Nonfiction

Essays

The Bad Dad Redemption Arc Needs to Die — Hollywood just can’t quit its addiction to toxic tropes about fatherhood. (Uncanny Magazine, July 2021)
The H Word: Scary Stories to Relive in the Dark — Trauma, temporality, and trashy television. (Nightmare Magazine, February 2020)
Rage Against the Machine: Channeling Queer Anger With Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist — As a poor, half-feral, queer teen, an underground comic gave me the tools to cope with my perpetual rage. (Tor.com, January 2020)
Stages Steeped in Blood — A brief history of violent artistic rivalry. (In the Fray, February 2013)
The Chicago Way — Corruption in Chicago is as constant as the Cubs’ losing streak. (In the Fray, November 2012)

Interviews and Profiles

Daniel Lavery Is Ready to Tweak the Canon — Profile of Daniel M. Lavery, author of Something That May Shock and Discredit You, as well as Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column and cofounder of gone-but-still-beloved website The Toast.
An Optimistic Dystopia: PW Talks With Sam J. Miller — Interview with author Sam J. Miller on his science fiction novel Blackfish City. (Publishers Weekly, February 2018)
Finding Your Front Line — Profile of the Brick and Mortar Collective, a cooperative renovating an abandoned duplex into a community center in Detroit. (The Cooperator, Autumn 2017)
On Collective Resistance: A Roundtable — Roundtable discussing collective resistance to oppressive systems in fiction, its triumphs and pitfalls, and how to translate it off the page and into the streets. (Strange Horizons, January 2017)
Picking Up The Pieces: PW Talks With Georgia Hunter — Interview with author Georgia Hunter on her biographical novel We Were the Lucky Ones. (Publishers Weekly, January 2017)
A Country Doctor — Interview with Dr. Jean Marius Gardy, a Haitian doctor running a homegrown humanitarian aid organization amid the flood of international NGOs. (In the Fray, July 2013)

Personal Essays

Kitchen Sink Gender — Personal essay exploring what I learned about gender in two months of pole-dancing classes. (Published in Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity, available from Columbia University Press)
Panic! In the Locker Room: On Fighting for Trans* Youth With Words as Weapons — I trolled a transphobic editor and got called a verbal terrorist. (Autostraddle, July 2013)
Hello, Goodbye, Hello — On May 22, 2011, after a random text exchange with an old friend, I moved to Chicago instead of France. My grandmother died a week later. (Gozamos, May 2013)
In Exile — My father and I both chose exile, of a sort. (In The Fray, December, 2011)

Food and Travel Writing

Drinking Coffee for Science — I don’t drink coffee, as a rule.
The Diner at the Edge of the World — Darkness, diners, and damnation in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.
Remembrance of Drinks Past — Proust had his madeleine and tea. I have flavored whiskey and falling leaves.
The Road to Nowhere — Full stomachs and silliness on the road to nowhere. (Come on and ride.)

Book Reviews

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle — (Strange Horizons, August 2017)
Octavia’s Brood, edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown — (Strange Horizons, November 2015)
Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue Deconnick and Valentine De Landro — (Strange Horizons, January 2015)
Hobo Fires by Robert Earl Sutter III — (The Future Fire, August 2014)
Long Hidden, edited by Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older — (The Future Fire, April 2014)
A Game for Swallows by Zeina Abirached — (Gozamos, November, 2012)