[Personal essays, occasional journalism, and interviews where I am the interlocutor. Book reviews I’ve written can be found under Criticism. Interviews where I am the subject can be found under Media.]

 

• “The Heart of Low” – A profile of Alan Sparhawk in The New Yorker online (April 11, 2024).
• “Some Ballad Folks” in the Oxford American Fall 2023 (25th anniversary Southern Music Issue).
• An appreciation of the Codex Seraphinianus for FMR #6 (Fall 2023).
• “The William Trevor Reader: ‘The Smoke Trees of San Pietro'” at The Millions (May 16, 2023).
• “Standing in the Doorway -> Craft Talk -> Jam -> Craft Talk -> Not Fade Away” (Northwest Review 52.02, Winter 2023).
• “Not Country, Not Western, Just West: Margo Cilker” in The Oxford American #119 (2022 music issue).
• “Pieces of the Big Thing”: Phish at Orange Beach. One man, one band, one midlife crisis; three nights, six sets, ten thousand words for The Baffler (9/5/22).
• “No Names” republished by Columbia journal as part of their 60 for 60 series.
• “The Cruising Speed of Mourning, or, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to a Review of a Kierkegaard Biography” at n+1.
• “Time Decides,” an excerpt from Riding with the Ghost, in the Paris Review Daily.
• The Riding with the Ghost playlist for Largehearted Boy.
• il miglior etcetera,” a remembrance of David Berman for Bookforum.
• “What it Means to Be Alive,” a personal essay in Harper’s (June 2019).
• “Idiot Bachelor Slurry,” an essay (with recipe!) in Mississippi Review #46.3.
• “Creek Theses”, an essay in Little Boxes, serialized at the Paris Review Daily.

• “Too Loud a Solitude,” an interview with Joshua Cohen in the Sept/Oct/Nov 2019 Bookforum.
• “Gonna Try for the Kingdom if I Can: Denis Johnson, 1949-2017” for n+1.
• “The Art of Fiction #235”, interview with Percival Everett in the Summer 2017 issue of The Paris Review.
• Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Gary Lutz’s Stories in the Worst Way for Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading.
• “The Outside Came Back In: Reading the Year” for the Barnes & Noble Review.
• “Story Collection as Form: Building a Book of Short Fiction” in Poets & Writers.
• “An Unrevised Sketch of Some Ideas About Revision” for the Hugo House blog.
• “Craft Talk Nobody Asked For” at Bomb magazine.
• “On the Total Weirdness of the Book Tour,” an essay at Lit Hub, and a playlist to go with it.
• “How the Icelandic Goats from Game of Thrones Almost Went Extinct” for Pacific Standard.
• The In-Between Space: An Interview with Shelly Oria for the Paris Review Daily.
• On William T. Vollmann: An Indulgence, at Electric Literature
• “The Lay of the Land” for B&N Review.
• “The Power of the Fake ID,” a true story about doing something truly stupid, in Details.
• An interview with Fiona Maazel in Bomb #124.
• The Agriculture Reader recommends “The Dead Generations” by Jared Hohl, for Recommended Reading #96.
• “What’s In a Name?” an essay in Slice 12.
• For Electric Literature‘s Recommended Reading #79, I present Sara Novic’s “Notes on a War-torn Childhood.”
• My essay on The Codex Seraphinianus reprinted with a new preface at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency to celebrate the 10th anniversary of The Believer.
• A letters exchange with Joshua Cohen for the Jewish Book Council.
• An interview with Elissa Schappell at FSG’s Work in Progress blog.
• “The Triumph of the Possible”, an essay on novels about poets at The Poetry Foundation.
• “Genre in the Mainstream”: an appreciation of Stephen King’s From a Buick 8 at Tor.com.
• A profile of the Dog House Band in Oxford American‘s online music issue.
• An interview with Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Co.
• Two essays about Hong Kong: About the English-language bookstore scene (The Faster Times); about eating bull penis brisket noodle soup (Asymptote).
• “Eulogy”, an essay in The Review of Contemporary Fiction‘s Failure issue.
• My “Secret Soundtrack” to The Gospel of Anarchy at Largehearted Boy.
• On G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Mysteries  for Tin House’s “Lost & Found” column.
• On Ted Berrigan’s letters to his first wife, at the Poetry Foundation.
• “Literary Mourning–Thoughts on Barry Hannah” at Paper Cuts.
• On “Sadie’s Ways” by The Esquires in the Oxford American 2009 music issue.
• “A Figure in the Distance Even to My Own Eye:” Ten Years of David Berman’s Actual Air in the Believer music issue (July/August ’09).
• “Refrigerate After Opening According to the Riches of His Grace,” a non-fiction story in Washington Square.
• Lost & Found: On Stephen King’s Needful Things in the Tin House Appetites issue (#39).
• “No Names,” a non-fiction story in Columbia: A Journal of the Arts #47.
• “Underground Man,” an essay on Nimrod Workman for The Nation.
• “Cousin Emmy: She Was Who She Was” an essay in the Oxford American 10th Anniversary Southern Music issue.
• “Death to the World: An interview with Will Oldham” in YETI #5
• “Fort Smith, Arkansas–A Monologue,” published in Barrelhouse #2, and cited as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2007.
• On Brautigan an essay for Lost Magazine.
• Big-League Doom: Stephen King’s Apocalypses, an essay for Powell’s City of Books.
• “Fall from Grace”, an essay at Nextbook.org [now Tablet].
• “The Codex Seraphinianus: A Fragment of the Complete History of an Unknown Planet” an essay in the May 2007 issue of The Believer.
• Interview with Gary Lutz in Bookslut #50.