My Writing
and other forms of yapping
Chapbook
Nest, winner of 2019 The Florida Review’s Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Prize, published March 2020.
(Note: To order at the link above, the webstore will ask you log into your Submittable account or create an account. Don't worry — your order will not be judged on its literary merit.)
Personal Essays
“#pandemicdiary,” Brink magazine, no. 2, fall 2021
“My Grief Is a Student of the Humanities,” Mid-American Review 38:1, Winter 2017 (runner-up in the Fineline Competition)
“Monuments,”Full Grown People, November 9, 2017
“Soft Spot,” Beautiful Things column, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, October 30, 2017
“The Suck,” Tin House Online, October 25, 2017
“Auteur,”Hippocampus Magazine, April 1, 2016
“The 781 Days,”Mutha Magazine, September 17, 2015
“The Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card,”Full Grown People, March 12, 2015 (named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2016)
“Running Late,” Readers Write column, The Sun, January 2014 (scroll to the bottom!)
“Not So Gladly Teach,” in Moving On: Essays on the Aftermath of Leaving Academia [the whole anthology is available on Kindle here], Kathleen Miller, Julie Cmiel, Lauren Whitehead, Jet, eds., 2014
“Dyad,”Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, May 2008
“Will That Child Step Off the Screen and Into Our Lives?” Modern Love column, The New York Times, October 8, 2006
“On Not Liking Kim Chee,”The North American Review, November/December 2005
The Iowa Review Editor’s Notes
I've been editor of The Iowa Review since 2021 and have written editor's notes for eleven of the thirteen issues published since then. Here are some of my favorites:
“Imagination,” 55:3, Winter 2025-26
“The Mixdown,” 55:1, Spring 2025
“Lost Time,” 52:2,3, Winter 2022-23
“You Breathed on Me,” 51:2, Spring 2022
“Terms of Art,” 51:1, Spring 2021
Tributes
“On Steve,” blog post about a friend and Iowa Review contributor, July 2019
“A Tribute to David Hamilton,” written for my mentor’s retirement celebration, April 2012
Podcast Appearances
Talk of Iowa, “Americanness Across Two Cultures and 70 Years”
New Books Network, “The Iowa Review: A Discussion with Lynne Nugent”
