Selected writing
How to go home: On resisting a very English hero’s journey (LitHub)
Ask Ellie: What can I do about my apathy? (LA Review of Books)
Are words the enemy of belonging? On Paul Kingsnorth’s SAVAGE GODS (LA Review of Books)
The Los Angeles River is your brain (Medium)
No place like space: on Norah Lange’s PEOPLE IN THE ROOM (Times Literary Supplement)
The beautiful Airstream myth and painful RV reality of life on the road (LA Times)
Welcome home: on Lucia Berlin (LA Times)
Everything
Substack
Criticism
Sacrificing eyeballs to save the earth: On Robbie Arnott’s THE RAIN HERON (LA Review of Books)
Salvation in the desert: On Ken Layne's DESERT ORACLE (LA Review of Books)
Paul Kingsnorth’s transhuman apocalypse unfolds in an Old English fenland (LitHub)
Are words the enemy of belonging? On Paul Kingsnorth’s SAVAGE GODS (LA Review of Books)
The generative joy of missing: Jennifer Croft’s HOMESICK (LA Review of Books)
Midway upon the journey: a gutsy translation of a modern hell (Times Literary Supplement)
Christos Ikonomou’s GOOD WILL COME FROM THE SEA (BOMB Magazine)
At 19, on a whim, she entered the world’s most grueling horse race—and won (Washington Post)
Lucia Berlin’s new books: An illuminating memoir, more sublime stories (Los Angeles Times)
No place like space (Times Literary Supplement)
Jesse Ball’s CENSUS is an understated tale of a father and son taking stock of America (Los Angeles Times)
Game over: a new novel by a Chilean voice of the millennial generation (Times Literary Supplement)
From absence to the living body: ‘Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985’ (BOMB Magazine)
The beautiful Airstream myth and painful RV reality of life on the road (Los Angeles Times)
The dystopian future is already underway in Maja Lunde’s novel THE HISTORY OF BEES (Los Angeles Times)
Carmen Maria Machado's HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES reclaims the female body in subversive, joyful ways (Los Angeles Times)
From Muir to matriarchs: the new, female-penned nature novel (Pacific Standard)
THE ICE by Laline Paull: allegory in the Arctic (The Guardian)
Rebecca Solnit tries to answer THE MOTHER OF ALL QUESTIONS (Los Angeles Times)
Amelia Gray’s ISADORA is a heavenly celebration of women in charge of their bodies (Los Angeles Times)
Argentinian star Samanta Schweblin’s destabilizing English debut, FEVER DREAM (Los Angeles Times)
In the space of dreams: Wendy Ortiz’s BRUJA (Los Angeles Times)
Pallacorda, or what the hell has happened in Mexico (LA Review of Books)
After the crash: Christos Ikonomou, Rafael Chirbes, and new fiction from the eurozone (BOMB Magazine)
Advice column
What can I do about my apathy? (LA Review of Books)
Help! I’m a writer spread thin (LA Review of Books)
How can I be free? (LA Review of Books)
How can I evaluate potential relationships? (LA Review of Books)
Should I choose my home or my marriage? (LA Review of Books)
Where should I live? (Medium)
How can I be nice to my mother? (Medium)
How can I trust that people are who they say they are? (Medium)
How do I heal my resentment? (Medium)
I don’t have a nuclear family. How can I feel OK about that? (Medium)
Essays and reporting
The Los Angeles River is your brain (Medium)
The mother of microbes (The Believer)
In Nunatsiavut in Northern Canada, a community faces the mental health impact of climate change (The Influence)
The desert vs renewable energy (Someplace Magazine)
The urge to disappear: How a poet lost in the desert became a little part of large things (Someplace Magazine)
Construction Sites of Los Angeles (column)
Glazed over in Silver Lake (LA Review of Books)
The Century Plaza Hotel: 50 years of leisure (LA Review of Books)
Wondrous and immensely bizarre at Olive and 5th, DTLA (LA Review of Books)
Disgust in Glendale (LA Review of Books)
“Small units,” “hip design” in Mid-Wilshire (LA Review of Books)
An East Hollywood shrine to safety (LA Review of Books)
Regional Connector Transit Corridor, 1st and Alameda (LA Review of Books)
435 West Los Feliz Road (LA Review of Books)