Written Works

Goodnight Moon

Post Road Magazine

The storm blew itself out before dawn. There had been no sleeping through it, so around six o’clock, you decided to go in search of a coffee truck. A cup of hot coffee would distract and reassure. Enterprising New Yorkers would never let a little rain deter them, you thought. Surely there was commerce in caffeine and crullers. So, armed with an umbrella and a heavy little LED flashlight, you opened the door to the stairs.

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Ohio House Tour

The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10

Some people say the most splendid thing about a road trip to Ohio is the road trip from Ohio. I might have agreed; benighted rustbelt, flyover, swing state that it is. But follow this simple itinerary and you may come away with affection for Ohio. Spring is a good time to travel.

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Try This at Home: Tips to Starting Your Own Reading Series

Brevity Blog

Vladimir Nabokov suggests a writer’s imagination transforms him into a storyteller, a teacher, or an enchanter and the best practitioners embody all three. One element the three roles share is in the speaking. Reading in front of people can feel onerous at best and potentially fatal at worst. Performance anxiety is the iceberg tip.

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Damariscotta Lake

The Common online
February 4, 2015

There were hundreds of summer camps in Maine in the ’60s. It was a seasonal gulag for middle-class white kids, ages 8–16. Being shipped off to the woods by your parents for eight whole weeks felt like a secret Get Out Of Jail Free card. Only the nametags on your clothes connected you to who you were once you had been dropped into June, and then, somewhere around August, you would brown and swell and burst into flame like a marshmallow on a stick.

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Serene Inside

Structo, issue 10

Serene Inside

Rowing into the wind
On a pond in Kansas
The oars are too short
I’m winded but
I won’t show it

The great blue heaven
Beguiles this golden arena
Of approving prairie grass
And glistens back at itself
Five acres of applause

A small dog glints on the shore
Following the boat’s
Progress with intention
I row like a sonofabitch
Like a swan inverted

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A Group of Writers

BLOOM
December 14, 2012

I graduated with a master’s in creative writing in the summer of 2011. Prior to that, my literary fantasies had simmered for many years on a stove of many burners. They were symptoms of a condition I called ‘English Major’s Disease,’ a chronic enthusiasm for the language that masked an unspoken yearning to be struck by the magic pencil. By the time I decided to pick up the pencil and finally write, I had at last become willing to entertain all suggestions for improvement. It was that kind of cleansing decision…

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Journey to the Center of the Earth

The Common online
September 20, 2012

With my fingertips, I shove my hardhat in front of me, while I thrust my body forward with my toes. A hundred yards of solid planet hang above me. Though dank anxiety brews in my core, my extremities are working flawlessly, independent of my consciousness. Be still, monkey mind. Now would be a supremely impractical time to have an out-of-body experience…

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Change Is Bad

The New York Times: Metropolitan Diary section
January 21, 2008

I was having a party the Saturday before Christmas. In order to create a gay seasonal display with sprays of piney extravagance, I needed some slabs of green plastic foam from Lee’s Art Shop, up on 57th Street across from the Art Students League. It was freezing, so I bundled up and took the B train to Columbus Circle…

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