Newsletter
Occasional posts: read and sign up here
Articles
Poets & Writers, Jan/Feb 2024: Ground Yourself in Purpose
Short Stories
“Shelter,” Crazyhorse, Spring 2021
“Desire Lines,” New England Review, June 2017
“The Remains,” One Story, January 2014
Interviews
Match Commentary, The Tournament of Books 2022, March 2022
The Intimacy of Teaching Creative Writing, Catapult, November 2021
Secrets of the Book Critics, Bookmarks, October 2018
Non-Fiction/Critical Essays
Traversing Memory in The Heather Blazing, Ploughshares blog, November 2022
Violets’s Mothers, Ploughshares blog, September 2022
Lucy by the Sea’s Pandemic Year, Ploughshares blog, September 2022
Perspective in The Dark, Ploughshares blog, July 2022
Reading Deesha Philyaw’s “Peach Cobbler,” Ploughshares blog, June 2022
The Physical and the Emotional in God’s Children Are Little Broken Things, Ploughshares blog, June 2022
Julia Otsuka’s Layered Points of View, Ploughshares blog, May 2022
Sara Lippmann’s Turns in Jerks, Ploughshares blog, March 2022
The Search for Home in Away to Stay, Ploughshares blog, March 2022
Love and Loss in You Never Get it Back, Ploughshares blog, February 2022
The Ebb and Flow of Women’s Friendships in Fiona and Jane, Ploughshares blog, January 2022
The Joy of Reading Slowly, Ploughshares blog, November 2021
Hao’s Exploration of Language, Ploughshares blog, November 2021
Life and Death in Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket, Ploughshares blog, October 2021
Dybek, Shalamov, and Condensed Milk, Ploughshares blog, August 2021
The Transfer of Power in The Lying Life of Adults, Ploughshares blog, August 2021
The Parallel Narrative Arc in Memorial, Ploughshares blog, July 2021
Reading Two Groff Companion Pieces, Ploughshares blog, June 2021
The Bass Rock’s Layered Use of Setting, Ploughshares blog, May 2021
The Tradition of Storytelling in Something Unbelievable, Ploughshares blog, April 2021
Reading William Trevor’s “A Day” and Jamel Brinkley’s “Comfort,” Ploughshares blog, March 2021
Two Contemporary Retellings of The Playboy of the Western World, Ploughshares blog, February 2021
Two Boston Commons at Twilight, Ploughshares blog, January 2021
Oksana, Behave! and Olive, Again!, Ploughshares blog, October 2019
The Unspeakable, Ploughshares blog, February 2019
All That Remains: The Lasting Images of a William Trevor Story, Ploughshares blog, May 2018
Fiction Responding to Fiction Series, Ploughshares blog, February 2016-December 2017
James Joyce and William Trevor, Ploughshares blog, December 2017
D.H. Lawrence and Raymond Carver, Ploughshares blog, November 2017
Jamaica Kincaid and Bret Anthony Johnston, Ploughshares blog, September 2017
Katherine Mansfield and Ali Smith, Ploughshares blog, September 2017
Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Doris Lessing, Ploughshares blog, July 2017
Henry James and John Cheever, Ploughshares blog, June 2017
James Thurber and Rivka Galchen, Ploughshares blog, May 2017
Ray Bradbury and Elton John, Ploughshares blog, April 2017
James Joyce and Joyce Carol Oates, Ploughshares blog, March 2017
Mary Robison and Amy Hempel, Ploughshares blog, January 2017
John Cheever and Raymond Carver, Ploughshares blog, January 2017
Flannery O’Connor and Alice Munro, Ploughshares blog, December 2016
Grace Paley and Amy Hempel, Ploughshares blog, November 2016
Jamaica Kincaid and John Keene, Ploughshares blog, September 2016
Edith Wharton and Alice Elliott Dark, Ploughshares blog, August 2016
Flannery O’Connor and Bruce Springsteen, Ploughshares blog, July 2016
Raymond Carver and Jonathan Durbin, Ploughshares blog, June 2016
James Joyce and John Updike, Ploughshares blog, May 2016
Anton Chekhov and Joyce Carol Oates, Ploughshares blog, April 2016
Vladimir Nabokov and Lorrie Moore, Ploughshares blog, March 2016
William Trevor and Yiyun Li, Ploughshares blog, February 2016
The Mainly True Story of the Writer and the Spy, Literary Hub, Fall 2015 (reprint)
The Writer and the Spy, The Scofield, Fall 2015
Book Reviews
Bratwurst Haven, Colorado Review, November 2022
Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, Colorado Review, May 2022
Milk Blood Heat, Ploughshares blog, January 2021
A Burning, Ploughshares blog, May 2020
Whiteout Conditions, Ploughshares blog, March 2020
Last of Her Name, Ploughshares blog, October 2019
The Gone Dead, Ploughshares blog, June 2019
Mostly Dead Things, Ploughshares blog, May 2019
Disappearing Earth, Ploughshares blog, May 2019
Spring, Ploughshares blog, April 2019
Other People’s Love Affairs, Ploughshares blog, August 2018
The Incendiaries, Ploughshares blog, July 2018
From a Low and Quiet Sea, Ploughshares blog, July 2018
The Boatbuilder, Ploughshares blog, May 2018
A Lucky Man, Ploughshares blog, April 2018
The Female Persuasion, Ploughshares blog, March 2018
Awayland, Ploughshares blog, March 2018
The Driest Season, Ploughshares blog, February 2018
An American Marriage, Ploughshares blog, January 2018
The Man Who Shot Out My Eye is Dead, National Book Critics Circle blog, November 2017
What Counts as Love, Ploughshares blog, October 2017
Daddy Issues, The Masters Review, September 2017
What We Lose, The Masters Review, July 2017
The Gypsy Moth Summer, Ploughshares blog, May 2017
Dog Years, Ploughshares blog, October 2016
You Are Having a Good Time, The Masters Review, July 2016
Music for Wartime, The Masters Review, June 2015