Matins, Compline
novel excerpt
Kissing Dan is like saying the psalms, outrageous winter faith. Every morning she feels more certain that she should leave him, that leaving would be the loving action.
First Published 2021 in The Windhover
MoreIf Party Wolf Jumps
short fiction
All of which is to say when you remember Baker now it’s best to remember him with the wolf mask on…
First Published 2021 in The Waking: Ruminate Online
MoreTuesday After School
short fiction
He entered the house through the garage and found his mother standing in the kitchen but watching the TV in the living room. The house was still and he had the sense that she had been standing there for some time. On the screen two skyscrapers were streaming black smoke the way people bleed underwater in shark movies.
First Published 2018 in Still Point Arts Quarterly
MoreConsuming Fire
memoir essay
I’m surprised when I walk out of the video store and it’s raining ash. So complete is the apparent lack of concern among the Montanans, you’d never guess that just five miles outside of town two thousand acres of land are burning.
First Published 2018 in Bright Bones: Contemporary Montana Writing
MoreWeights & Measures
short fiction
He was plunged so deep in tunnel vision now that he was deaf to the thunder rolling off the rooftops around us.
First Published 2015 in The South Carolina Review
MoreBev Trimpy’s Dog
short fiction
The dog gave a laughing bark and then tore off into the brush, and that was that. There were predators in those woods and the dog was not smart.
First Published 2015 in Dappled Things
Honorable Mention For
The J.F. Powers Prize
By And By, And Yet
short fiction
On the news they say there were tornados as far north as Buffalo and Toronto, but what I know is, here in Chambersburg, the storm ripped the steeple off the church.
First Published 2015 in Lalitamba
MoreImages of the Invisible
memoir essay
In America we have always been good at taking Jesus out of context and refashioning him in our own image. Shortly after the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson did it with scissors.
First Published 2014 in The Cresset
MoreSix Feet From The Sun
memoir essay
When you’re a carpenter’s son there are things you don’t tell your mother. The old asbestos siding Dad had you driving nails into, for instance. Or the ceiling fan he wired without first shutting off the power. Or how you close your eyes when you bring the round whirling blade of the chop saw down on a length of spouting so you won’t get any flecks of aluminum in your eyes. How it just seems safer that way.
First Published 2013 in The Common
MoreWe Are the Pretty
short fiction
We talk about you behind your back, Samantha Oswald. In the hallways and the bathrooms and the cafeteria. In the locker room after field hockey practice. You’re very popular. We talk about you all the time.
First Published 2012 in Identity Theory
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Ryan Rickrode 