Category Essays

New York Times: Tiny Love Story

I wrote a Tiny Love Story for The New York Times. It’s about how patient my husband is with dealing with my anxiety He’s great!

Article On Anaïs Nin

My article on Anais Nin for Alta Magazine is now online! For decades, Anaïs Nin was married to two different men on separate coasts of the United States. Neither man knew about the other. She called this complicated situation her…

Essay In Prairie Schooner

Very happy to have an essay in the most recent issue Prairie Schooner. It’s about my experiences dealing with the California wild fires, including evacuations and the ongoing weirdness and tragedy of climate change.

Alta Article: The Mystery of the Poisoned Marshmallow

My newest article for Alta Magazine is about a murder mystery that happened in Carmel in 1914. A writer named Alice MacGowan discovered a mysterious box of marshmallows sitting on her back porch. She thought they were from a friend.…

Mark Twain Illustrated

Article: When Mark Twain Canceled Bret Harte

I have a new article in Alta Magazine! It’s about the 30 year literary feud between Mark Twain and Bret Harte. 30 years! That Mark Twain could really hold a grudge. Read about it here.

haunted house

Article: Haunted by Houses

Over at the Los Angeles Review of Books, I wrote about gothic horror, Shirley Jackson, and California Victorians: RIGHT BEFORE SHIRLEY JACKSON began working on her 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, a postcard depicting a California mansion started…

LitHub Essay: All in the Timing

For Literary Hub, I wrote an essay called All in the Timing: On Publishing a Novel Nine Years After Giving Up on It. It’s the publishing story of my novel, Right Back Where We Started From, which I finished way…

Article: Flight of the Condors

Late last year, I went on a quest to see the critically endangered California Condor in the wild. I wrote about the experience for Alta. I’ve always wanted to see a California condor in the wild. It’s on a list…

Essay: Elegy For A Tree

My neighbors cut down their tree and banished all the birds from our yard. I wrote an essay about it for Entropy. The morning after the neighbors cut down the tree, my yard was quiet. The crows that for the…

Alta Essay: Searching for Mary Austin

For Alta Magazine, I wrote the essay Searching for Mary Austin: Life for the author of The Land of Little Rain was as hard as the inhospitable region she wrote about. Excerpt: Right before the coronavirus quarantine, I went to…