WRITING.

Fat Ghost

My beautiful, powerful, and very fat mother, Rose, died of breast cancer when I was twenty-two. In the year after she died, I gained a hundred pounds.

My mother had been sick almost my entire life. I grew up in constant terror, always wondering: What will I do when my mother dies? 

Eventually, I found out.

What I would do was raise my mother from the dead. I’d become as fat as she had been, and then, I’d have her back.

See the full essay at: The Rumpus

Just Another
Dan Wieden Tribute

It's priceless, what you gave me. Still, I'd like to believe that you wouldn't want me to end this tribute without saying the shadow part of what I'm thinking; how I still believe (maybe more than ever) that advertising hurts people, and how that harm has only gotten more extreme as the structures that serve advertising into our eyeballs have only gotten more powerful, ubiquitous—and far less human—than they were when we first met. I'd like to believe if you heard me say this to you on your white couch, you'd lean in closer and ask me to explain what I mean. That's one of the 10 million things that made you great. You were a guy with his name on the door, but you still wanted to hear the contrarian thoughts of someone like me—a fat, bankrupt phone sex operator from New Jersey.

See the full essay at: Muse by Clio

The Woman in
the Peach Dress

I’m always rushing somewhere, carrying something light; ready to model a new dress, a new bag, a new me. My lips curl up at the corners; glisten with pink gloss. I am the most gracious when seething. I ask the woman who works behind the counter about the taste of their pastry because I want to appear relaxed about pastry, but I am not relaxed about pastry. I hear women eat pastry, but I don’t know any personally.

See the full flash at: Compressed Journal of Creative Arts

Duck and Pivot

Here, it’s normal to smell balls. That took a little getting used to but now that I’m one of them the scent isn’t foul, it’s flowers. I get thirsty for wet air. I do my best work in that thick smell; it means our bodies are working. I’ve learned how to plant my face right down into the dank mat and not flinch. From the floor I hear the echoes of their leather soles. That’s all the history I can remember. From down here, every punch gets pressed into my cheek.

See the full flash at: Autofocus

How Sex Work Prepared Me For
A Career In Advertising

Because of me, you believe the dreams you have are your own. 

I build perfect worlds for magazines and television, tech and the telephone; worlds that sparkle with possibility and make you want to feed the machines that own you with all your money and all your time.

I am a professional manipulator. I am sadly very good at what I do. 

See the full essay at: Pigeon Pages

The Biore-Gun Violence TikTok Controversy — 4 Questions the Ad Industry Should Be Asking.

When I was coming up in the advertising business in the mid-2000s at Wieden+Kennedy, I internalized a central belief I was taught there—that advertising soars when it can uncover a truth that resonates emotionally with a brand’s target audience and then again, when the brand translates that truth into advertising. I loved this concept so much I really thought it was my calling—to make capitalism more human. This is the main reason I spent nearly two decades of my life in or around the ad industry. I loved making people feel things while selling stuff. I thought my ability to conjure emotion in the name of airlines and face soap made my work more important than people in advertising who used more straightforward approaches, such as naming product benefits with a giant logo or casting a model to post next to a bottle. Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Now, as the reality of our world gets louder and feels more dangerous every day, I believe even less that human truths can coexist seamlessly inside an industry that runs on manufactured aspiration.

See the full essay in: Ad Age.

To The Fat Woman in Economy Class Who Spilled Over
Into My Seat

i considered whispering: why are we this way, anyway?

but already knew.

someone far away had decided the dimensions.

it was now our job to make ourselves fit.

See the full poem in: Book XII

Britney’s People

Britney chews her SunChips out loud. Britney is getting crumbs on the insides of her thighs. Britney stares directly into the eyes of Britney’s People but doesn’t see them as eyes. Britney sees them as white hot headlights on a dark highway during a hurricane. Britney thinks the sandwich is quite tasty. It is so quiet, Britney can hear her heartbeat in her ears. I love this song, Britney thinks. I wonder who sings it.

See the full poem in: Hobart

In Tokyo.

In Japan, I do what I always do. I eat. In that way, I’m never not home. I down a hundred microscopic fish—eyes and all, a prehistoric pyramid, piled onto steaming white rice. I drink twig tea with sugar syrup. I’m the world’s fattest hummingbird. I submit my mouth in service to slippery udon, still-squirming squid, an egg sac from a salmon, plump with child. I slurp. I dunk. I masticate myself for my sins. Fry me up like an octopus ball. Put me on a stick. Sure, it’s not ice cream, but it’s tentacles I want; hugs from the inside.

