Writing

THE MAN WITH EIGHT PAIRS OF LEGS: Ploughshares

Title story of my debut collection published October 13, 2021 in Ploughshares Solos.

"I loved both the quirkiness of this love story but also the way this small Colorado town came alive, and the skill with which you address so many timely issues without overwhelming the narrative."

— Ladette Randolph, Editor-in-Chief, Ploughshares

Order the Story Here.

NIGHTLIGHT: Southern Indiana Review

First Prize, Mary C. Mohr Editor’s Award for Fiction, selected by Stuart Dybek.

"If this was a high dive and not a story competition, “Nightlight” would impress, in part, because of its level of difficulty. The story–a secret sharer themed story–is risky, ambitious, unpredictable, gracefully written, and rich in both its external detail and its characterizations."

— Stuart Dybek, author of Paper Lantern

"I love its generosity of spirit and its intelligence, and I especially love the sadness towards which it builds. Stunningly sad, and stunningly well done."

— Jim Shepard , author of The World to Come

EXCERPT: Reiner slid his screwdriver down the doorframe until he hit the deadbolt, pissed that he had once again given into his wife and was actually breaking into their neighbor’s house. The old widow, who had lived there alone, had died four months before, but yesterday evening, Beth had noticed a suspicious light.
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TASMANIANS: Arts & Letters

First Prize, Fiction Contest, selected by Amy Hassinger

"I love how the story is weighted with a larger sense of history, the world pressing itself into the lives of these very specific characters in their very specific universe. Beautifully done."

— Amy Hassinger, author of After the Dam

EXCERPT: Mariam likes to get up before Cedric, just as the world is taking shape, and stroll in her nightgown and robe through their newly built home on Novato Ridge—her Shangri-la. Oh, how they soothe her, these rolling hills that stretch north and west beyond the tidy housing development – like a pride of sleeping lions, she’s pointed out to Cedric – their tawny, muscular backs marked by scattered native oak and stands of towering eucalyptus.
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THUNDER IN ILLINOIS:The Briar Cliff Review

Selected by the fiction editor for first prize…

EXCERPT: Mr. Evans, who still loves Mrs. Evans, has thought up a dozen ways to leave her. Some literal, like lifting off in a Hughes 500P stealth helicopter from their tar-spun roof in rural Bradley. Some figurative, like disappearing into the pages of a John le Carré novel, exhaling honeyed tobacco on the cruel sands of a British beach.
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CITY OF ANGELS: Thomas Wolfe Review

First Prize, Thomas Wolfe Fiction Award, selected by Jill McCorkle

"Very well written and moving . . . an accurate portrayal of teenage angst that opens to a much broader—and very timely—landscape."

— Jill McCorkle, author of Life After Life

EXCERPT: We wanted to be ravished. The Jewish girls leaving their nouveau riche houses on the east side of Overland Avenue, the Catholic girls released from their meager tract homes on the west. We were the popular girls and the wannabes. Every Saturday morning, we piled onto the Pico #7 bus at the corners of Beverwil and Manning, where we met the opposite sex – pop, nerd and dweeb – and rode West, a ride without parents, heaven waiting at the end of the line.
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“I’ll Take You There”: New Harmony Workshop

"Wow!! Here’s a story I’ll remember. Quite a ride: imaginative, energetic, deeply felt. It takes a lot of chances,=– in colorful characters and settings and unpredictable turns…Quite a piece!"

— Stuart Dybek, MacArthur Fellow

“Triptych”: Tin House Summer Workshop

"What a generous, complicated and big-hearted story. It is a story that means something, that increases empathy in the world…innovative and beautifully written…the writing is lovely and strange in all the right ways."

— Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light You Do Not See

Non-Fiction

Journey into Motherhood, Riverhead

Buy on Amazon.com

"No other book I know honors both the depth of pregnancy and its uniqueness for every woman…and in such a beautiful way."

— Laurel Houghton, Psychotherapist/Childbirth Education

"A great achievement…you will learn more about yourself, define your priorities more clearly, and find deeper satisfaction in your experience of pregnancy and birth."