Survived, But I Still Grieve
Human Parts, Jul 2019
"Cars scare me. Phone calls, too. Hospitals. Loving someone. The list goes on. I am continually grieving the life I had before I was afraid all the time." [read more]
How to Say “I’m a Writer” and Mean It
Literary Hub, Jan 2019
"I hate saying I’m a writer. I hate the way people’s faces light up, as though I’ve told them my secret kink." [read more]
On Failure and Beautiful Quiet: Reading Jack Gilbert in Tbilisi
Off Assignment, Dec 2018
"Tbilisi felt like this in 2011: like a city straining forward. Perhaps I was drawn there for this reason. At twenty-four I too strained to see around the corner of my life..." [read more]
Ruby
Post Road Magazine, Nov 2018 (Print only)
"In the day she rumbled over jagged rocks, wheels turning on a dime. The world worked like this for her: When she asked the wheels to turn, the wheels turned. She was a woman who got what she wanted. She didn’t want much. She was my shuttle bus driver and her name was..."
Trying to Conceive
Creative Nonfiction, Fall 2017: Science & Religion Issue (print only)
"It’s not difficult to imagine a line. First, close your eyes. Remember when you were a child and noticed everything about the world: the light stretching just so across the baseball field, the white dog fur on the kitchen floor, the map-like lines on your mother’s stomach..." [in print]
How I Injured Myself Reading Elif Batuman's The Idiot
Fiction Advocate, May 2017
"The Idiot is not a satisfying read. At times it feels like a bird’s eye view of the most boring parts of college—and of life. In my notes, I wrote, “Where’s the fucking?”..." [read more]
Learning How to Talk to My Ovaries
Motherwell, May 2017
"The doctor said it was a dermoid cyst, full of hair and teeth. He poked at it with the wand. See that, he’d said, prodding. That’s the hair inside of it, moving..." [read more]
Sex, Drugs, and a Live Podcast Recording
Defenstration, Nov 2016
"Will there be drugs? What do you think? Alcohol? Sex? This is a live podcast recording. Anything can happen. And will..." [read more]
Grown Up Words
The Nervous Breakdown, Sep 2013
"His name was Jeremiah and he was in my preschool class. He was five years old, tall for his age. His parents were divorced and he had an older brother, which meant he knew words like ass and hell..." [read more]