I’m a queer southern writer working to put roots down in my body. I am a recovering perfectionist, an ex-evangelical, and a lover of liminal spaces. I grew up around women who tended extensive gardens, and now use my own plant projects as a way to carry their tenderness forward. I can lose myself looking at the minutia of nature or reading a book of poetry. I get excited talking about trees, or family dynamics, or metaphor. I live with my wife, our dog, cats, and hens in the hills of the Ozarks.
I gravitate toward themes of liminal spaces, southern landscapes, generational traumas, and queer identity. In my writing, I try to honor the sanctuary of language and the intimacy of character. Literature has always been a space where I could explore other realities and ways of being; growing up an isolated, rural queer, the written word was the only real way to unearth and experience myself in a genuine way. There are so many ways language can be used to tear down and separate. I think the real work of being a writer is cultivating and protecting spaces where it can be rejuvenative, exploratory, experimental, and joyful. I like books about writing (Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack & Honey and May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude) and poetry (Mary Oliver’s Dream Work or Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds). I have poems published in Stone Fruit Literary Magazine, Issue 3.
Things That Bring Me Joy
Watching my chickens take dust baths in the backyard. Reading a book in the sunshine. Kneading yeast dough. Making a big pot of gumbo to share. Big green spaces. Conversations lasting over four hours. Wildflowers on the sides of highways. Long solo drives to loud music.
Favorite Quotes
“In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?”
Mary Ruefle
“What you risk reveals what you value.”
Jeanette Winterson
“In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.”
Ocean Vuong
My Top Five Books
- Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack & Honey
- Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You
- Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds
- Zadie Smith, On Beauty
- Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
honey gaze 