Gutted
Pushcart Prize Winner
Best American Essays Notable Essay
“When the salmon aren’t biting—which is a lot of the time—Eric and I sit with blood caked on our faces and talk about neon squid lures and diesel engine mechanics and my father’s unraveling brain. As we wait—and even when the fishing is good, we do a lot of waiting—we talk about wind speeds and water temperatures. We talk about gaff hooks and hydraulic gurdies. We talk about properly sharpened filet knives and salted herring threaded on barbed treble hooks. Every morning from May through September we rise at first light to discuss the state of the tides, the swells, the current.”
Resisting REDUCTION: the fluid boundaries of non-Communicable Disease
Winner of the 2018 MIT Media Lab Resisting Reduction Essay Contest
“One day, around his fiftieth birthday, my father stopped talking. It wasn’t a complete silence, but seemingly overnight he struggled voicing more than a few words at a time. A couple weeks later, he quit the career he’d held for twenty years and began sleeping most of the day. One day he lost his way to the bathroom. Another, he lost the kitchen. He lost the ability to sleep at night. How to use a fork.”
Crucifixions
Winner of the 2016 Crazyhorse Creative Nonfiction Prize
Best American Essays Notable Essay 2017
“Say no. Tell Britney Allen that you like your summers just fine they way they are. Tell her thank you for the invitation, but no, you’ll pass. You don’t need any more time to think about it. Tell her your life is on the lake this summer: that your father is rebuilding the old sunfish, that this is the year you will sail on your own.”
Deadman’s Pass
2018 Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize, Honorable Mention
“We sent him in there by himself. Sure, my mother was in the driver’s seat busy studying the map, and I was occupied getting gas and Andrew was cleaning the windshield and Jacob was off looking for a place for our dog to pee, but regardless, we sent him in there by himself. If I’m honest with you, I’d say that deep down, we did it on purpose. If I’m honest with you, I’d say sending him in there for tire chains was yet another test in a long series of unspoken tests we’d been carrying out for a while now. Because any one of us could and should have gone in there instead.”