I wrote an essay for Literary Hub. It’s about the California wildfires, Climate Change, and the writing of Frankenstein. Excerpt:
The campground in Oregon is foggy in the morning. The air is soft and clean. I walk out of my van and scrutinize the white feathers of cloud blurring into the branches of fir trees, looking for undertones of brown. My fear is that the smoke has followed us here.
The day before, we drove eight hours to escape the wildfire smoke smothering California. All week I’d been suffering from a strange sickness. First, a wild sore throat fading to congestion. Then I coughed up something green. When I tried to sing, I found myself gasping for air, my ability to modulate sound compromised by weakness in my chest. I walked my son to school and came back with an itching spot in my throat, like a low-level ember that couldn’t be put out, no matter how much water I poured on it.