Year in Reading – 2025

Selected 2025 Reading:

Fiction Novels/Novellas

  • Tomorrow They Won’t Dare To Murder Us by Joseph Andras
  • On the Clock by Claire Baglin
  • The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
  • In a Distant Valley by Shannon Bowring
  • The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
  • Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle
  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
  • Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
  • Our Long Marvelous Dying by Anna DeForest
  • The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
  • The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
  • Light in August by William Faulkner
  • The Devil Three Times by Rickey Fayne
  • Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg
  • The All of It by Jeannette Haien
  • I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
  • Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
  • Orbital by Samantha Harvey
  • Sift by Alissa Hattman 
  • We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
  • The Liberators by E.J. Koh
  • The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey 
  • A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
  • Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie 
  • Ancillary Mercy by Anne Leckie
  • Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor
  • A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe
  • Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
  • Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
  • Home by Marilynne Robinson
  • Lila by Marilynne Robinson 
  • Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson 
  • Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson 
  • The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson
  • Isle of Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
  • Coram House by Bailey Seybolt
  • The Cliffs by J Courtney Sullivan
  • The Emissary by Yoko Tawada
  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

Short Stories

  • Green Frog: Stories by Gina Chung
  • She and Her Cat: Stories by Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa

Graphic Novels/Graphic Nonfiction/Graphic Memoirs

  • A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll
  • Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy Delisle 
  • Hostage by Guy Delisle
  • The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo by Joe Sacco
  • The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
  • On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

Art

  • Latin American Posters: Public Aesthetics and Mass Politics edited by Russ Davidson
  • Art of the Literary Poster by Allison Rudnick
  • Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton

Poetry

  • American Wake by Kerrin McCadden 
  • The End of Childhood by Wayne Miller
  • Ariel by Sylvia Plath
  • Loss and Its Antonym by Alison Prine
  • Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss 

Nonfiction

  • A Horse at Night: on Writing by Amina Cain
  • 50 Ways to Protect Book Stores by Danny Caine
  • The Dry Season by Melissa Febos
  • Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly
  • Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert
  • The Eighth Moon by Jennifer Kabat
  • The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story by Pagan Kennedy
  • Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
  • The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner
  • Motherhood and its Ghosts by Iman Mersal
  • Cultish by Amanda Montell
  • Opacities by Sofia Samatar

Anthology HORIZONS publishes “Pergelation”

The Blue Mesa Review put together a print anthology of previous contributors’ work to display at AWP in Los Angeles this year. They picked ten pieces from 2016 to 2022 and included my essay “Pergelation,” which won the Blue Mesa Review Nonfiction Contest judged by Leslie Jamison in 2018 and went on to be a Best American Essays Notable that year.

“Pergelation” is one of my favorite publications. I worked on it off and on for years, and I kept trying to fictionalize it. Finally, after reading Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, I rewrote “Pergelation” as straight nonfiction, then submitted it to the BMR contest. My hope was that it would be a finalist and she would read it, and I was delighted when it won.

I wish I could have picked up a print copy in person at AWP but I’m happy to have this in my hands now–it’s a beautiful anthology. Thank you to Amy Dotson and the rest of the team for making this book.

Postictal State in The Masters Review Anthology XIII

My short story “Postictal State” is one of ten to be included in The Masters Review’s thirteenth anthology, Best Emerging Writers 2024, judged by Gina Chung.

You can read Gina Chung’s introduction to the anthology here.

You can read my story online here.

You can order a physical copy of the anthology here.

From The Masters Review website:

“These stories ask questions about power, intimacy, control, our imperfect knowledge of one another and the world around us,” Chung writes in her introduction. “There is heartbreak and suffering here, as well as healing, of a kind.”

Thanks to Gina Chung and the editorial staff at The Masters Review for giving “Postictal State” a chance.

