Fiction & Essays

• Let’s just call this one,  “Seriously. Don’t Hug Me.” (Catapult – Dec. 2018.)

  How did “hug a trans person” become a meme? Why do people I hardly know praise me for my “bravery”? How did I acquire shady, semi-legal testosterone back in ’01? And what does all this have to do with the Spanish conquest of the Americas???

• “Dogs of America” Winner of the 2019 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize, forthcoming from Crab Orchard Review (Summer 2019).

  21-year-old Avi, couchsurfing, jobless and recently out as trans, can’t figure out how to be an adult. When his best friend gets tired of mommy-ing him, Avi’s only option is to use a forged Greyhound pass to return home to his real mother, a recently converted Jew. 

• “Bad Things That Happen To Girls”  Named by Best American Short Stories 2016 as one of the year’s 100 Distinguished Stories. (Colorado Review -November 2015; Winner of the Nelligan Prize, judged by Lauren Groff; Featured on the Colorado Review podcast)

  Birdie’s daughter is turning thirteen, an age when bad things happen to girls, but Birdie has a plan. All she needs is an RV and six thousand dollars, cash.
  
  

• “Destroyed Flowers Everywhere” (Fourteen Hills – May 2015, Pushcart Prize nominee; Winner of Wilner Short Story Award, judged by Kirsten Valdez Quade)

  The 1980s-themed, end of the world lesbian teen sex romp you didn’t know you needed.
  
  

• “The Invention of History” (Midnight Breakfast – July 2014)
  In a place that is/is not the Vilnius Ghetto, history is rewritten daily.
• “Live Feed” (Slush Pile Magazine – July 2014)
  A tomboy, a cyclone, a first kiss–and, of course, supernatural possession. 
• “Assignment of Blame” (Bluestem – June 2013)