I’m sitting at my desk at work dressed as a “ghost writer” — white painted face, corduroy jacket, pretentious-looking scarf, purple plastic glasses. The office Halloween party is hours away but here I sit. The face paint is crackly and uneven and feels stiff. The paint makes my teeth look yellow so I can’t smile. […]

1. The cover of the current New England Review makes me happy. 2. When I was 15, the local paper did a little profile on me after I won a writing prize and ran my photo on the cover of the weekend section. The day after the paper came out, I was walking my dog […]

My personal essay “The Pressure of Young Promise” appears in the Why We Write section of the November/December 2010 Poets & Writers magazine. I’m beyond thrilled to appear in P&W — I’ve subscribed for years and it’s a little surreal to see my own byline in there. Just for the record, I most certainly did […]

My husband and I recently traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a weekend getaway. As we crossed the state border and left Ohio behind us, I remembered something about my second novel — a manuscript I hadn’t  thought about in ages. “Oh my god,” I said. “I set my second novel in Michigan.” While he’d […]