I’m a writer and editor, born and raised in the American state of Arkansas, living in Brooklyn, New York.
I’m interested in place, class, caste, and dialect. Consciousness and power structures.
“De kreeft”
Story translated into Flemish by Stefanie Huysmans-Noorts for issue 183 of Belgian literary journal Deus Ex Machina. A collaboration with thi wurd
Excerpt: Het boek geeft een bibliotheekgeur vrij: rook en aarde.
Ik vind de illustratie op pagina tachtig, om het te imiteren spreid ik het ratjetoe aan servies uit. Een gespikkeld bord met bruine rand. Een ongelijke set vorken, messen en lepels, drie aan elke kant van het bord. Een vel keukenpapier, gevouwen ter vervanging van een stoffen servet.
Excerpt: The first week I lived in New York, a schoolbus wheezed past as I walked, and a tiny boy popped his head out its window: “FUUUCK YOOOU!” he yelled at everything. An alien feeling began at my toes and rose to my stomach—warm. And then my chest—warmer, warmer still. And then I knew. This feeling was joy. My shoulders softened down from their normal tight peaks, so I could name my next feeling, too, relief. I closed my eyes right there on the sidewalk. The air was flat with concrete, sour with September trash, no matter. I took smooth breathfuls.
“It Could Be Almost Paradise”
Published by HerStry on their May 2022 theme “Before and After”
Excerpt: In El Dorado you drive for hours, just to feel like you’re going somewhere. Your dad tinkers with cars and he’s given you one he loves, a 280Z. It’s too fast for you. You get reckless and twist past the pines. Once, you skid in a ditch on a zigzag turn. Another time, you open the throttle on a straight highway and rear-end a brown pickup full of stoners. No damage, dude. They’re the only stoners you’ve ever seen in Arkansas, and when you drive away you start to wonder if they were even real.
“Paragraph of Proust”
A personal project. Once a week I deliver one translated paragraph of Swann’s Way via email for subscribers. Then I post the material at https://paragraphofproust.micro.blog/
Excerpt: I always used to go to bed so early. Sometimes, my candle barely snuffed, my eyes would close so fast I had no time to say, “I’m asleep.” And after half an hour, the thought that it was time to seek my sleep would wake me; I’d want to put aside the book I thought I still had in my hands and blow my light out; I wouldn’t stop reflecting on whatever I’d just read, but these reflections took a turn to something rather strange; it would seem to me that I myself became the subject of the book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François the first and Charles the fifth. This belief persisted several seconds after waking; not a shock upon my reason, but weighing down like scales upon my eyes and stopping them from knowing how the candle wasn’t lit.
“The King-a El Do”
In thi wurd 4 (April 2021), a literary magazine from thi wurd, Glasgow, Scotland
Excerpt: I’m in El Dorado in my dream, sitting in a car, wondering where to go. I think about the Spudnut Shoppe, which I recall is on West Faulkner. First I look up the place on my phone—are the Spudnuts still there? I find a listing on Yelp, and on Yelp I find a review by Tristan Fair, and here my waking self intrudes to calculate that this review has outlived Tristan by four months. My dreaming self sustains its focus, though, on Tristan’s words.
The Spudnut Shoppe is not your ordinary donut shop. The potato flour transforms Spudnuts into a unique delicacy. If you’re from El Dorado, you looked forward to eating these at church potlucks and family gatherings. My family and friends and I ate them by the pool on Sunday afternoons. Spudnuts are an important part of El Dorado culture, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Thank you, Jones family, for carrying on this local tradition.
“Fin”
Microfiction from the Ali Smith Tribute Night, shared on the blog at thi wurd, Glasgow, Scotland
Excerpt: The last time I was in Amsterdam, I was going home to America from France. I had an overnight stay at Schiphol. I ate a slice of airport pizza, the best thing I’d tasted in months. In Paris I’d lived on Nutella and Camels.
Snow sparkled in the night on the path to my motel. A Dutch woman with silver hair said, “Hello, how are you?” in English as I passed. She made me want to stay in Amsterdam, that’s how desperate I was. One kind hello and I could imagine a whole new life, where this woman was my neighbor and she had a tabby cat and drank a lot of red wine.
Etc.
Stuff I do
Apart from writing, I have edited books for twenty years, first as an in-house editor for a regional Texas publisher, and then as a freelancer specializing in music and performing arts. I’m a former professional pianist and am learning to play concertina. I also practice photography.