Creative Writing
Poetry | Flash | Short Stories | Novel-Length Works
Selected Prose
Novel Excerpt
Clearing Ground (formerly Farewell, Mr. Garcia). Petigru Review. 2020.
“A soft, staccato patter of footsteps came from the other end of the hall. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. I fumbled for the spare set of car keys in my pocket and tried to pull up my tennis shoes from the tiled floor, but my legs had frozen.”
Clearing Ground is a 96,000-word manuscript of upmarket literary fiction and psychological realism, supported by funding from a scholarship and mentorship from an Emmy-winning writer. Set in fictional Ashford, Illinois between 1995 and 2012, CLEARING GROUND follows Nora Hall, a survivor of a middle school shooting whose unidentified perpetrator leaves her community suspended in fear. As Nora is drawn back to Foxwood during her teens and early adulthood, she grapples with survivor’s guilt while trying to support her peers’ recovery. But as she seeks closure, she must confront whether tending to others’ wounds is a way of avoiding her own. Fifteen years later, the shooter is finally identified, just as Nora begins to rebuild her life, pulling her back into the shadow of a violence she thought she had survived.
Short Story
Still Life. Redwood Writers Prose Anthology: One Universe to the Left. 2023. [Available in Print]
“As the clock struck eight, Maria shoved the rickety cheese cart across the stone path bisecting the town square. The bell’s vibrations rippled through her frantic brain. She was late to market. Again.”
Flash Fiction
Maybe It Was. 1st Place CWC Marin Flash Contest. 2025. [Read]
“I can’t remember the exact moment I fell in love with Willa Curran. Maybe it was the summer after 4th grade, when our neighbor Ms. Merveille turned 90 and decided to chase her every long-deferred dream before time ran out.”
Selected Poetry
Amplified (Seeing the Beautiful Brain Today). Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, Syracuse University. 2025. [Read]
“You fold forward, torso just brushing knees. You rotate your head, right ear parallel to the blistering summer concrete.”
Garden Memory. Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, Syracuse University. 2025. [Read]
“I still imagine the blooms’ | outlines, still trace | the contours of each leaf.”
Season. Stirring: A Literary Collection. 2025. [Read]
“Wheels rumble across | cracks splitting sidewalks | as cornfields fade | like mirages.”
38th Parallel. Jewel City Review & the Poet Laureate Program of Glendale, CA. 2025. [Available only in a select print edition].
“Still, | the razor wire | rushed past, framing | our view outward.”
Sensation. Award-Winning Poem, 92nd Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. 2023.
“brain and neurons | on fire, liquefying, | detonating through | a fragile barrier of skin”
Spotlight. redrosethorns. 2023. [Read]
“my eyelashes are | moonlight crescents. | I am a singer: | a spotlight surrounds, | radiates from, | me.”
Praise Poem for a Body *(Nominated for Best of the Net). The Pensieve. 2023. [Read]
“Praise the lifetime surgery scar, | the hidden mark of a child-survivor.”
My Mother’s Coat. *originally published in Willawaw Journal. 2019.
“She spread the garment | across the bed with a reverence | reserved for family heirlooms.”
My Work in Selected Books & Anthologies
A Poet’s Directory of Wild Things, South Broadway Press.
The poetry in this anthology responds to the press's quiet question of what is weird, what is gorgeous, and what is revolutionary. From the first submissions, we started to see an incredible narrative unfolding as poem after poem on everything from roadkill and refrigerators to fascism and femininity came our way. The conversations between poets -- some who are well-known to each other in our home community of Denver, Colorado and plenty who are strangers around the world -- emerged in a way that helped me understand more of what humanity is holding in our current moment.
Made from Midnight: Delirium, Poets in the Pines.
It's midnight, but I am entangled in an eternal noon..
"Made From Midnight: Delirium opens a door into the hidden architectures of dreaming, collecting voices that move deftly between nightmares, liminal states and lucid dreams. The anthology captures an astonishing range and depth of nocturnal messages, revealing dreams as both personal mythologies and collective undercurrents. Discover the underbelly of sleep in this compelling and deeply atmospheric collection." --Leah Larwood, poet, oneironaut and relational gestalt psychotherapist
Livina Press Literary Journal: Issue 12, Livina Press.
With spring comes warmer temperatures and spring showers (though thankfully it’s not hurricane season yet here in the southern U.S.). Every year I eagerly await the spring issue to see what kind of work emerges from the clutches of winter. I can always see a change in the tone of the submissions, and I’m always amazed at just how much of an impact the changing seasons can bring on everyone’s writing.
This year is no different, and within the pages of Issue 12 you’ll find magic, mystery, heartache, and everything in between.