Links to What's Online...
Creative Nonfiction
“Bluegrass and Fescue,” Short Reads, Nov. 15, 2023
“The Pain of Punishment,” The Inquest, June 12, 2023
"Old Birds and Empty Nests," Oldster, Nov. 2, 2022
"Expressing Anger as a Positive Choice," (on ranting as writing exercise), Assay, Oct. 1, 2022
"If You're Struggling to Write, Lead with Voice," LitHub, Sept. 9, 2022
"Promote Your Book with Your Values," Jane Friedman.com, May 25, 2022
"String Theory," Complete Sentence, Dec. 10, 2021
"The Joy of Detail in Nonfiction," Brevity Blog, Oct. 4, 2021
"Bubbles and Poppies," on having long covid, at Intima, April 2021.
My post at "How We Are," Nicole Walker's pandemic blog project. My post is about having COVID, April 2020.
"The Three Words that Almost Ruined Me as a Writer: Show, Don't Tell," LitHub, Sept. 27, 2019.
"I Am Showing Up for the Apocalypse," Signal Mountain Review, April 2019.
"How to Write an Essay," Brevity Blog, Feb. 20, 2019
"Between One and Ten Thousand," Another Chicago Magazine, December 2018
"Dear Bridgeport," Slag Glass City, Oct. 25, 2018.
"Writing with and Through Pain," LitHub, June 25, 2018.
"On the Verge," as part of the Essay Daily June 21 project in which over 200 essayists wrote about their day on June 21, 2018.
"Need and Smoke," The Rumpus "Voices on Addiction" series, March 26, 2018.
"Does Counting Your Blessings Work?" The Atlantic, Jan. 4, 2018.
"Stop Dismissing Midwestern Literature," Electric Literature, Dec. 13, 2017.
"Try-Hard in Clown Shoes," Proximity, June 8, 2017.
"She's a Diva: Finding Sexiness in My Chronically Ill Body," Ravishly, March 20, 2017
"How Are We Surviving the Days? A Group Essay in 37 Parts," Lady/Liberty/Lit, Feb. 7, 2017, group essay I curated with 37 authors.
"The Lunch Lady and Her Three-Headed Dogs," Brevity, Jan. 17, 2017.
"2016 Eulogy: Fact," Barrelhouse Blog, Jan. 1, 2017. (flash prose)
"Divorce Papers: One of the Best Christmas Gifts I've Ever Received," Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2016
"Do You Like Her?" The Fem, Aug. 21, 2016. (flash prose)
"Flying the Flannel." Vela, July 14, 2016.
"Ratchet Straps and Roadkill," The Manifest-Station, June 10, 2016.
"Life is Good," DIAGRAM 16.2
"What Pain Wants," Rogue Agent Journal (published as a poem), Winter 2016.
"In the Grip of the Sky." Creative Nonfiction 58, Winter 2016.
"8 Adult Dilemmas You'll Face and How Not To Lose Your Shit About Them." Thought Catalog, Jan. 25, 2016.
"What Sex is Like With Chronic Pain," O: The Oprah Magazine, Summer 2015.
"On Being a Woman Who Hates to Cook." Role Reboot. June 10, 2015.
"The Lava Lamp of Pain." The Rumpus. Dec. 28, 2014.
"The Status of Pain," Full Grown People, Sept. 18, 2014.
"Stone Houses: A Poem about Fiction within Nonfiction," Bending Genre, July 7, 2014.
"How the 'Trophy Just for Showing Up' Is Earned," New York Times Motherlode Blog, March 6, 2014.
"Picking Up," Full Grown People, Jan. 6, 2014.
"The Final Bakesale," As It Ought To Be, Dec. 29, 2014.
"A Day in the Grammar of Disease," Brevity 43, May 2013.
"Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook," Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Jan. 2013; Kenneth Nichols wrote a neat analysis of the piece on his blog "Great Writers Steal." Thanks, Ken!
"One-Hitter," Extract(s), August 16, 2012. "Glass Beads," The Baltimore Review, Summer 2012.
"Legoland," Defunct Vol. 3, Issue 1, Spring 2012
"Wall Street's 99 Percent Show Family Values," Huffington Post, Oct. 4, 2011
"When Visitation Phone Calls Are All You Have," Huffington Post, August 3, 2011
"Saint Jerry Wants a Medium Pizza with Half Pepperoni" at r.kv.ry, Spring 2011.
"How Do I Write" is a photo essay I did for Oxford Magazine about composition, creativity, and what the writing process feels like for me. Oxford Magazine's archives seem to have folded or disappeared, so I republished it.
"Land of Infinite David," an essay on David Foster Wallace and Illinois, in Crab Orchard Review, Summer/Fall 2010.
"Prescriptions," Sweet: A Literary Confection, 1.2: 2009. (This is an excerpt from Cover Me)
"Postcards from the Fatherland," Waccamaw 2, Fall 2008.
