Category: Literary Practice

  • 8/8/24: You’re Still in the Running

    8/8/24: You’re Still in the Running

    It’s early days still, but I’m honored that The Asterisms is a finalist for AWP’s James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, and doubly happy that Susan McCarty’s manuscript The Only Thing Missing is Something is a finalist for AWP’s Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Fingers crossed! You can check out the finalists […]

  • 7/7/24: Review of Shena McAuliffe’s We Are A Teeming Wildnerness

    I sometimes, after the hyperspeed of studying for exams, still have trouble reading for fun, so it helps me to write reviews, where I’m forced to really read a book slowly, read it again, think about it, think about how to convey (all sorts of) powerful writing to others. So I’m happy to say that […]

  • 5/17/23: Joining Seneca Review

    After five years away from the important and rewarding work of literary journals, I am super super happy to announce that I have joined the staff of Seneca Review. As co-editor with the brilliant Kathryn Cowles of SR’s Beyond Category section (which reminds me, so pleasantly, of the Tour de France and its “hors categorie” […]

  • 3/17/23: RIT Creative Writing faculty read at the Henrietta Public Library

    One of the most difficult things about being an academic is attending to your school duties and finding ways to meaningfully connect the institution to the local community. When I got to RIT, I had such big plans about creating local reading series’, volunteering at Writers & Books, high schools. Quickly, though, it became clear […]

  • 3/27-3/28/23: Reading at the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University

    I’m so happy (though I’m going to miss my baby terribly!) to be traveling next week to Minnesota, to read and hang out with Professor Rachel Marston’s wonderful students at the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University. Thanks so much to the Literary Arts Institute for hosting me! Pix to follow… Event details!

  • 3/11/23: What babies do to (non-baby) blogs (aka AWP Panel today!)

    Holy crap, I haven’t posted in almost a year. Why? Well, we had a baby. Do you want to hear about poops, endlessly? No you do not. But now that the baby is seven months old, I feel a little bit like I can be in the world again. And later today, I’m presenting, along […]

  • 7/15/21: Reading and Conversation with Te-Ping Chen

    On Thursday, July 15 @8PM EST, Writers & Books will be hosting a free virtual reading and conversation (I’ll be moderating) with the writer Te-Ping Chen. Her first book of stories, Land of Big Numbers (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) has been acclaimed by the Oprah Magazine, NPR, and Publishers Weekly; it is truly amazing. […]

  • 12/12/20: Ensconced in MacDowell

    It is such a pleasure to be back at MacDowell after a 5-year hiatus. The walks, the turkey and deer, the staff, the other residents (after a 10-day test/lockdown), and of course, some time to write and think and breathe after a never-ending semester. Thinking good thoughts about the world and about the novel-beast!

  • 11/20/19: Back to MacDowell

    I’m super happy to be going back to the MacDowell Colony in March. I can almost imagine the walks around the grounds and the daily soup thermos…

  • 10/23/19: The Transformation of Versal

    Many of you know that I was the fiction editor, and later the co-editor, of the Amsterdam-based literary journal Versal from 2005 to 2017. It was a super, and meaningful run. I left this position, one I dearly loved, only because of the exigencies of a tenure-track position, coupled with Versal‘s re-centering in Amsterdam (along […]