EsSAYS

Creative Nonfiction

2024 “My Christian Faith Won’t Let Me Vote for Donald Trump or His Disciples,” TIME, October 28.

2024 “The Shared Solace in Southern Folk Songs,” Garden & Gun, April/May.

2023 “The Many Ways We Have Failed Young People Amid the Gun Violence Crisis,” TIME, November 21.

2023 “Ashes to Ashes,” Harpur Palate, Winner, Creative Nonfiction Award, 22.1.

2023 “The Southern Baptist Convention’s Long War for the Patriarchy,” TIME, June 20.

2023 “How Do We Respond to this Hell. In Nashville After the Shooting,” TIME, April 11.

2023   “Charles Simic: An Appreciation,” Plume, February. (hybrid creative-academic essay)

2021   “The Religious Door-Knockers Are Back,” The Christian Century, Dec 29. (memoir essay)

2020   “Staying Alive: How Disco Saved Daddy,” New York Times, July 10. (memoir essay)

Academic Essays

2020   “Shifting the Power Dynamics in the Creative Writing Workshop: Assessing an Instructor as Participant Model,” New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing.

2019   “‘Song from the Soil’: The Role of Nature in Yusef Komunyakaa’s Poetry,” English Studies, 100.4, 447-460.

2016   Teaching Tactic: “Visual Exegesis,” Teaching Theology and Religion, January, 19.1, 77.

2012   “Metaphysical Suspicions: Charles Simic as Agnostic Theologian,” Christianity and Literature, Winter, 61.2, 281-306.

2007   “Kitchen Metaphysics: An Interview with Charles Simic,” Poetry Review, Fall, 97.3, pp. 76-84. (academic interview)