My work has also appeared in literary journals including Creative Nonfiction, Puerto del Sol, The Pinch, The Sonora Review, Crab Orchard Review, Fourth Genre, Topic, Passages North, Main Street Rag, Literary Mama, Kaleidoscope, Hotel Amerika and Sports Literate and others and in periodicals including The Washington Post Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Psychology Today, In These Times, Sojourner, and Earth Island Journal; and elsewhere.
Journalism/Politics/Reporting/Blogs with Memoir
"Promote Your Book with Your Values," Jane Friedman's blog, May 24, 2022
"You've Got the 'Rona But Failed the Test," Labor Notes, May 18, 2020.
“How to Go to the Doctor With No Insurance,” Teen Vogue, Sept. 27, 2017.
"Your Brain on Hillary Could Be a Whole Lot Happier," The Establishment, October 6, 2016.
"Set this Health Insurance Garbage on Fire," The Billfold, July 26, 2016.
"I take opioids to treat chronic pain. Stigmatizing them will harm me," The Guardian (UK), June 22, 2016.
"I Slept with the Enemy: Here's What an Unlikely Romance Taught Me About Racism, Donald Trump, and Our Cultural Obsession with Male Rebellion," Salon, March 20, 2016.
Two Eyes are Never Enough: A Minimum Wage Memoir, SheBooks, May 2014
"Why I Loved Direct Care Work, and Why I Quit," Direct Care Alliance Blog, May 29, 2014
Waiting for the Goon Squad, Inside Higher Ed, April 7, 2011
"The Birth of the North Star Cafe," Columbus Monthly, 2004
Pedagogy/Theory of Nonfiction
"Breakup, Break Down, Break Open: Intimate Partner Violence and Life Inside a Daily Ending," New Ohio Review. Originally published in print in 2017, then re-issued online in Summer 2021.
"James Baldwin: Nonfiction of a Native Son," Assay 3.1 (Fall 2016).
"Hydra-Headed Memoirs and Well-Connected Essays: Navigating Your Book-Length Nonfiction Thing," Assay Special Conference Issue, Jan. 1, 2016.
"The Mind and Heart and Gut at Work," The Essay Review, Dec. 2014. A craft and literary reflection on the appearance of anger in essays.
"Amazon Constellations," Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies 1.1: Fall 2014. A discussion about the author's role in interacting with online reviews of one's work.
"Grout, Tiles, and Eduardo Galeno's Three-Volume Essay ," Essay Daily, Dec. 17, 2014
"Kidney Stone in My Shoe," Her Kind: A Blog Powered by VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts, Dec. 2012
"Reality Is Sly, People Are Complicated: A Roundtable on the Facts of the Matter, Part 2," Brevity Blog, Nov. 20, 2012 "As a Matter of Fact: A Roundtable Discussion on Anonymous' 'The Facts of the Matter,' and Truth and Craft in Creative Nonfiction" Brevity Blog, Nov. 5, 2012
Reviews of Other Authors' Work
Review of Sejal Shah's This Is One Way To Dance, Brevity, August 6, 2020.
"Working and Trying," part of a tribute to Ned Stuckey-French, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, 6:1, Fall 2019.
"Why Is the Midwest So Maligned?" Interview with Sarah Smarsh about Heartland. Electric Literature, Nov. 12, 2018.
Review of Kelly Davio's It's Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability, Brevity, November 15, 2017
Review of Katherine McCord's Run Scream Unbury Save, Brevity, May 11, 2017
"Barrelhouse Reviews: Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen," Barrelhouse, Nov. 3, 2016.
Review of Jessica Handler's Braving the Fire: Writing About Grief and Loss, Brevity, Jan. 2014
"Literary Creation and Formation: Review of Allison Bechdel's Are You My Mother?," Literary Mama, December 2012.
Reviewed: Looking for Esperanza, River Teeth online, Fall 2012.
Editorial Work
I co-edited, along with Keah Brown and Sarah Fawn Montgomery, the September 2020 "Experiences of Disability" Special Issue of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Nonfiction.
Anthologies
Sonya Huber and Ioanna Opidee, "Teaching the Exploratory Essay as Pedagogy, Process, and Project," Creative Composition: Inspiration and Techniques for Writing Instruction, ed. Lori A. May and Danita Berg. Multilingual Matters, May 2015.
The Incredible Sestina Anthology, ed. Daniel Nester, Write Bloody Publishing, 2014.
American Creative Writers on Class, ed. Shelly Reed, Big Wonderful Press.
Learning to Glow (University of Arizona Press),
Young Wives' Tales (Seal Press),
Bare Your Soul: A Thinking Girl's Guide to Enlightenment (Seal Press),
Reading for the Maternally Inclined: The Best of Literary Mama (Seal Press),
Mama Ph.D. (Rutgers University Press)
Campus, Inc. (Prometheus Books)
I've been writing a few editorials for AOL on the healthcare debate, including "Is ObamaCare Socialism? Not on Your Life," Dec. 6, 2010.