writing

Toast article: soap operas & adjuncting

“Something always happens to sustain us. A tenured professor goes on sabbatical and their course trickles down to the adjuncts. A university I applied to years ago finds my information at the bottom of a drawer and gives me a call. Brady Black’s wife hits his father over the head with a fire poker, putting him in a coma, and Kristen DiMera participates in scientifically impossible villainy and steals someone’s fetus.”

My latest article for the Toast is available here.

 

Gidget essay published at The Toast

My essay, ” ‘Just a Doll in Dungarees’: Revisiting Gidget” has been published at The Toast. Here’s a quick preview:

While I can’t pretend to know how the filmmakers intended audiences to perceive Betty Louise, called B.L., they’ve presented her in such a way that it’s difficult to not read her as a lesbian. Using initials for a girl’s name was not common in 1959 by any means. B.L. is not invited to the manhunt; she has short hair several years before the pixie cut would come into style, and in every scene, her clothing is loose, monochromatic, and without frills. Plus, look at her in that chair: legs crossed in a way that takes up as much room as possible, she lets her face slip into an inaudible scoff as she eats an apple noisily.

The essay is here and also linked under “Writing” on this site.

New story & reading

My short story, “Lake,” is being published in the Winter 2013 issue of Schuylkill Valley Journal. This is the story for which I was nominated for the Pushcart. SVJ is a very high quality print journal that has published some of my favorite writers in the Delaware Valley area.

I’ll be reading from my story at the issue’s launch on December 8, 2013. You can find more information on the Events page, or contact me for details.

Publication in U.S.1 Worksheets

I’m proud to be a part of the 40th anniversary issue of U.S. 1 Worksheets, the magazine of the U.S. 1 Poets’ Cooperative. My poem “She Doesn’t Know Where She Is. She Keeps Asking Me How I Got Here” will be published in the magazine in April. Order copies here.

I’ll also be doing a reading at the launch of the magazine. Check out the Events page for more detail.