PUBLISHED WORKS
Published Works
"Will the Real Kim Novak Please Stand Up"
in The Masters Review
Fiction | March 2026
Summer Short Story Award Finalist
"Julissa has just dropped a month’s salary on a tiny diamond stud for her tragus, a reward for twenty weeks of sobriety. As she’s leaving the piercing salon, she sees her father enter a wine bar across Melrose with a woman whose blonde updo and juicy rump don’t belong to her mother, who has dark hair and a crepe for an ass. Again? She’d hoped her rehab had put an end to all that, the need to unite against a shared enemy, her addiction...."
"Skinny" in Harvard Review
Fiction | October 2019
"The summer I turned sixteen, my mother drove me to a fat farm in the desert east of Los Angeles. We didn’t call it a fat farm. The place’s name, Aunt Addie’s Health Retreat, saved us that embarrassment. But there was little mystery to our purpose as we sped through the dry land. The windshield grew battered with bugs and we flattened a couple of snakes. Every so often, a blooming yucca would startle into view like a white flag waving in the breeze...."
"Water of Life" in Narrative Magazine
Fiction | April 2017
"Marla had little use for philosophy, but a boy named Albert from her survey course lived for it. In their discussion section Friday afternoon, he delivered a critique of Rawls’s theory of reflective equilibrium with such nuanced reasoning and spitting passion that even the instructor, a graduate student who struggled to command the room, was left speechless. In the silence, it occurred to Marla that Albert might prove useful with the twenty-page paper on Plato’s allegory of the cave that she needed to write over the weekend but had yet to begin...."
"Gold Standard" in Potomac Review
Fiction | Fall 2015
"Your yoga instructor is trading gold. You bump into him at the supermarket, where you’ve wandered in to buy a bag of Oreos for lunch (though you plan to tell the checkout person they’re for your son’s soccer team). The store’s sagging shelves and dim lighting depress you, but your yoga instructor is bouncing with energy. He practically glows. His basket contains GreenVolution wheatgrass smoothies and nothing else...."
"Everyday Occurrences" in
Jewish Women's Literary Annual
Poetry | 2011
"...the children stared over their toaster waffles
until I snapped What are you looking at?
You have three minutes to finish your breakfast!
which they did, dutifully, a side helping of fear
floating in the dark syrup of their eyes..."
"Transgression at a Bar Mitzvah" and
"Baghdad" in The Madison Review
Poetry | Fall 2009
"Transgression at a Bar Mitzvah"
"...we bumped bodies at the pasta station,
the crepe station, the sundae bar, kept
on bumping like salsa dancers’ hips,
sniggering at the excess we conspired
in until our bellies were full as rice pots..."
"Baghdad"
(Previously published in The Dos Passos Review)
"When the first bombs fell, dropping on
targets as tiny as pinpricks, success
a promised thing, like a tax refund,
we were drinking gimlets on Lettie’s balcony..."
"Getaway" in Passages North
Fiction | Winter/Spring 2009
Republished October 2017 online in Redux
"Ellen lies on a bed at the Plaza Athénée, idly stroking the satin coverlet. She and Jim have been on plenty of weekend getaways, but none like this. We just need some time alone, he has promised, and Ellen wants to believe...."
"Cutting" in Quarterly West
Creative Nonfiction | Summer 2008
After publication, "Cutting" was made into a VidLit production.
"The adult size gardening gloves look cartoonish on our son’s small hands, while the giant trimming shears he wields could be weapons in a faraway war where they make children fight...."
"Saint Valentine" in Rio Grande Review
Fiction | Fall 2008
"Francie stole Caroline Singer’s Valentine’s Day stickers during the basketball game at last recess.... It was easy...."
