Short Fiction & Nonfiction

ZYZZYVA

“I always sensed beast in the house. From the time I could sense anything, I knew I could reach for and grip onto a shaggy coat, pull myself up to lean against a beastly wall of muscle…”

Hidden Child Foundation

“What goes on in the mind of a child like this? How does a child sort through and make sense of what is real and what is ‘pretend’ — especially when that child must exist in a kind of psychological duality for the sake of survival?…”

Largehearted Boy

“In the Occupied Zone of France, the Germans made dancing and most forms of music verboten, especially any kind of music celebrating French culture or history, the French commitment to democratic or patriotic principles; the penalty for defiance could be imprisonment, or even deportation. Or worse...”

CrimeReads

“One film, in particular, brought me into the feeling of a young Jew living in a world of Nazi-Occupied France and made a significant impression on me; Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), written and directed by French auteur Louis Malle…”

Air/Light

“I’ve never seen my mother naked, is that weird? I’m not saying I want to—that would be weirder, like I’m some freak and I’m not. I just wonder about her breasts, sometimes, if they’re like mine, now that mine have puffed out a little. Hers are probably bigger though, less girlish.…”

Bomb Magazine

"When he breaks her rib the first time—slinging her over his meaty shoulder like a caveman..."

Air/Light

"It is a cruciferous vegetable, which sounds like crucifixion, I know, like crucifix, the tortured crux of it all..."

Los Angeles Review of Books

"A while back, driving from LA to Phoenix on the I-10, I got caught in a haboob..."

Tin House, Issue 75

"‘A meat bee,’ the ER doctor tells her boyfriend. He grabs a slab of her bare thigh, slams a syringe of epinephrine in..."

Electric Literature , recommended by Rick Moody

“My sweet little dog, Tess, is what they call ‘apricot’…”

Salon

"Even in mid-October, the Phoenix heat is brutal, the very air like a toss of acid to the skin. But this evening, when I exit the creative writing workshop I teach, there is a faint, delicious breeze…."

TriQuarterly

“They’re in Needles for the night. At least, that was the plan. But Rick had shut his cell phone off against her early in the day’s white glare, and she’d lost sight of the weaving truck after his angry cutoff on the westbound I-40…”

Tin House

“she knits because she grows absorbed by the taming of chaotic string into structure…”

SmartSmut, Nerve.com

“The girls work till closing at 9 pm, and all day Saturdays and Sundays. The smell of their fruity lip gloss and gum competes with the cherry-topped cheesecakes and yeast…”

Black Clock #17

“He spotted her immediately from - his word - afar. The Famous

a) Playwright
b) Congressman
c) Musician

had espied her sylvan, fragile beauty at once, he tells her…”

The Rumpus

“Consider the clavicle…”

The Los Angeles Review

"I live in Los Angeles, so I live by the same rule all my single girlfriends do: Don’t date an actor. We respect the stereotype...” A

The Kenyon Review

“...Of course, not drawing from our lives, not writing the "real" life story that draws blood, that pains us, is often what keeps it safe. The writing and the life.... But how much, as a writer, am I willing to pay for my work? How much am I willing to earn?”

Tin House, Vol. 4, No. 3

"I discovered my parents' porn stash when I was around nine or ten, home sick from school, queasy, mildly feverish, forlorn, achy, and itching to discover something...."

Reading Ireland

“I’m a writer because of Brian Moore. Or - I’ll back up - I’m actually a writer because I dreaded Chaucer…”

Electric Literature, excerpt from Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies

“Am I really just some impure, low-minded slut? Why aren’t I looking to be completed?”

Salon, from Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies

"But it is so far away from me, up there on-screen; I want this, for absolute real, and I'm not even sure what this means..."

The Manifest-Station

“I had my first experience with electroshock therapy when I was eleven….”