Writing
Latest
- Y’all: the Most Inclusive Pronoun, a letter of recommendation for the New York Times Magazine
- On the Importance of Acknowledging Wrongs of Individual Enslaver Ancestors, at Guardian US
- Learning About Ourselves From Genealogy, an Ancestor Trouble excerpt, at Wall Street Journal
- On My Father, an Ancestor Trouble excerpt, at Esquire
- On Uncovering Family Histories America Is Still Wresting With, an Ancestor Trouble excerpt, at Time
- Good Writing is All About Being Interested, an essay on craft, at Literary Hub
- Marriage Skepticism: A Love Story, for Harper’s Bazaar
- 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
- 13 Ways of Looking: Maud Newton on the Imagery of Ancestors (Including Her Own), at Literary Hub
Previously, on Ancestors
- America’s Ancestry Craze, for Harper’s
- Review of Alex Wagner’s Futureface, for the New York Times Book Review
Perennials
- I, Rodent, a year-end essay at Awl
- A Doubter in the Holy Land, in New York Times Magazine and Best American Travel Writing 2015
- Science, Chance, and Emotion with Real Cosima, a profile, for Longreads
- When the Flock Changed, winner Narrative Prize for fiction, in Narrative Magazine
- 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 40th Birthday, essay at Awl
- Regarding the Insurance Defense Attorney, in Eyeshot (and Irwin & Alice Stark Short Fiction Award)
- My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller, for New York Times Magazine
- Ode to an Enchanted Hotel: My Rendezvous with the Haunted Biltmore, for Oxford American
- Conversations You Have at Twenty, essay in Love is a Four-Letter Word and Narrative
Essays and Opinions
- Oy Vey, Christian Soldiers, on evangelicals’ Bar Mitzvahs, for the New York Times Magazine
- What Would Jesus Buy?, at Bookforum
- Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace, for the New York Times Magazine
- Some Company For Slow Writers, at Tin House
Selected Reviews, Appreciations, Interviews, Profiles and Conversations
- Mat Johnson’s Pym: my choice for the 2012 Pulitzer, in the New York Times Magazine
- Review of Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter, for the technology issue of 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, my conversation with Chang Rae Lee about On Such a Full Sea, for Barnes & Noble Review
- On the Sunshine State and T.D. Allman’s scathing history of it, for Bookforum (print only)
- After the Affair: On Jean Rhys and Ford Maddox Ford, correspondence 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, at NPR, and other contributions to NPR’s Books We Like
- 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
- Review of Adam Levin’s The Instructions, at Barnes & Noble Review
- Review of A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, at Barnes & Noble Review
- Review of Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs, at Barnes & Noble Review
- Review of Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields, in The New York Times Book Review
- Review of C.E. Morgan’s All the Living, at The Second Pass
- Review of Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, in the LA Times Book Review
- Review of Richard Price’s Lush Life, in the Boston Globe
- Review of Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project, in The Boston Globe
- Review of Cate Kennedy’s Dark Roots, in the New York Times Book Review
- Review of Ellen Litman’s The Last Chicken in America, in the NY Times Book Review
- Remembering Harry Crews, my former teacher, at Awl
- A Talk with Philip Connors about Fire Season, at The Paris Review Daily
Miscellany
- My teeny NYT One-Page Magazine columns, in the New York Times Magazine
- Better Boundaries with Muriel Spark, at Awl
Selected Older Fiction and Essays
- Luke, fiction in storySouth, published 2002
- Wartime in Williamsburg, essay in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, published 2003
- Post-Extraction, fiction in Swink, published 2004
- Send Up the Clowns, in The American Prospect, published 2006
- Confessions of a Cradle Robber, essay in When I Was a Loser, published 2007
- 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
- Nobody’s Stranger, a Miami noir short story (Part One and Part Two), at Medium
- Football and Nachos, the Texan Way, at Awl