Writing

Latest

My Mom Gets Her News from Someplace Even Worse Than Fox, for Slate
Review of Leah Myers’ Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity, for NYT Books
Y’all: the Most Inclusive Pronoun, a letter of recommendation for the New York Times Magazine
My Ancestors Enslaved Black People, and Acknowledging that Matters, at Guardian US
Marriage Skepticism: A Love Story, for Harper’s Bazaar
Learning About Ourselves From Genealogy, an Ancestor Trouble excerpt, at Wall Street Journal
On My Father, an Ancestor Trouble excerpt, at Esquire
Review of Rachel Jamison Webster’s Benjamin Banneker and Us, for Washington Post Book World

Selected Essays and Opinions

Pave Forest Park and Put Up a Parking Lot?, on “Forever Wild” land in NYC, for Curbed
I Love Being a Stepmom, a Role I Was Afraid to Take On, for Human Parts
A Doubter in the Holy Land, in New York Times Magazine and Best American Travel Writing
On Uncovering Family Histories America Is Still Wresting With, an Ancestor Trouble excerpt, at Time
America’s Ancestry Craze, for Harper’s
13 Ways of Looking: Maud Newton on the Imagery of Ancestors (Including Her Own), at Lit Hub
Oy Vey, Christian Soldiers, on evangelicals’ Bar Mitzvahs, for the New York Times Magazine
Ode to an Enchanted Hotel: My Rendezvous with the Haunted Biltmore, for Oxford American
Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace, for the New York Times Magazine
Good Writing is All About Being Interested, an essay on craft, at Literary Hub

Selected Fiction

When the Flock Changed, winner Narrative Prize for fiction, in Narrative Magazine
Nobody’s Stranger, a Miami noir short story (Part One and Part Two), at Medium
Regarding the Insurance Defense Attorney, in Eyeshot, winner Stark Short Fiction Prize

Selected Reviews, Appreciations, Interviews, Profiles and Conversations

Review of Alex Wagner’s Futureface, for the New York Times Book Review
What Would Jesus Buy?, at Bookforum
Mat Johnson’s Pym: my choice for the Pulitzer, in the New York Times Magazine
Science, Chance, and Emotion with Real Cosima, a profile, for Longreads
Review of Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitterfor the New York Times Book Review
Interview with Nicole Chung, author of All You Can Ever Know, for B&N Review
Wave of the Future, conversation with Chang Rae Lee, for Barnes & Noble Review
On the Sunshine State and T.D. Allman’s scathing history of it, for Bookforum
After the Affair: On Jean Rhys and Ford Maddox Ford, with Alexander Chee at Granta
For Vassar or for Poorer, on the timelessness of Mary McCarthy’s The Group, for Bookforum
Appreciation of Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, and other NPR contributions
Alison Bechdel: The Balancing Act, interview at Barnes & Noble Review
On Molly Crabapple’s “Altarpieces to the Revolution,” at The New Republic
On the unparalleled Muriel Spark, at Barnes & Noble Review
When Your Shrink Dies: A Talk with Emma Forrest about Your Voice in My Head, at Awl
On Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, at Barnes & Noble Review
Joan Didion , profiled for Humanities
Remembering Harry Crews, my former teacher, at Awl

Older Fiction, Essays, and Miscellany

I, Rodent, at Awl
Some Company For Slow Writers, at Tin House
My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller, for New York Times Magazine
Conversations You Have at Twenty , essay in Love is a Four-Letter Word and Narrative
My teeny NYT One-Page Magazine columns, in the New York Times Magazine
Better Boundaries with Muriel Spark, at Awl
Wartime in Williamsburg, essay in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, published 2003
Cleaning Up on Christmas, on a holiday alone at my father’s place, at Medium
Portrait of My Father, a recollection at Granta
The Rapture Meets My Birthday, essay at Awl
Luke, fiction in storySouth, published 2002
Post-Extraction, fiction in Swink, published 2004
Send Up the Clowns, in The American Prospect, published 2006
A Novel, Not a Memoir, essay (clarified here) at the LA Times
Mess Up Your Mind, anthologized (print only) in What My Mother Gave Me
Football and Nachos, the Texan Way, at Awl