Year in Reading – 2024

Selected 2024 Reading:

Fiction Novels/Novellas

  • The Garden by Clare Beams
  • Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker
  • Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring
  • Where the Forest Meets the River by Shannon Bowring
  • Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton 
  • Day by Michael Cunningham 
  • Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
  • And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliot
  • James by Percival Everett 
  • Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
  • Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall
  • I Could Live Here Forever by Hanna Halperin
  • Goldenseal by Maria Hummel
  • Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Foster by Claire Keegan
  • Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  • Very Cold People: A Novel by Sarah Manguso
  • Liars by Sarah Manguso
  • North Woods by Daniel Mason
  • The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 
  • Cosmere books by Brandon Sanderson: Oathbringer, Rhythm of War, Dawnshard, Elantris, Warbreaker, White Sands, Tress Of The Emerald Sea, and the Wax and Wayne series
  • Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
  • Fire Exit by Morgan Talty
  • State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg
  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Short Stories

  • The Missing Morningstar: And Other Stories by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
  • Craft by Ananada Lima

Graphic Memoirs

  • Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls
  • Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: an Introvert’s Story by Debbie Tung
  • Spinning by Tillie Walden

Art

  • The Public Library: A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson
  • Mary Cassatt: Paintings and Prints by Frank Getlein 
  • The Art of Lee Miller by Mark Haworth-Booth
  • Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows by Vivian Maier, Richard Cahan, Michael Williams
  • Encampment, Wyoming by Lora Webb Nichols
  • Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning by Elizabeth Partridge
  • The Writers: Portraits by Laura Wilson

Poetry

  • Best New Poets Anthology
  • Landlock X by Sarah Audsley 
  • The Pressure of All That Light by Holly Painter
  • Steel by Alison Prine

Nonfiction

  • Molly by Blake Butler
  • Any Person is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert
  • Shift by Penny Guisinger
  • The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel
  • Splinters by Leslie Jamison
  • Trespasses: a memoir by Lacy M Johnson
  • This American Ex-Wife by Lyz Lenz 
  • The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush
  • Art of Recklessness by Dean Young

Delmarva Review Anthology

The Delmarva Review has released their first anthology, a beautiful book spanning the best of sixteen years of publications. Included are two of my prose pieces: “Nursing 101,” creative nonfiction from Volume 4 (2011), and “Undertow,” a short story from Volume 6 (2013). I am so pleased to be one of the seventy-five authors selected, and the only author represented in both the nonfiction and fiction sections.

The Delmarva Review was my first literary magazine acceptance. They published my work three times while I was a nursing student in Baltimore, and I cannot overstate how supportive they were of both the work they published and of me as a writer. I learned so much just going over edits with the team. Twice they invited me to read at the Writer’s Center. I drove my battered car—the Toyota I later sold to the autobody shop to cover my outstanding repair bills—to Bethesda, and at the end of my first reading, they let me take home the extra cheese plate. I made fancy pepper jack omelettes for my classmates. I remember exactly where I was when I opened my email to find out they’d nominated me for a Pushcart Prize. Twice, they interviewed me for Writer’s Edition on Delmarva Public Radio.

On a very concrete, editorial level, The Delmarva Review helped me become a much better writer. But they also introduced me to the idea of literary community and taught me what that looked like.

All of which is to say: I am deeply grateful. Support literary magazines in general, and the Delmarva Review in particular. Buy a copy of this anthology. I’m proud to be included.

Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five

Many thanks to Morgan Talty for choosing my flash fiction story, “Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five,” for the Fractured Lit Anthology 4 Contest. 

The story comes out twice: online today, and in a print anthology which will be published next spring.

It’s always gratifying to be published but it’s especially thrilling to know that one of your writing heroes has read and selected your work. Morgan Talty’s short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, wrecked me so thoroughly, I can remember exactly where I was (in my parents’ house in Maine) when I finished the last story. I can’t wait to read his debut novel, just out with Tin House.

