New Fiction: "Fluke" at The Art of Everyone

"Your whale's scar cracked long and jagged, like a vein or map, a point to place your finger and trace back to yourself."

I have new fiction, "Fluke," in the inaugural issue of The Art of Everyone, a Publishing Genius project edited by Joseph Young. So excited to be among work by Stephanie Barber, Kathy Fish, and others!

New fiction, "The Company of Strangers," at FRiGG Magazine

"You’ve spent your whole life trapped by things you never did, words you never said. You’ve spent your whole life feeling the ache of longing, confusing it for being alive."

Thrilled to have a new story, "The Company of Strangers," up at FRiGG Magazine!


To read more, go here.

New Fiction: "Important People of New Jersey" at Necessary Fiction

"Walt Whitman, Woodrow Wilson, Molly Pitcher, Vince Lombardi. These are the important people of New Jersey, she thinks, the people whose names adorn the service areas that dot the turnpike like prayer beads." 

Excited to have a new story, "Important People of New Jersey," at Necessary Fiction! 

 To read more, go here.

New Fiction, "DreamWorld," at A-Minor Magazine

Excited that my story, "DreamWorld," is up at A-Minor Magazine!

Photo by Markus Spiske

"You’re never sure what’s history and what’s spectacle, whether the things Barry said happened when he was a kid really happened, like the usurping of the government by companies, the quarantine to Sunrise City for so many families, or the “Others,” and forced exodus of the Banned, those unable to work or who just weren’t liked for a number of reasons. In the history book sponsored by The Corporation, only one of which was available in your school, those families like yours, who were homeless, forced to barter and prostitute, were the victims of their own bad choices."

You can read more here

New Ficton: "The Long Haul" at BULL Magazine

Excited to see my story, "The Long Haul" at BULL!

"He cooked with a cigarette tucked behind his ear and a can of Coors in his left hand and whisper-sang Van Halen songs with sexual innuendos that completely eclipsed mine and Joelle’s comprehension."

To read more, go here.

"Eat a Peach" at Chicago Quarterly Review!

Thrilled to see my story "Eat a Peach" in the latest issue of Chicago Quarterly Review! I wrote first draft in bed in a hotel room overlooking the Hollywood Hills, before getting up, knowing I was onto something special. I'm glad it found such a special home to match. Thanks to editor Elizabeth McKenzie and everyone who workshopped the piece:


"Lynn wonders what it would be like if she were the one speaking for once. What she would say. What it would be life if someone rubbed her shoulders, knuckled the back of her neck to relieve her headache. To release the heaviness from her heart. She wants to burrow in some corner of Los Angeles and start a garden, have a small yard and a cat. She doesn’t want much. In a city where there are so many fantasies, she wants a reality."

New Fiction at Little Fiction: "The Loneliest Creature on Earth"

I was watching a Shriner's Hospital commercial one night, and I thought about writing a children's hospital story with a nod to Lorrie Moore's "People Like That Are the Only People Here," but after it went through the filter of my weird little mind, this is what came out instead. Thanks, Little Fiction. for publishing my quirky little story, "The Loneliest Creature on Earth": 

"Later, we will explain to you at your mother’s wake, that the final month was the worst for our son. Not because of his incapacitation or the anti-contamination chamber, but because there simply weren’t enough kind people like you to come and visit him. No one for him to tell, for instance, that the man who found the 5000-year-old corpse named the Iceman in 1991 was also found frozen dead in ice in 1994. And goodness knows, we stopped listening to him months ago."

To read more, go here

New Fiction, "The Club of the Missing," at the Cincinnati Review

"What you learn: It is so easy to disappear."





Really thrilled that The Cincinnati Review has published my story "The Club of the Missing." I love the work they've been publishing for so long, and I'm honored to be included among their contributors:

To read the story, go here. 

Pushcart Nomination, "Greater Good"

So excited to receive a Pushcart nomination for my story, Gargoyle, "Greater Good." It's my fifth nomination for the Pushcart prize; maybe this will be the lucky one! Above all, I'm so grateful to Richard Peabody and the staff of Gargoyle for believing in my work.

"She will love him, honor him, comfort him, keep him in sickness and in health, forsake all others, be true to him as long as they both shall live. She will tell white lies, that she doesn’t mind if he wears the ugly green and blue-stripe golf polo to the museum or to the garden party or that his feet stink, yes, monstrously so, does he ever wash between his toes, or that the smell of beef and vodka on his breath, ruffling the air around him like waves of heat, makes her ill. She will tell not him she is not sure what love is, if she ever felt it, if she feels it for him."

To read more of "Greater Good," go here. 

New fiction, "Escape Velocity," at Literary Orphans

Thrilled to see my story, "Escape Velocity," in Literary Orphans! 

"She thought astronauts were smart, brave people. She wanted to know their secrets: how they survived the G-forces without puking, how they became used to weightlessness and vacuum-packed food. How they could live in a black, soundless void millions of miles from everything familiar and feel like they belonged."

To read more, go here.

