"Proximate People" in San Francisco Chronicle, 2020
“My BFF Dani would describe these women as proximate people, their lives lived aside my own, yet they remain aloof. A type of preservation, intimacy offering dangers, like parallel lines that never intersect. Funny thing though: Dani and I have never met IRL.”
"The Uncertain Ones: Ambivalence and A.I." in Tor.com, 2020
“While I don’t necessarily sit in the kill us all camp, I do worry that AI in its present stupid form is turning on us unknowingly, serving up content that feeds into our basest needs and fears, distracting us from pressing issues like climate change.”
"The King of South Phoenix" in Ninth Letter, 2018, Best of the Net nominee
“They’ve situated me up high, a long thin elevator shaft that hurtles to my bulbous dwelling with its 360-degree view, the better to survey my territory.”
“For All of Human History” in Tin House, 2018
“The vegan is alert with hunger and there isn’t anything to eat at the wedding reception that isn’t rolled in meat, drenched in butter, or encased in jello.”
“Back Out Baby” in Witness Magazine, 2018
“Of course we had intended to try, but it was hard to imagine that anyone, even a baby, even our baby could generate so much feeling. It didn’t seem possible to love someone else so much; we weren’t sure we’d have room in our WeHo two-bedroom.”
“A History That Brings Me to You” in The Masters Review, 2018
“The Watson girl had only been missing a matter of minutes, yet she could feel the tension mounting, the disaster taking shape.”
“In the Skin” in Indiana Review, 2018
“Sometimes she balances the round silver canister on my head and I stayed very still. It is not hard to balance things.”
“If Things Go on Like This” in Juked, 2018
So many lost. That’s what someone’s scrawled on the side of the corner store you stop in for rations, a night’s worth of food and wine. Don’t forget the ice cream.
“Island Rule” in Colorado Review, 2017, Winner, Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction
“I ate meat pies flecked with sea salt in front of the television, and no one asked me who I came in with, if I wanted to call home. Better to forget. To forget, I learned, is easy for a time, to billow and spill memory, to open up and let your insides float away, to feast on things new.”
“A Gift from Your Leader” in Heavy Feather Review, 2017
“He is the president, and these shoes are in my apartment, but I do not put them on. I put them in the hall, close the door. Then I open the door and throw them down the stairs. A moment later, there’s a knock.”
“The Single Friend” in Joyland Magazine, 2017
“The single friend had been single for a long time. It had become her defining quality, the one who preferred to be alone.”
“Recede” in The Fourth River, 2017
“He didn’t really care if she went in, except he didn’t want that smell trapped in his car forever, the upholstery exhaling it every time the weather turned hot, reminding him of this place, this girl, who was not a girl at all, or a student blowing off finals like him, who was actually—he’d found out at the police station—twenty-seven, and probably some sort of drifter.”
“Up and Atom” in Parcel Magazine, 2017
“Henry went home with the bartender under his arm, and you went home with no one per usual.”
“Herd” in (b)OINK, 2017
“They come so quickly that the ones in the water cannot find their way to safety, crushed and suffocated under the weight of the herd.”
"What It Takes to Love You" in Queen Mob's Teahouse, 2016
“Uday had his hand up my dress, an automatic rifle resting against my bare knee.”
"Nothing but Monsters" in Paper Darts, 2016
“There were maybe twenty guys hiving around the chicken wire and wood fight ring, riled up and calling bets, leering at the machine they’d made to battle the bear.”
"Bury the Bird" in Superstition Review, 2016
“When I was a teenager we burned tattoos into our forearms with the lighter-heated tips of paperclips and started a band.”
"Invisalign: A Product Review" in Hobart, 2016
“I’m just gonna say it. Invisalign is bullshit.”
"A Great Nation" in Literary Orphans, 2016
“I can hear the protesters chanting outside our walls, over a quarter-mile of ocean. It was a dramatic political maneuver, transplanting the Capitol from the forested heart of our river country to its very fringe, beyond. It sent a message—we will leave you all behind, you provokers and usurpers, we will let you rot, watching from our manmade island, built on dredged up seafloor silt and the toil of thousands, connected to the mainland by a single span of bridge.”
"Trouble" in Monkeybicycle, 2016
“The cyber crimes he’d committed hadn’t been as bad as the BuzzFeed piece suggested…”
"The Thirteen Films of Victoria Umlat" in Carve Magazine, 2016
“Alan began to see the actress’s face everywhere. There were posters up in cafes and framed photographs in restaurants, even T-shirts—a man wearing her likeness passed them on the street! Alan held tightly to Phyllis’s hand as if at any moment she could be gone, plastered on a wall, smothered behind a frame.”