Selected Nonfiction
Don’t Play With Your Kids. Seriously.
I have three kids under 10 who don’t expect—or even want—to play with me. It took some practice, but over time, we’ve all learned we’re better off doing our own thing.
Motherhood Will Not Be Optimized
I am not an ideal mother. I don’t want to be. I want to be human.
Our Mothers As We Never Saw Them
Because any story about your mother is part myth, isn’t it?
Kevin Bacon Is Not a Dick
“I was a waiter,” he explains, though the gesture feels far more chivalrous than food service would ever allow.
The Secret, Magical Underwear That Only Moms Know About
To a young, healthy person like myself, this underwear is part novelty, part revelation.
My California
Don’t ask me, I want to say, I just live here.
Naked and Unafraid and Totally in Public
I'd never seen so many naked bodies at once: male, female, thin, fat, old, young, dark, pale, supple, wrinkled, scarred.
Op-Ed: Unplug the phone, turn off the news, light the light and read together
Co-written with Tess Taylor.
Reading and Race: On Slavery in Fiction
I began to connect race to history to power, and it was all because of a book.
In Praise of Wearing the Same Thing As Everyone Else
Like the best basic, it doesn’t upstage the body, but empowers it.
Taking Marriage One Year at a Time
This was Paris, and this was my honeymoon, and I was depressed.
Shutting the Drawer: What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell?
Eventually, a writer must accept rejection, accept the death of her first true darling, and move on.
Short Stories Available Online
People in Hell Want Ice Water
A random hookup amidst the COVID-19 pandemic brings two lonely people together when they need it most.
Calistoga
They’d known each other for thirty years and nothing was going to change.
Chorus
In the Pence administration, high school girls have to take things into their own hands.
I Am the Lion Now
They were married,
and passion was not greater than cake.
There’s No Place Like Home
From Warmer, a collection of seven visions of a conceivable tomorrow by today’s most thought-provoking authors.
Amazon Original Stories
Ambulance
of Boys
We were fifteen. The world had to be ending.
Salt Lick
I didn’t plan on telling Rachel the horse story.
Animals
As soon as Mr. Blackburn shuts his eyes, he begins to dream about bison, as he has for the past month or so.