See the full poem in: Unbroken Journal

The Dance

Together, we are Barbie’s on the beach; striped swimsuits in the sun. She is laughing and lifting me, so small, the entirety of me, with just her pinky. I am the polka dot bow on her shoe. I am below myself. She is above me. I am alive, but shrinking. I am held by the hologram of a mother.

See the full flash in: Bending Genres

The Egg

She had an inkling that maybe she had something soft inside, but she couldn't believe it, even when she jumped up and down and felt a heavy wave, moving from left to right. Was there something better somewhere deep, just hoping to break free? She often wanted to punch herself in her belly and pull out the mystery, but she wasn’t convinced she could survive the impact. Mostly she felt sick to her stomach and tried not to breathe too much.

See the full story in: Kithe

What I Think My Eighth Grade History Teacher Said About
Me After I Reported Him

She eats every crumb off her Styrofoam lunch plate too. Licks the oil off her pizza while the other girls put a napkin on top to soak it up, which everyone knows is the right way to eat pizza when you’re a girl. She gets picked last at kickball at basketball at four-square; not like those gymnastics girls I coach. For over twenty years, as everybody knows. I even trained an Olympian. A goddamned gold medalist. I know my shit. Those girls roll when I say roll. Jump when I say jump.

See the full flash in: Anti-Heroin Chic

SSBBW

These are not the exact men, of course, they are avatars of the original men; men who were boys and who made it clear she wouldn’t ever be wanted and therefore, was going to have a hard time in life. They weren’t wrong. She was eight years old when it became obvious to most people she’d be unfuckable.

See the full flash in: Maudlin House

First Fall

All our food comes in a box or a can or a bag. My favorite is broccoli: a giant green ice cube covered in cheese frosting. We heat it in a square in a pot until it burns. Where do fish sticks come from? McNuggets? Hungry Men? I was ten before I knew French fries were potatoes.

See the full flash in: The Maine Review

what my dead mother would have said about the pandemic

fuck ‘em those assholes
with their stupid dicks
in charge of us all glad to kill us for a buck
they don’t know shit about love
and they’re ugly too

See the full poem in: Voicemail Poems and listen to me read on: SoundCloud

The Five Year Poems
[With Peter Campbell]

There are less birds but now there is more sky.
You can’t have everything.

I walk by the rivers. Indian. Hudson.
I can feel the way the water makes deep etchings under the surface. I am older now.

There are seasons to this and you can’t see them until they’ve passed.

See the full project in: Autofocus

Before We Ever Met, He Tattooed My Name on His Hip

He was 50. I had just turned 30. He had a big job in the city at a law firm, lived on Long Island, and wore tailored suits to work. I assumed he was rich. He sounded rich. I was working as a telephone dominatrix from my ramshackle apartment deep in Jersey City and had just filed for bankruptcy. His voice was measured, wise. I liked him more than the others and more than I was supposed to.

See the full essay in: TueNight

HONORS+AWARDS.

• New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts, Nonfiction Literature Fellow, 2023

• CRAFT, CRAFT Character Sketch Challenge, Short List Finalist, 2023

• Best of the Net, Finalist, 2022, How Sex Work Prepared Me for a Career in Advertising

• The Tupelo Press, 30/30 Project Poet, November 2022

• The Kenyon Review, Finalist, 2021, Developmental Editing Fellowship for Emerging Writers, Nonfiction

• Slice, Bridging the Gap Award, 2020, Honorable Mention for Poetry + Nonfiction

• Pigeon Pages, Winner of 2020 Essay Contest with How Sex Work Prepared Me for a Career in Advertising, Judged by Morgan Jerkins

RESIDENCIES.

• Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT

• Craigardan, Elizabethtown, NY

• Center of Gravity/Walkaway House, North Adams, MA

• Gullkistan Center for Creativity, Laugervartn, Iceland

• Tin House Summer Workshop, with Saeed Jones

• MASS MoCA, Writer-In-Residence. Assets for Artists,
  [Link to interview about my residency experience]

• SPACE on Ryder Farm, Creative Residency

• Monson Arts, Writer-In-Residence, Monson, Maine

• Hedgebrook, Radical Craft Retreat w/ T Kira Madden

PAST LIVES.

Places I’ve worked as a writer, editor and creative director:

Details Magazine
Time Out New York
PS 122
Wieden+Kennedy
MTV
Comedy Central
Facebook

If you’d like to see some of the things I made in my former life, please go here.

FUTURE LIFE.

My memoir about my life in advertising (and how it almost killed me) — Don’t Buy What I’m Selling — is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2026.