Publications, Workshops, Conferences, & Awards

Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA. Fiction. 2017

 

works in progress

I’m working on two speculative novels at the moment. Here’s a peek at one:

We are not on any map. My birth certificate lists a P.O. Box thirty miles away, in a city I’ve never been. This is how it is for the people who are born in our company town, and on the death certificates for those who have died here, too. Our home is at the town’s edge, where the desert meets the green lawns. Beyond our yard is the wash, a flood basin. It has no water in it as there has been no rain. Where we are in the foothills, the wash is left natural and broad. Down the valley, past city limits, it narrows to concrete channels funneling west to ocean, but you can't know that from here; there's too much haze and it’s too far. The laboratory lies opposite the wash, hemmed in by the sifter nets. Even when you can’t see the nets, you can take a deep breath and know they are there. You can take a deep breath because they are there, filtering the toxic dust, claiming this patch of Southern California desert. At their tops, floating lights blink to alert low-flying aircraft, although we live in a no-fly zone.