Essays
In the Grip of the Sky
Essay
If you're wracked with joint pain, you don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows
Age, Formative
Found texts.
"When I was nine years old I began taking piano lessons. When I was nine years old I got my own library card. When I was nine years old I was diagnosed with lupus. When I was nine years old ..."
The Same Story
Winner: Best Essay Prize, "Mistakes"
Two young women pregnant at the same time by the same man.
Sleepless in Any City
Insomnia in Lorca's Madrid
I am prey to the nocturnal creaks in my mind and weak to the city creatures that stir at night. I am lonely but not alone. No one is asleep in this city. No one. No one.
Sensualiterature
The scratching & hammering & tapping of writing
One of the things that we do not talk about when we talk about writing is the sound and scent and sensuality of it, the scratching and hammering and tapping, the pitter of pencils and the scribble and scrawl of pens, the quiet mumble of the electric...
What You Learn in College
Or how to play strip spin-the-bottle
"To be out of that room and away from your drunk, laughing, happy, naked friends. To leave behind what could have happened, how your life might have shifted, to have escaped unchanged."
The Library as Storyplace
Essay
"A reader can still count on finding everything at a library, and there is still something emotionally secure about that."
Man on the Tracks
Essay
"When you watch a man on the tracks before an oncoming train, that’s exactly what you do: watch."
The Butterfly Effect
Finding Sanctuary in Butterfly Town, USA
"When the monarchs hang clustered together, paralyzed by the cold, they are clasped to each other, holding the heat between them. They wait for the sun to warm them."
Strong Loyalties
On Australian Biscuits
"Fairy bread! Hundreds and thousands! These are foods that deserve their own treatment."
