For Longreads, I uncovered a shocking part of America’s history. In the 1880s, thousands of Chinese-Americans were driven from towns up and down the West Coast. Their neighborhoods were destroyed, their belongings stolen, and their lives threatened. The first incident…
I have a new article up at the Smithsonian. It’s about Stephen Bishop, a slave who was also one of America’s first cave explorers. He discovered much of Mammoth Cave National Park, the longest cave system in the world. ……
I wrote an essay for La Review of Books. It’s about the Chinese poems on the walls of Angel Island Detention Center. From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station processed 175,000 Chinese immigrants. It was called the “Ellis…
I wrote an essay for Literary Hub. It’s about the California wildfires, Climate Change, and the writing of Frankenstein. Excerpt: The campground in Oregon is foggy in the morning. The air is soft and clean. I walk out of my…
I’m so happy to have my first piece in The New York Times. I retraced Eugene O’Neill’s footsteps around San Francisco, where he raced to complete his best works before he lost his ability to write. It ran in the…
I wrote an essay for Ploughshares on Student Debt and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the novel written by Betty Smith. It looks at the difficulty of paying for school, both now, and in Smith’s time. Things have changed, but…
I wrote an article for Longreads. Check out Ghost Writer: The Story of Patience Worth, the Posthumous Writer. One day in 1913, a housewife named Pearl Curran sat down with her friend Emily Grant Hutchings at a Ouija board. Curran’s…
I wrote an essay for The Washington Post! It’s about how becoming a mother has made me a better writer. A sample: Throughout my pregnancy, I weathered comments about how difficult writing would soon become, all while obsessing about how…
I wrote an essay for the Poetry Foundation on the poet George Sterling and the Carmel artist colony. It’s a crazy story about artistic utopia, California Bohemians, scandals, affairs, and a suicide pact. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and HL Mencken…
I wrote an article for the LA Review of Books on Tight Wires Between Us: On “Difficulties of a Bridegroom” by Ted Hughes. Excerpt: ON FEBRUARY 9, 1963, two days before the poet Sylvia Plath killed herself, a radio play…
I have a new article in The Atlantic asking Why Aren’t There More Women Working in Audio? Here’s an excerpt: In 2000, the Audio Engineering Society’s (AES) women in audio committee—which is now, tellingly, defunct—loosely estimated that 5 percent of…
I wrote an article for The Smithsonian on Sammy Davis Jr. and interracial marriage. Did you know the mob forced Davis into a sham marriage to a black woman after he was caught dating Kim Novak? Or that his marriage…