PUBLICATIONS
SHORT FICTION
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Belly of the Beast
American Short Fiction November 2019 | Web Exclusive IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT, AND THE BEAST HAS SWALLOWED MY HUSBAND. One minute he was there, the next, gone—just a shout, half smothered, as the creature engulfed him. I didn’t see the actual swallowing. I arrived seconds later, in time to see the wolfish thing licking its jowls. It’s not like anything you’ve ever seen... Continue reading |
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Ron Tin House Spring 2018 | Candy Issue | 75 I MET RON MYERS at an amateur astronomers' club, our identical Celestron SkyMaster binoculars slung around our necks - an unusual omen from the start. We clustered around the telescopes, listening to the lecture about Vega, faint and barely visible against the backdrop of light pollution. Ron was watching me, I could tell. Continue reading |
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A Boy Who Does Not Remember His Father
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue 60 | 15th Anniversary Contest Issue IN THE BOY'S MIND his father could be anyone: A taxi driver or a chef, an actor or a judge. Someone who lives in one of those tall, shiny office towers in Albuquerque. Maybe his father wears those skin-tight suits and steps onto the backs of whales to cheering crowds. But his mother has said that his father is none of those; that his father is far away, hiding. Continue reading | Read author interview |
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We Are Trying to Understand You
TriQuarterly Issue 153| Winter/Spring 2018 WE FOUND THE WOMAN living under a fishing boat. Our cameras picked up her movements. We are guessing the food sources were more abundant near the beach, and she was able to survive unnoticed for some time. We thought she'd stay there, but she walked out on the highway, along the lines of deserted cars. When she found one that drove (a van), we let her make it into the San Joaquin Valley before disabling it. Continue Reading |
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End Grain
The Iowa Review Winter 2017/2018 IN HER FINAL DAYS, my wife begins hoarding furniture. She's grown so weak that she can't leave her bed, but she insists on flipping through local catalogs, circling all the wooden chairs, end tables, and nightstands she wants in red marker. Keep Reading / Buy issue! |
How to Survive on Land
New Ohio Review
September, 2016
2016 Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest Honorable Mention
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY MOTHER, a mermaid: For years, despite her handicaps, she embraced land life in Okanogan, Washington—the drizzly winters and sun-soaked summers—with a steadfastness both impressive and exhausting. She read us stories with the ardor of a human mother; bagged our lunches; brushed our hair.
Continue Reading
New Ohio Review
September, 2016
2016 Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest Honorable Mention
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY MOTHER, a mermaid: For years, despite her handicaps, she embraced land life in Okanogan, Washington—the drizzly winters and sun-soaked summers—with a steadfastness both impressive and exhausting. She read us stories with the ardor of a human mother; bagged our lunches; brushed our hair.
Continue Reading
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Night Circus PANK December 2016 YOUR EX-LOVER HAS BUILT a circus outside your window. It's the kind of thing you might have found cute five years ago, when you first heard him say "I'm an artist" and "I make things for a living" and you hadn't wanted to scream through your empty apartment, to tear down your memory of him... Continue reading (or listen to Joy read) |
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The Forgiveness Machine
F(r)iction December 2016 THE FORGIVENESS MACHINE ARRIVES in a box with bubble wrap. It’s small, sleek, and Pam sets it on the table. She’s already written each item she’ll forgive on blank two by four inch flash cards, in black ink, as stated in the directions, and she stands admiring the machine that will change her life, tracing her fingers over its lunar contours. Continue reading | Buy F(r)iction #6 |
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Squirrel, Leopard, Goat
Tin House, The Open Bar August, 2015 IN MY SISTER'S TAXONOMY, our father is a squirrel. She’s eight, I’m five, and we both agree on this, although if we didn’t, she’d have the final word. Our father: Limpid squirrel eyes, a narrow squirrel face, prominent squirrel teeth. He scampers and leaps and takes nibbles of everything, even applies. "Pure squirrel," she says, and I not wordlessly. Continue reading |
