March 9, 2019, as good press for my short story collection, Gristle: weird tales, I wrote for Cagibi about my favorite short story collection, Fizzles, by Samuel Beckett.
November 9th 2018, the 100th anniversary of Guillaume Apollinaire’s Heavy Feather Review ran my love letter to that lovely, lost literary companion.
June 20, 2018 wasn’t just my ninth wedding anniversary, but the day Heavy Feather Review ran my essay about being William T. Vollmann’s research assistant for his non-fiction tome on climate change and energy, Carbon Ideologies. Get the true story here!
May 2, 2018 I had my first piece of journalism in Athens own free weekly, The Flagpole. I ventured to Newnan, Georgia to cover a demonstration by some Nazis. Check it out here, The Nazis Went Down to Georgia.
In the April 2018 issue of Brooklyn Rail magazine I interviewed Alistair McCarthy about his brilliant book, The Disintegrations.
March 23, 2018 I interviewed publisher, editor, and novelist James Reich over at The Believer. Reich is a brilliant novelist who tackles themes and forms like others can only dream of. It was great to talk with him in this formal setting about running Stalking Horse Press and his most recent book, Soft Invasions. It should be noted this interview happened before he accepted my manuscript for publication next year (woo!!).
February 9, 2018 I reviewed Erika T. Wurth’s Buckskin Cocaine over at Cleaver Magazine and I can’t recommend that book enough. Check it out (my review and the book)!
It was an honor to write the catalog essay for an amazing show by Lisa Freeman, an artist whose work I really love. Check out “Lisa Freeman’s Work Makes Me Angry” at Heavy Feather Review and see some of her work there too. December, 2017.
In lieu of reviewing D. Foy’s novel, Absolutely Golden, I interviewed my mother-in-law about it at Heavy Feather Review. Read “There’s Another Side to D. Foy…” and you’ll understand why. November 28, 2017.
October 12, 2017 I did a double review for Cleaver Magazine where I compared Eileen Myles’ Afterglow and Caroline Picard’s The Strangers Among Us, both dealing with human/animal intimacy. One book is for cat people, one is for dog people, but they are both great reads. Check out my REVIEW.
September 14, 2017 at Guernica Magazine I reviewed Laurent Binet’s new novel, The Seventh Function of Language, and in that book “Semiotics Has Never Been More Thrilling.” Read that review and then check out that hilarious and brilliant book.
September 9, 2017 at Cleaver Magazine I reviewed Jarett Kobek’s The Future Won’t Be Long. It’s a wonderful book, but be sure to read I Hate the Internet first!
With the opening of his newest film at the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles in July 2017, I interviewed William E. Jones about Alexander Iolas and so many other topics for Guernica Magazine, “Urgency and Impermanence.”
In June 2017 I published an essay about what there is new under the sun to do with Shakespeare’s work by considering Anthony Burgess’ Nothing Like the Sun and reviewing John Reed’s All the World’s A Grave and Jason De Boer’s Annihilation Songs for The Believer under the title, The Bard Lives On.
I’ve been kinda obsessed with Joan of Arc recently and she is clearly in the zeitgeist so in May 2017 I reviewed Jennifer MacBain-Stephens’ poetry collection, The Messenger is Already Dead, for The Believer.
I have a deep love and admiration for Jeff Jackson and his work so it was really wonderful to interview him for The Believer in April of 2017, “In the realm of the imagination the facts hold no currency.”
Continuing my investigation into politics, protest, and performance art I interviewed Muntazer Al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who was imprisoned for throwing his shoes at George W. Bush for The Believer in February 2017.
On the one year anniversary of David Bowie’s passing (January 10, 2017) I published this essay at The Believer about my love of him and my favorite Bowie books, “Something Happened on the Day He Died.”
In December 2016, my response to the depressing presidential election was to reread Snowball’s Chance by John Reed and then interview him about it for Literary Hub, “Life in Interesting Times.”
September 24, 2016, I participated in a feature at the website of my first publisher, Black Hill Press/1888, where writers are asked why they write and have 500 words to answer, so here you go, Why I Write.
January, 2015, Delaware University Press released William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion including my essay on the punk aspects of Vollmann’s work, “Piss Lime Vitriol.”
Happy New Year! The Broad Collective has just published my second article for them. It’s about my love of sandwiches and my favorite vegetarian and vegan sandwiches in Athens, GA: My Favorite Inventor: The Earl of Sandwiches (January 1st, 2015).
As It Ought to Be published my review of William T. Vollmann’s recent collection of short stories involving ghosts, vampires, and love stories that transcend death. Last Stories and Other Stories by William T. Vollmann is truly worth the read, just see my review: An Unnecessary Defense of William T. Vollmann’s Last Stories and Other Stories. (October 16, 2014).
My first article for The Broad Collective is a contemplative and rhapsodic review of the Negroni Slushy at Seabear Oyster Bar in Athens, GA. With no immodesty, it might be the best thing ever written about a slushy. It’s title is from “Heathers” with a nod to Tolstoy: Our Love Is God, Let’s Get a Slushy… (October 7th, 2014).
I liked the first Wildwood Revival Music Festival in July 2014 so much I had to write about it for the Athens Banner-Herald.
The Chicago-based literary magazine Curbside Splendor published my review of Okla Elliott’s wonderful short story collection, From the Crooked Timber, on its website in September, 2013. My review and Elliott’s book are both worth reading.
The April 2012 issue of Athens Food & Culture Magazine is out all around Athens, GA with my new book review column “Better Off Read.” In it I review Steve Erickson’s These Dreams of You.
One “Art in the Novel” essay and further thought about Spain and visual art led to another, this one in tribute to Pablo Picasso and published on his 130th birthday, also at As It Ought to Be, “Art in the Novel: II.” In it I consider Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece, Zola’s The Masterpiece, and Picasso’s own masterpiece, “Guernica.”
After returning from a summer trip to Spain and Morocco and finally formulating some thoughts about the interaction between visual and written art, I published another essay at As It Ought to Be, called “Art in the Novel,” doing a comparative review of both Don Delillo’s Point Omega and Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters.
My first published essay “In Search of a Cannon” (March 2nd, 2011) is available at the web magazine As It Ought to Be.