Essays

“Death Conjunct Living” is a collection of flash essays that explores the interconnectedness between life and death—births, miscarriages, childhoods, funerals— as well as the term “empty stomach.” How a stomach can be empty of child or empty of food; how it can indicate a birth, a miscarriage, or an eating disorder. “Death Conjunct Living” is an exploration of the flash medium and how micro nonfiction can tackle macro themes.

Hoops and Other Essays is a collection driven by form and lyricism threading themes of grief, fatherhood, joy and anxiety. I place myself within an American landscape spanning South Florida, Northern Alaska, and Montgomery County, Maryland. Anchored by non-linear structures, an exploration of trauma, and a delight for language, these essays depict the coming of age of a thirty-year-old man who seems to be still coming of age. Poop is a theme; Nature is a theme. Speaking aloud to no one is a character trait, and iguanas are a motif. Hoops and Other Essays pulls free the particulars of the universal struggle of trying to be okay when things hardly ever seem okay. The collection comments on the inevitably of dying shared among the living and the pleasure and pain that emerges from loving what has to end. The essays were written over the course of two years after the sudden loss of my brother which was quickly followed by the birth of my son. In the end, Hoops and Other Essays tries to unravel how one fits between the polar opposites of human existence, with the hope to uncover more likeness than difference in the way we enter and the way we leave it.

This thesis is a collection of essays related to place, including meditations on different landscapes, examinations of historic place-based research, and an exploration of environmental and cultural issues.

This thesis is composed of a collection of essays on the themes of motherhood, loss, and grief. Through the use of innovative form, these essays thread together personal narratives and research to find language for complicated manifestations of loss. These essays experiment with structure and form to grapple with the illusive nature of memory, loss, and healing. The essays in this collection attempt to find healing and meaning through language and meditation. This collection is also an attempt at categorizing grief when normative societal ideas are challenged by complicated loss. This work serves as a call to action that there should be better recognition of uncommonly recognized manifestations of grief.

These Things Leave Traces is a collection of essays, some lyric, centered on themes of control, consent, feminism, and ethics. Reflecting on personal experience and drawing from fairy tales, this collection explores the ways in which trauma manifests and, further, how these traces of trauma can be found both in a body and in a body of work.

After losing over a hundred pounds, between the years of 2010 and 2015 and having two invasive revisionary plastic surgeries, I wrote this book of personal essays to explore how trauma—both externalized and internalized—shapes and misshapes the body. As individuals living in a western, consumer-driven culture, we have become adept at scrutinizing our bodies—to the point of self-immolation. In this way, our bodies have become fragmented. In this collection, I am building a narrative 'body.' The text explores body issues and anxieties in an attempt to rebuild the marginalized body through voice. Each personal essay is thematically bound to a body part. In the essays, fragmentation and objectification meet connectivity and the wholeness that can be found in the interstices.

“Foreign Affairs” is a collection of travel related essays that have been crafted through reflection from my long experience traveling the world. Together, they are an attempt to describe what was in my mind as I was living through these times and events. They are entirely nonfiction.

Prone to immaturity, restlessness, and rash behavior, Kel was never exactly the epitome of responsibility ; however, despite her longtime tendency to veer toward all that is childish, she somehow managed to hold her life together- except for the times she didn't. Add It Up tells the story of exactly that:"the times she didn't." Like an epic poem, Add It Up is a collection of lyric essays chronicling a journey. Starting even before her very beginning, it gives insight into exactly what it is that made her what she was, what she is, and what she intends to be. The pieces of this collection, Prologue, or The Letter I Wish I Wrote Myself Four Years Ago ; Kelpedia ; A Little Bit Peter ; Breakdowns ; Wyrd ; (un)fair ; Kindred ; and Kellypedia, can stand alone, but it's way better if they don't ; it's way better if you add them up.