About Me

Hi there. I’m a writer and editor and I live in Philadelphia, which is where I’m from. I write about grief, love, books, cats, queer stuff, material culture, and the chance meetings and small domestic details that make up my life. When I’m not writing or editing I’m usually doing Consonant Collective things with Joseph Carlough, my partner in life and other creative projects.

That’s the short description.

Here’s the longer one

I started my career as a writer and editor on staff for Philadelphia Weekly, where my column “The Dubliner,” a chronicle of a year I spent living in Ireland, was recognized for excellence in column writing by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

For several years I was a regular contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, mainly as a book critic but also as a reporter. For my biweekly column I looked at new ideas like interactive novels, computer-generated poetry, and other places where traditional storytelling and new technologies intersect.

Since that time I have published personal and critical essays in many other publications, including the Utne Reader, Adbusters, Philadelphia Magazine, Rain Taxi, The Millions, The Comics Journal, and The Believer Logger, as well as in the anthologies My Red Couch (Wipf & Stock), The Alternative Media Handbook (Routledge), and Make a Zine (Microcosm).

I am also a longtime zine maker and a great believer in the power of this kind of self-publishing. I found the punk community back in 2004 after I made my first zine, a collection of poems called “Word Math,” and brought it to the Philly Zine Fest. I met people there who were interested in my work, and equally interested in sharing theirs with me; a true connection was made, and for the first time I felt that my solitary pursuits had led me to a place of belonging.

Through my involvement with zines I met the good people at Microcosm Publishing, who have now published several of my books: a memoir called White Elephants; a collection of essays called Slip of the Tongue; Cats I’ve Known, an illustrated collection of stories about cats; and The Kitchen Witch, a guide to natural living for the spiritually inclined. My most recent book is an anthology I edited called Cat Party!, which features work by a few dozen artists and writers.

I used to have a horror of public speaking but I kept on doing it anyway, and now I sometimes even enjoy it. I’m proud to have given readings or talks at Ladyfest Philly, the Portland Book Festival, the Radar Reading Series in San Francisco, and the NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1; on a few different public radio and TV stations; and in a great many DIY spaces.

I have had artist’s residencies at the Anchor Archive in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Gröndalshús in Reykjavík, Iceland; and Cloud Croft Studios in Owego, NY. Currently I’m sitting at home working on my collection of blackout poems, tentatively called “looking for god.”