BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING “NOTABLE”/PUBLISHED ON VELA MAGAZINE: In those first months living in El Salvador, had I walked down a village street and seen young men leaning against gaping doorframes, their eyes steady upon me, I would have read the wrong story. Then, I could barely speak, let alone interpret …
PUBLISHED BY THE PINCH: Judge Abigail Thomas selected “Lifecycle of Butterflies” for the 2013 Literary Prize in Nonfiction. About the essay, Thomas writes: “Beer compares the lifecycle of the Monarch butterfly and its fantastic migrations with her own life of seemingly random wanderings. This is a fascinating, beautifully written and ultimately very …
PUBLISHED IN BEST WOMEN’S TRAVEL WRITING, VOL. 8. On Christmas Eve day, I stood with my father on the bridge over the Rio Paz. It was no–man’s land—a gap between two nations—but children swam in the glittering brown river and birds flitted back and forth, from El Salvador, to Guatemala, and …
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, …
A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Spring Orlando Prize Judge Pam Houston wrote this about “The Rat”: This is, to my mind, a clear example of creative nonfiction, a smart piece of writing that essays (as John D’Agata uses the term–as verb) from topic to topic to make a beautiful mosaic …
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 …
“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 …