(Originally published at https://www.bostonbookblog.com/articles/focusing-outward-living-literary-citizenship-in-community on July 16, 2019.) “Try to treat o...

(Originally published at https://www.blackrosewriting.com/blog/a-writers-becoming on June 15, 2019.) When I was fifteen, my father diagnosed me as a “jack-of...

I grew up in a family that was too poor to travel the world. Instead, we invited the world into our home and hosted exchange students who taught me that kind...

Nobody warned me when I set out to become a writer that the job would require self-promotion. Not even in grad school, when I first discovered the terrors of...

February 3, 2016 If I had to choose between trying to sell a novel or writing a new one, I would choose writing a new one. Hands down. Every time. And yet th...

March, 28, 2015 Since I’m not interesting enough to write memoir, and not scholarly enough to write non-fiction, I’ve staked my claim in the fictional world,...

May 17, 2013 I have never really felt as though I belonged. At first I believed my sense of displacement was chronological, owing largely to my reading (and ...