New Fiction, "Dominion," at Hawaii Pacific Review

I have a new story, "Dominion," up at Hawaii Pacific Review today:

"The whole three-hour trip—your mother’s chain smoking, the crushed gold and red empty cellophane cigarette wrappers sliding back and forth across the dashboard, the entire Frank Zappa discography on crackly cassette tapes, your legs sticking to the hot vinyl of the seats as you sat up in front and kept the map spread across your thighs while your little brother Owen played a hand-held asteroids game, oblivious to everything but the blip-blip-blip on the machine—has stretched you to the breaking point."

To read more, go here.

New Fiction in Heavy Feather Review: "Everything Is Good Here, Too"

Excited to see my story, "Everything Is Good Here, Too" post today at Heavy Feather Review. Thanks so much to Jason Teal and everyone at HFR for the incredible product they put out:

"Everything here is alive, tense with waiting. Every take-out container, every trash bag is quiet in worry. You burrow a place to sleep in your old bed, between Thanksgiving decorations, economy-size paper towel packages, ground-bristled toothbrushes. Every consumer moment of your lives, after your father left, has been preserved, as if the presence of these things provides clues, as if their presence convinces your mom there will never again be loss."

To read more, go here.

Pushcart Nomination for "I'm Such a Slut and I Don't Give a Fuck"

So honored that my story, "I'm Such a Slut and I Don't Give a Fuck," has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Smokelong. Congrats also to Tamara Schuyler, Raul Palma, Andrew Mitchell, Gwen E.  Kirby, and Geoff Kronik! Crossing my fingers for everybody!

PS, you can read my story here.

New Story, "Among the Wreckage," in The Cabal

Thanks to Aleks Conrad and the editors at The Cabal for publishing my story, "Among the Wreckage":


The impound lot is what you’re expecting but maybe not prepared for. Hundreds and hundreds of cars in rows, most towed from accidents, tires pressed onto their sides but still attached, hugging the ground like dune buggies. Entire front and back ends are unrecognizable, the metal shredded like iceberg lettuce. Doors sink inward like fallen cakes. Spider web cracks stretch across windshields where heads have hit the glass. 

 To read more, go here.

New story, "After Life," in LitMag

Excited to have a story, "After Life," in Marc Berley's new journal, LitMag

"You were not looking for evidence of an affair, or bulimia, or membership to a terrorist cell, just something. You were looking for dirt that you could rub between your fingers, a grit that would catch under your fingernails, take days to scrub out. Something that would leave a mark." 

To read more, go here.

"Possessions" in The Baltimore City Paper

I have a short fiction piece, "Possessions," in the Baltimore City Paper's Special Fiction Issue, curated by award-winning author and fellow Baltimorean Susan Muaddi-Daraj. It's a great issue, full of some of our greatest working writers and poets.

"And you will insist that I take your regrets, that you shouldn't have been so critical, so quick to anger, so jealous and controlling. That you wish you had appreciated me more, that you hadn't cheated. You will press them on me when I leave, like a missionary tract or a Jehovah's Witness pamphlet. You will hope I examine them later, in some moment of reflection, and convert back to your way of thinking."

To read more, go here.

New Work in The Coffeelicious

Excited to have an excerpt of a novel I'm playing with in The Coffeelicious this week!


She clamped the lid tightly and pushed the button vreevreevree and the fruit was pink frothy soup, no pain, not like boiling a lobster, no anger at her for her betrayal. And if she did not drink it? Someone would come behind her — he would come behind, and put it in the refrigerator, thinking she would drink it later, or even pour it down the sink, if he’d ever had a thought to housekeeping, and no one would be any the wiser.

To read more, go here.

July 14, 2015: Series 3 of Collaborative Work at Pair-Shaped Journal

The third in a series of collaborations between Elizabeth Crisman and me is up at Pair-Shaped Journal. Here is Elizabeth's photo, and my response, the short "Swan Lake":

So much depends on what is never spoken and also what is. So much depends on where you are waiting and how open you are to what comes along.

To read the entire story, go here.

New Collaborative Work in Pair-Shaped Journal

Really thrilled to collaborate with photographer Elizabeth Crisman in series 9 of Weston Lyon's beautiful new collaborative journal, Pair Shaped. Earlier this week Beth posted this image, and I responded with this story:

We eat oranges on the train. I had been dreaming of meat, a roast with a thick brown sauce, instead of the thin juice that filled my cheeks as my teeth ground into the cellophane pulp.

We had not planned to leave so soon. There was a fight. Predictable for us, perhaps, but we had expected the country to fold over us, like a tissue over phlegm, and conceal our rotten parts; to present us, to Europe, to ourselves, as downy snow virgins.

To read the entire story, go here.

"Pan-America" at Style Magazine

Thrilled to have short fiction featured in the July/August issue of Baltimore Style Magazine, along with Jessica Anya Blau, Elisabeth Dahl, and Timmy Reed: Pan America

The couple at the four-mile marker of the trail has the smallest Yorkie you’ve ever seen. It eats from a collapsible bowl under the picnic table as the woman offers you a drinking for the water pump.

“Hard to get enough like that,” she says as you curl your head under the stream of water.

You fill the plastic tumbler. The people who frequent hiking trails are super nice or super crazy. Sometimes they’re both. You consider this as you join her at the table, where she is spreading egg salad on wheat bread. Her husband, muscular, head covered in a bandana, repacks their SUV. To read more, go here.