I drafted “Protocol for What to Do After Hearing Another Rape Story in Exam Room Five” about one year into my first job as a family nurse practitioner. I had awkwardly tried to ask one of my mentors whether or not there was a list of things I should be doing when people shared great traumas with me. I was very new to primary care and was routinely horrified at my own position of authority, and was hoping that medicine, a field which adores algorithms, might have a flowchart for me. My mentor did that thing where you ask for a resource and they reply, what a great idea, why don’t you make one. It was yet another moment of me realizing that medicine was not magic and the guidance I was looking for, if it existed, was not readily available. I also started writing a tongue-in-cheek protocol. The story didn’t grow legs until after I revised it several times over several years, finally leaning into the surreal. Which, on further reflection, is sort of closer to what most medical providers are taught to do: oh, you’re exposed to trauma? Have you tried leaving your body?

Thanks, Fractured Lit. Thanks, Morgan Talty.

Fairy Tales & Western Medicine in HAD

I have two flash fictions up at HAD today: “Cinderella at the Podiatrist” and “Rapunzel Gets Referred to the Endocrinologist.”

These stories are part of a series that I drafted during one of child’s many episodes of croup last winter. They made me laugh and made other people ask me if I was okay, so I decided to send them out into the wider world.

This was my first time submitting to a HAD submission call, the highlight of which was following their twitter in the hours/days to follow, getting updates on how many submissions remained, feeling like the quiet kid still standing in a game of dodgeball, wondering if I was good or just too short to have been hit yet.

Thanks to HAD for my first skull and to my friends who read these when they were handwritten on folded paper.

Previously, “Cinderella at the Podiatrist” was shortlisted for The Masters Review Spring Small Fiction Awards judged by K-Ming Chang.

Year in Reading – 2023

Selected 2023 Reading for the end of year list:

Fiction Novels/Novellas

  • Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  • How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
  • Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
  • Boyfriends by Tara Atkinson
  • I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane
  • History of Present Illness by Anna Deforest
  • Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
  • Youth by Tove Ditlevsen
  • Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen
  • Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
  • The Shame by Makenna Goodman
  • The Great Transition: A Novel by Nick Fuller Googins
  • This Other Eden by Paul Harding
  • The Long Answer by Anna Hogeland
  • What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jimenez
  • Mobility by Lydia Kiesling
  • Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
  • Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
  • I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai
  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  • Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
  • The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel
  • Tripping Arcadia by Kit Mayquist
  • The Group by Mary McCarthy
  • People Collide by Isle McElroy 
  • Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
  • Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
  • Mistborn: The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson 
  • Mistborn: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson 
  • Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
  • Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson
  • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
  • System Collapse by Martha Wells
  • Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
  • The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
  • Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabbrielle Zevin

Short Stories

  • Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  • People Want to Live by Farah Ali
  • Almost Famous Women: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman
  • How Strange a Season by Megan Mayhew Bergman
  • Out There by Kate Folk
  • Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma
  • Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

Art

  • Eye Mama by Karni Arieli
  • A Comic Year by Meg Reynolds
  • Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur

Poetry

  • Gravitas by Amy Berkowitz
  • Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley 
  • Turn Up the Ocean by Tony Hoagland
  • Tap Out by Edgar Kunz
  • Fixer by Edgar Kunz 
  • Does the Earth by Meg Reynolds

Nonfiction

  • Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell 
  • The Undying by Anne Boyer
  • The Highs and Lows of Shape-Shift Ma and Big-Little Frank by Frances Cannon
  • The Loneliness Files by Athena Dixon
  • Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
  • The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick
  • Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Triscia Hersey
  • Stay True by Hua Hsu
  • Good Inside by Becky Kennedy
  • The Magical Language of Others by E.J. Koh
  • Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
  • Enchantment by Katherine May
  • On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
  • Thin Skin by Jenn Shapland
  • The Light Room: On Art and Care by Kate Zambreno