Short Prose

“God is strong and gentle-mouthed and loyal to the death. My hand on that harness God wears, I walk the woods, I walk the road, I come to love my darkness whose possibilities are double-sleeved in my unknowing and God’s knowing.”

Keep reading: “Love Letter on the Day of a Mammogram” essay in storySouth, Issue 55: Spring 2023

“Each fall, at the start of a new semester, the bright vibration of muscle memory has me reaching for leather work gloves and muck boots instead of syllabi. In the morning dark, I smell the sharp cold dirt of wresting tubers from the furrow behind the plow—until the coffee percolates and I throw on a dress and respectable heels, pack my lunch and laptop and texts.”

Keep reading: “Good Fire” essay in AGNI Online (April 2023) (nominated for Best of the Net)

“Miss Rosier, who was childless, had us bow our heads to our fifth-grade desks on the appointed day, as though for prayer. She slowly ran the side of a pencil from the nape of each neck to the top of each head. We tried not to shiver as the pencil slipped slowly up our skulls. And if, later, a name was called over the intercom, we knew they had it. “We tried not to shiver as the pencil slipped slowly up our skulls. And if, later, a name was called over the intercom, we knew they had it.”

Keep reading: “Blessing for the Lice Check” essay in Scoundrel Time, April 2021 (winner of the Scoundrel Time 2022 Editors’ Choice Award in Creative Nonfiction; nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

“I’m trying to talk about the pause that is not a paucity, the silence that is not empty, the ache that is not only.”

Keep reading: “Bless the Smallest Hollow: On Longing and Online Dating” essay in Gulf Coast, 31.1 (Winter/Spring 2019); Winner of the 2018 Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction and listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2020

“The voice is an animal’s snort before attack. That is what it sounds like when I read the story this time, that kind of groan and agitation. A guttural hauling up, the voice ricochets in multiplied clamor, saying, ‘Come forth.’ According to second-century rabbis, the soul must now travel a long way back down the southeastern slope of the mountain, a full day gone free. Each morning for three days, the soul returned, from wherever it is souls go, to the tomb in Bethany, obliged to reenter the body if possible; but when it saw the skull finally sink in and face disfigure, jaw held on only by a stubborn strip of linen, the soul finally abandoned the body. Fourth day, though, here it is hooking back because the agitated-animal voice calls Lazarus.”

Keep reading: “What I Want Your Voice to Do” essay in Blackbird 17.1, Spring 2018

“Blessing for Homecoming” and “Blessing for the Demolition Derby” two flash essays in Still: The Journal #40, Fall 2022

“Meet You at the Dollar General Across from the Family Dollar” essay in Blackbird 18.2, Fall 2019

“Yoke” essay in Appalachian Review, Fall 2017 (Denny C. Plattner Award for Creative Nonfiction)

“The Cattle Guard” essay in Belmont Story Review, Spring 2016

“Testimony” short story in The Tusculum Review “Featured Artist” online archive, May 2014

“Edna” short story in Newfound: An Inquiry of Place 2.2, July 2011

Interviews