2026 Notable In Best American Essays
What a nice surprise to learn that my essay on Langston Hughes in Carmel for Alta was a notable in the 2026 Best American Essays! You can read Vigilantes at the Door here.
Category Essays
Alta: That’s AJ In The Background
Essay: First Love, Faded Bloom in The American Scholar
Alta Article: Condors Lords of the Fly
For Alta Magazine, I wrote an ode to the California condor: I don’t know when I started looking for California condors in the sky. It must have been when I was a child growing up in Humboldt County, before I…
New York Times: Tiny Love Story
I wrote a Tiny Love Story for The New York Times. It’s about how patient my husband is with dealing with my anxiety He’s great!
Alta: Falling In and Out of Love with Sierra On-Line
I have an essay in Alta Magazine about how much I loved Kings Quest and other Sierra computer games when I was a kid. For a while I wanted to be a video game designer, but relatives scared me away…
Article On Anaïs Nin
My article on Anais Nin for Alta Magazine is now online! For decades, Anaïs Nin was married to two different men on separate coasts of the United States. Neither man knew about the other. She called this complicated situation her…
Essay In Prairie Schooner
Very happy to have an essay in the most recent issue Prairie Schooner. It’s about my experiences dealing with the California wild fires, including evacuations and the ongoing weirdness and tragedy of climate change.
Alta Article: The Mystery of the Poisoned Marshmallow
My newest article for Alta Magazine is about a murder mystery that happened in Carmel in 1914. A writer named Alice MacGowan discovered a mysterious box of marshmallows sitting on her back porch. She thought they were from a friend.…
Article: When Mark Twain Canceled Bret Harte
I have a new article in Alta Magazine! It’s about the 30 year literary feud between Mark Twain and Bret Harte. 30 years! That Mark Twain could really hold a grudge. Read about it here.
Article: Haunted by Houses
Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, I wrote about gothic horror, Shirley Jackson, and California Victorians: RIGHT BEFORE SHIRLEY JACKSON began working on her 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, a postcard depicting a California mansion started…
LitHub Essay: All in the Timing
For Literary Hub, I wrote an essay called All in the Timing: On Publishing a Novel Nine Years After Giving Up on It. It’s the publishing story of my novel, Right Back Where We Started From, which I finished way…