News

Modern Love

A decade ago, I wrote an essay for Modern Love about my relationship with my complicated father at the end of this life. This fall, I was honored and thrilled to work with the amazing team at The New York Times to update the story for the Modern Love podcast. Listen here.

Poems

“Here I am Walking at Night in Summer” Conduit forthcoming

"Meeting My Eighty-year-old Aunt at the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine for Lunch" and "From Michigan on Her Winter Break, My Niece," Painted Bride Quarterly

"Meaningful, Memorable, and Brief" Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog January 26, 2024 

“Mother’s Day,” Gettysburg Review,Volume 25, No 1 Winter 2023

Birdwatchers,” Anacapa Review Puschcart nomination. August, 2023

“Suburban Journal,” DIAGRAM forthcoming 2023

“Inside Out,” Bennington Review, Issue 12. Spring 2023

“True Flash” Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog April 11, 2023 

"Write what scares you (without scaring away readers)" Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog February 7, 2023

“Tuesday with Oars,” Bennington Review Issue 10. Spring 2022

“After the Streets Flooded,” SWWIM December 14, 2022

New Poetry Collection

Field Notes from the Flood Zone BOA Editions

Winner of a Florida Book Award in poetry

Review by Mark Jarman for The Hudson Review

Review by David Starkey for The California Review of Books

The Present State of the Garden

The Present State of the Garden won the Blue Lynx Prize and is now available from Lynx House Press and Tombolo Books. Order from Tombolo and I’ll happily sign your copy and we will mail it to you.

 

Narrative Poetry Contest Finalist

"On a Late June Evening in My Driveway" places as a finalist in Narrative's 12th Annual Poetry Contest, Fall 2020

"Florida"

"Florida" is a new micro piece in The Cincinnati Review.

My recording of the piece accompanies the online text. This piece will also appear in my new collection, forthcoming from BOA Editions.

Crisis Coverage Awards: COVID-19 Edition

"Just This Breath" was an Honorable Mention in the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors).

 

The Best of Brevity

The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction

Delighted to have a piece in this volume from Rose Metal PressI love this book.

Watch the video trailer here.

 

"Just This Breath"

I have a new essay in The Sun's June 2020 issue. Because of the pandemic, the magazine has opened its online content.  You can now read the magazine for free.

The Practice of Creative Writing Fourth Edition

Textbook

The fourth edition of The Practice of Creative Writing is out on September 16, 2020, updated for ease of use in online classrooms. If you are interested in ordering for your students, you can locate your sales rep here.

There’s a brand new instructor’s manual that accompanies the book and you can see videos and find out more here.

New Poetry

"Accidental Practitioners" appears in Agni, Issue 91 Spring 2020.

A poem titled "Every Girl Has Her Own America" appears in Conduit, #30.

Two poems appear in the March 2020 issue of The Sun Magazine.

Two poems in Issue 48 Spring 2021, Birmingham Poetry Review.

Two poems appear in the 2019 print issue 57 of Southern Poetry Review.

"Protection," a piece from my prose poetry series, appears in issue 30 of The Adroit Journal.

Colorful M representing the MacDowell logo

Residency

I worked in the Heyward House at Macdowell in Spring 2021 and made friends for life. Check out the astonishing Marta Sanchez.

Chapbooks

The Present State of the Garden, a collection of new poems, is a finalist in the 2020 Snowbound Chapbook Award at Tupelo Press.

Frond is a top three finalist in the 2020 Chad Walsh Chapbook Series competition.

Cover of Where am I

Pushcart Nominations

Every month, Creative Nonfiction publishes a tiny magazine, True Story, containing a single longform essay. I’m honored the magazine chose my piece on topographical agnosia, “Where Am I?” for a 2019 Pushcart Prize nomination.

The Sun nominated my 2019 essay "Girl Underwater."  Thank you, Sun!

Sunset Over Coffee Pot Bayou

Essay-Poem

“Breathing Underwater” is a one-page essay-poem about how trauma lives and works in the body-mind. I love On the Seawall in part because one of my central subjects as a writer is swimming/water. And I love this magazine’s focus on short and flash fiction, conventional and lyric essay, cross-genre writing, text and image. They also publish photo essays.

Celeste, subject of "Pedal, Pedal, Pedal"

2019 Pushcart Prize

“Pedal, Pedal, Pedal,” an essay, is collected in 2019’s Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses.