Writing
“The Run”
“Joanna asked me to go to Miami at my grandmother’s eightieth birthday party. She was back home in Des Moines, tan from her new life in South Carolina, no longer the pale, rosy girl who blew out my candles with me each year and guarded her bedroom door while I tried on her dresses in secret.”
“Kings of Cool Crest”
“Rocket ship’s broken again on Course Two. I have it all in pieces on the turf, and I’m painting it again, with the NASA site up on my phone so I get the insignia in the right places.”
“Donut Country”
The woman seated opposite Marta in the waiting room is laughing as she reads the folder of material for new patients. ‘Oh my God,’ the woman keeps saying, followed by a giggle. ‘Wow.’
“Interstate”
“We play games in the backseat, the children and me. It is bigger than a breadbox? Smaller than a house? Everyone’s a good sport before lunchtime but, by afternoon, our minds are tired and the games become more brutal.”
“Free Swim”
Baltimore Review
Summer 2014
“We could do things in water we couldn’t on land. We flipped our bodies like Easter eggs in bowls of vinegar and food coloring. We conducted orchestras with our toes.”
“Body Work”
“If You Wanted to Live”
Colorado Review
Spring 2026
“The bunny arrived at Easter, as many bunnies do, with a green fabric ribbon around its neck. I didn’t ask for it, my sister Aileen did. I let everyone know, even as I petted its twitching haunch, that I would take no responsibility for its care.”
“Per Aspera”
Indiana Review
Summer 2024
Issue 46.1
“There are snakes in my mother’s sunflower patch. Last week, Sammie limped into the house and lost control of her bowels on the living room carpet. My dad screamed “Bad dog!” and kicked at her, but she didn’t run. She fell down in her filth and whimpered.”
“Boiling Out”
North American Review
Spring 2020
“By seven, Billy was already restless, awakened hours earlier by troublesome dreams. His fingers beat the kitchen table in time to a song that played only in his head. The green scent of July cornfields pushed through window screens and busy flies bumped their wings against the upper panes.”
“The First Part of Knowing”
“The power and heat had gone out near midnight and the apartment was freezing. I stood at our bay window in my flannel nightgown, three sweatshirts and Chuck Taylors I’d graffitied with Wite-Out phrases that meant nothing unless you were in on the joke.”
Southern Humanities Review
Notable, Best American Essays, 2023
“The reception room at the fertility clinic is pleasant enough, white walls and blue chairs, a coffee urn, the tasteless mini-muffins served in corporate conference rooms. On the walls, framed magazine articles tout the success of Dr. Z, who will not be my doctor, but oversees this floor and the bigger one upstairs.”
“Ape Opus”
Salamander
Winner of 2025 Salamander Contest
…This story is so vividly told, both internally and externally, that you might feel your own empathy expanding as you read
—Helen Phillips, Judge, Salamander Fiction Prize
“I’ll Tell You the Truth”
Witness
Spring 2023
“EllyGal46 has 256K followers on TikTok. Half her videos are split-screen; she points and makes approving faces while a man on InfoWars or a woman in a sunny kitchen suggests vast conspiracy.”
“Zion”
“This summer, all the kids call themselves Zion. They come one by one and hang on the fence behind the backboard, then drift in until they’re standing under the basket, waiting for the rebound off my shot.”
“Construction”
“Back then, I was a job counselor at a free training program for women who wanted to be construction workers. The women were convicts, college graduates, former addicts, former computer programmers.”