Essays:
“Ten Things” adapted into a non-fiction piece, cover story of The Washington Post Magazine.
“Keep Your Dead Close,” an essay, in the Alan Squire Bulletin.
“This Is the Greatest Love Story and Ghost Story,”* memoir, Salon
…The houses we passed [in Charleston] were vast, boxy mansions, as lavish and as importantly grand as wedding cakes, with columns and pastel paint and porticos and wrought iron. Maybe it was how our tour guide’s gossipy stories of past and present intertwined melodramatic deaths with mournful ghosts—having learned tourists tip better on ghost stories. Hand in hand on a sunny afternoon, the houses swelling on one side of us as water sparkled on the other, with Fort Sumter on the horizon and dinner plans for shrimp and grits, I asked Steve, “Have you ever seen a ghost?”…
*NOT the title I provided!!
“The Person in Front of Me on the Metro Found Out Someone Close to Her Died,” flash essay in Washingtonian magazine
…People gaze into tiny screens, lost in tiny worlds of … what? We can’t see if it’s Facebook, games, Netflix. We don’t know which e-book is so enthralling, what the incoming text message advises. Most times the Metro is as quiet as an old-fashioned library. It’s what I thought I wanted, but I don’t like this desolate silence, either….
“Joy to the World,” essay in Poem~Memoir~Story [PMS]
… So things are moving along, and I’ve committed to a check-out aisle, unloading my cart onto the conveyer belt, doing my usual tidy job of it: heavy stuff up front; frozen foods, meat, and milk grouped together; produce in one section, poisonous cleaners in another; fragile things at the end. I’m daydreaming about the array of Christmas cookies on the covers of the food magazines, so I don’t notice the person in line ahead of me until she snaps, “I told you I can’t lift more than five pounds! Those bags are too heavy!”…
“Death Notice,” essay, The Washington Post Sunday Magazine:
“No one likes to hear about such a loss. Euphemisms help: a loss. Passed on. I refuse those words because they’re soft, hiding the reality that this could happen to you; someone you love could drop dead one Sunday morning while eating cornflakes. (Or that someone could be you.)”
From “Sophomore Outing,” a live storytelling event in Washington, DC, on May 5, 2011. Hosted by Story League. This is a YouTube video.