A new short story in The Baffler

I’m pleased as punch that my dystopian short story “The Wizard” is shining its little grey light from the pages of The Baffler.

A new short story in Conjunctions

I’m very happy to have my short story “Water Music” among the great writing in this fall’s issue of Conjunctions.

Read the story here.

“The Problem with Being a Final Girl” … in LitHub

LitHub has excerpted the beginning of my recent New England Review essay — and paired it with an appropriate film still:

Although I feel like this one would have really been on the nose:

You can still read the whole essay here.

New essay in New England Review

My essay on “The Problem with Being a Final Girl” has shown up in this fall’s New England Review:

Find the whole essay here.

New essay in Cabinet

Check yer local eccentric book seller for my new essay in Cabinet #65. “At the Sign of the Mortar and Pestle“ is about longing for a sense of historical place and finding it in the vestiges of medieval trade emblems on city streets and strip malls today.

 

 

Best American Short Story?

Tickled to learn that “The Pathetic Fallacy” was recognized as “distinguished” by the people at Best American Short Stories, 2018.

Full story, here.

A story in New England Review

I’ve got a short story in this winter’s edition of New England Review. “The Pathetic Fallacy” is what it’s called.

 

Balderdash

I’ve got an essay up at Identity Theory, about my formative years playing the language game called Balderdash.

In the game of Balderdash (which is just Mattel’s rendering of the old parlor game called “Dictionary”) there is a single word printed on the front of each card. Something you will have never seen. Perhaps schenkfelder, or allocochick, or sialogogue. Words so obscure that no one at the table will have encountered them – not even my father, who, having done the Times crossword puzzle every day of the week, long before I entered the world, seemed to me a repository of lexical bits and bobs. But Balderdash words are the white elephants, the curios and forgotten imports that lurk in the vast storehouse of the English language.

The folks at Queen Mob’s Tea House asked me to write about … my bed. So I took a moment to explain what I call “the triclinium.”

I first encountered a description of the triclinium at an exhibition of the ruins of Pompeii. A bed in Roman times, the wall text informed me, was also used as a triclinium for eating, reading, writing, and even for receiving guests. It was one of the most important pieces of furniture in the household.

And now a picture of my bed is on the internets.

“How to Keep a Journal: A history of the discipline, and of myself”

Reading these pages more than two decades later, it’s hard not to wince. I’m embarrassed by the young person who filled every single page of VOLUME I, making sure to begin on the very top line of every ruled page and to end each entry at the very bottom line, leaving no gaps or asymmetries. I pity her blithely compulsive tally of each day’s obligations and incidentals. I’m exasperated by how she glosses over almost everything that might actually matter. But what did you actually feel? What did you actually think? Can’t you explain it any better than that? It’s me you’re talking to, I want to say.

Happy to have this essay up at The Paris Review online.