Selected Fiction
Literary Hub, excerpt from YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER.
“Pogo wants to pay for everyone.”
Late Night Library, excerpt from YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER
“I’m daydreaming about a white box truck.”
“Transfigured Night,”
My new boss, Chick, was a morbidly obese manic off his meds who hailed from a tiny town I’d never heard of—Wassily, Louisiana—a town so small, Chick claimed, the shotgun shacks only had space for pistols.
From Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2014; included in YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER, forthcoming May 2016.
“Another Story”
This is what you get for choosing the ‘challenge’ puzzle.
From Gargoyle Magazine, reprinted online by Gloria Sirens
Essays, Interviews, & Humor
“The Value of Land,” Letters to the Editor, Washington Post Opinion, May 14, 2022.
“…two-thirds of the land in the continental United States, 85 percent of grasslands and more than half of forest lands are privately owned..”
I interview author Leslie Pietrzyk for Read Her Like an Open Book:
“To me everyone has a compelling story, even if it’s one I made up for them.”
I’m interviewed by Dan Wickett for National Short Story Month, at Emerging Writers Network
“My experience playing around with novels helped me to write a novelistic story collection.”
I’m interviewed by Sarah Seltzer, Poets & Writers Magazine, about Scoundrel Time
“We can keep telling one another stories, and those stories will draw people in and give them some relief.”
“You Write Until You Die”: I’m in Conversation with Paul Vidich, Fiction Writers Review
“I like to think my background as a literature student and a lifelong avid reader means that I came to understand by osmosis something about what makes stories work, what makes good writing.”
The Story Prize blog: Six Steps to Conquering Your Fear of Sex Scenes
“Ask yourself, is the scene necessary?”
Shelf Awareness Book Brahmin Interview
“Book I hid from my parents: The one I wrote. Jig is up now, though.”
James Scott’s TK Podcast I’m interviewed along with my agent, Daniel Menaker
James discusses the “slow burn” of my stories, and we talk about writing sex, and writing with honesty in fiction.
The Rumpus Interview with Ann Ryles On discovering truth in fiction, and how memory interferes with good storytelling:
“A “true,” remembered event…is trickier to render successfully, because the writer is blinded by the bias of his memory.”
Electric Literature, interview with Michele Filgate “Motherhood, Linked Stories, & The Inherent Humor of Sex Scenes”:
“As much as Miranda insists she wants resolution, her own life repeatedly demonstrates the impossibility of that goal.”
Interview with American University about linked stories, MFA programs, and the 5 books that inspired me. This fall, I’ll be part of American’s 2016-2017 Visiting Writer Series.
“When I was looking for models, I didn’t find another book in which all the stories were told by one woman…”
Chicago Review of Books interview with Rachel Leon
“YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER is funny as hell, despite its darker moments. Astute, poignant, and rife with lovely prose…”
Interview with Teddy Wayne in Salon, along with Curtis Sittenfeld, Allison Amend, Geoff Dyer, and Anton DiSclafani.
“It’s about lust and anxiety and elusive contentment…”
“7 Ways to Make Your Own Luck,” Writer’s Digest Guide to Literary Agents, edited by Chuck Sambuchino.
“Speakers are used to being buttonholed by goal-oriented writers who want something from them and think the best way to get it is relentless one-note badgering. Don’t be that person.”
Large-Hearted Boy’s Book Notes column, a music playlist for my book.
“I immediately associated the song with the sex scene I’d started writing earlier that week.”
Interview with Caroline Leavitt and excerpt.
“I’ve always been kind of obsessed with how people change—or don’t change—over the course of a life.”
Big Loves: Paula Whyman on T.C. Boyle’s “Greasy Lake”: I explain my early crush on T.C. Boyle’s story.
“[I]n my early twenties, I was working on the production of a free 600-page apartment shoppers guide…”
Fiction Writers Review interview with Melissa Scholes-Young
“I love to read characters I think of as interesting train wrecks.”
Monkeybicycle’s “If My Book” series, in which I describe what my book would be like if it were not a book.
“If YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER were on a summer trip to Italy, it would stay in a hostel too close to the train station…”
Q & A with Paula Whyman by Susan Sechrist in Bloom.
“Paula Whyman is a bit of a trickster…”
Check Please: When the Menu is a Minefield, Washington Post, Food section
I’m in a fancy restaurant, and I have a sandwich in my purse.
Rumpus Interview with Pro-Bono Gitmo Lawyer Dave Engelhardt
Lawyer Dave Engelhardt represented two Guantanamo prisoners, one of whom died mysteriously while in custody.
Rumpus Mini-Interview with Artist Tim Guthrie
Artist Tim Guthrie explains an early anti-war project involving public restrooms.