Happy 2016, and may your new year be as fierce as this centaur wielding a bow and arrow. Here’s a quick update on what I’ve been up to: 1. I’m here to judge you. In a good way, that is. I’ve updated this site to reflect my manuscript critique services. I specialize in critiquing book-length […]

Yesterday, I described my process for reading and evaluating dozens of manuscripts for a short story collection contest. Today, I’ll share some of the common problems I saw in the submissions as well as some tips aimed to help writers submit the strongest collections possible. Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way first. […]

I recently served as a reader for a short story collection contest. That means I was responsible for evaluating between three and four dozen book-length manuscripts – only a small portion of the contest’s entire entry pool – and sending my top picks on to the final judge, who would choose a winner to receive […]

My personal essay, “In the Twelve Years Since You Died,” which chronicles the time in my life following my mother’s death, is out now in the May issue of The Sun magazine. You can read an excerpt online. Here’s the opening paragraph: In the twelve years since you died, I moved eleven times and saw […]

“Once upon a time, in a far-off land, I was kidnapped by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones.” That’s the opening line of Roxane Gay’s new novel, An Untamed State, which […]

The first thing you should know about The Sun’s AWP panel, “Full Disclosure: How to Spill Your Guts without Making a Mess,” is that nearly every panelist took issue with the session’s title. According to moderator Krista Bremer, “Full disclosure is not a memoir’s job. It’s not an autobiography, nor is it about spilling your […]

While I spent most of my time in Seattle at AWP 2014 catching up with my far-flung writing buddies, sitting at the Mid-American Review booth, attending readings, meeting or catching up with writer friends (including our own Teri!), and drinking unicorn-themed cocktails, I also attended several excellent sessions. Here’s a (belated) glimpse of what I […]

I still have quite a lot of catching up to do on this blog – specifically, I have multiple AWP recap posts in the hopper – but for now, I’d like to share some wisdom from Zadie Smith, who read in Toledo last night. My MFA cohort and I piled into a few cars and […]

Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River, American Salvage, Q Road, Women and Other Animals (and owner of this fantastically redone kitchen — follow the link to hear her advice on why writers should live in cheap, messy houses), visited Bowling Green a few weeks ago to give a reading and share some […]

This morning, as I rushed out the door to head to work, a long-lost memory from a high school English class popped into my head. We’d been tasked with writing short stories, which we then passed around to several other students to review. When I received a story from a classmate I’ll call Jim, I […]