Essays
177 posts
Deficiency
I’ve never had a cavity, but I brush too hard. A decade ago, a dentist told me I was scrubbing away my own flesh.
On Tove Jansson’s Eccentrics and Oddballs
I saw my fears and yearnings magnified and reflected back to me in Jansson's stories.
A Bloody Brilliant Sentence: Erotic Linguistics in Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber”
...I had not yet read horror written by another woman with such a rich, arresting evocation of female sexuality.
Parallel Practice: How to Break a Sentence
Which color might capture the word “would,” for example? And which stitch?
Losers Keepers
It’s hard to go on reading when you don’t remember what happened twenty pages ago, so I haven’t read many novels recently.
On Snorting Human Remains
One of my friends, Enzo, had just died, and he’d probably felt a similar way, invincible and lost.
Nothing New Under the Sun: The Russian Formalists’ Guide to Prose Craft
With a fixation on abstract novelty, our students call to us from a crowded space of so many like tales and so much pressure to spit out some shiny new thing.
An Imprecise Translation
There are feelings, memories, behind everything you say. If only it were as simple as putting your hand to your temple.
Wilder’s Mozzy
We feel a pull toward the missing person, want to find them, give a little bark or nip at their heels, then direct them home.