PUBLISHED ON TERRAIN.ORG. From the euphoric heights of the Muir’s Sierras, through Steinbeck’s blooming Central Valley, and down to the glitter and seethe of Didion’s Los Angeles, from the glorious antiquity to the gleaming modern, I carried my tubed tree. I did not insist on planting it somewhere there within …
PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE. It is best to use a well-made bed or the floor, so long as you have a large, smooth, clear surface, a canvas, if you will. It is best to start early, to take your time, to mentally map out (a maze of nerves like tangled …
PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE. Clayton may be in possession of the only Ivy League degree between us, but he arrived in New Mexico without either a sleeping bag or hiking boots—he’d lost the Vasque boots our sister and I had given him a year or two earlier—and suffered for his folly …
“As You Set Out for Ithaka,” which originally appeared in FarFlung Magazine, has been shortlisted for Best American Travel Writing 2006, edited by Tim Cahill. Read the essay here: https://dean.williams.edu/files/2010/10/When-Rolling-Stones-Roll-Home.pdf
PUBLISHED BY VELA MAGAZINE. This is a compilation of work by women writers (and one artist) connected to Nepal that I assembled for Vela Magazine. It is a collective response to the earthquake that seeks to tell a different story than the body counts and the images of rubble can do, to remember and recount, …
PUBLISHED IN FOURTH GENRE. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born while his parents were traveling to Bethlehem to register, as required by law, with the census. Fast forward two thousand and ten Decembers—giving or taking a few for the ecclesiastical debate and/or shoddy recordkeeping around the dawn …
PUBLISHED ON TERRAIN.ORG. From the euphoric heights of the Muir’s Sierras, through Steinbeck’s blooming Central Valley, and down to the glitter and seethe of Didion’s Los Angeles, from the glorious antiquity to the gleaming modern, I carried my tubed tree. I did not insist on planting it somewhere there within …
PUBLISHED ON THE RUMPUS. One day I picked my toddler up from his Montessori school and, along with the usual bags of laundry and lunch detritus, I was handed a slip of paper informing me that during his day at school my son had been vaccinated for polio. I sucked …
“Fire Ants,” which originally appeared in Vela Magazine, has been shortlisted for Best American Travel Writing 2014, edited by Paul Theroux. Read …
PUBLISHED ON THE RUMPUS. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Chinese-American journalist Angie Chuang was charged by her editor with putting “a …
RE-PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE. This essay was a finalist for the 2013 Annie Dillard Prize and won that year’s essay prize from The …
PUBLISHED IN DEFUNCT MAGAZINE AND ANTHOLOGIZED IN DIMESTORIES’ TENTH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION OF 3-MINUTE STORIES. The boy in purple moon boots thumps up to …
“In the Land of the Monarchs” has been named one of the top ten travel articles of 2013 on GoNomad. You can read the …
BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING “NOTABLE”/PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE: In those first months living in El Salvador, had I walked down a village street …