Nonfiction

  • Nine Changes of a Watery Star

    —for Blaze You left home with nothing but a cell phone, left without your wallet, your keys, your glasses, without saying goodbye. Perhaps you forgot them. Perhaps you got a text and rushed outside without stopping to think about what you would need. Perhaps you were feeling flustered, impulsive. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you left…

  • netwerk

    /ˈnεtˌwәrk/ Goose bumps are a good sign. More and more often these days, I find my eyes falling on just the thing I was looking for in an area of apparent chaos. More and more often these days, I find myself encountering significant floral debris just at my feet. Some weeks ago, during my first…

  • Vita Nova

    I had some vague idea that I would one day write a book (maybe a comic picaresque memoir) about having cancer, but it also feels like maybe I don’t have time for that. With what rapidity life follows my pen, etc. —Text to friend, December 28, 2025 I am used to dealing with the dead….

  • Memory Foam

    April 12, 2025 | Pets I always say that I hate nature, but the more I think about it, I find that I hate nature in the “american midwest” where nature is mostly grass and useless trees. My father was, above all else, a farmer. He hated planting useless trees; he only planted trees that…

  • West Shed

    My friend Clytia dropped me off near Point Reyes Station for a writers’ retreat at Mesa Refuge. It was my first writers’ residency, and as a scientist I had no idea what to expect. For so long I had organized my days with precision to pack in the tasks that made my career. Would I…

  • The Woodcutter’s Daughter

    For as long as I can remember, my mother wanted to get back home. She delighted in many things (Elvis Presley, migrating birds, black raspberry ice cream, figures of women and birds sculpted from stone) but for eighty of the eighty-three years she walked this earth, my mother was best defined by her desire to…