The Summer of the Video Game will also go down as The Summer I Moved. Not across town, not from apartment to house. This is the year we made a leap from Portland to Tucson, forced by my husband

“Go back to sleep,” I hissed at Perry. It was 2:00 in the morning and we were in our newly purchased condo in Mammoth, sleeping in twin beds in the only room that was habitable. The other two

I’ve gotten in the habit of writing these long email invitations and party reminders for parties I host at my place. Here’s from my 2nd Annual Holiday Festival party. I’ve got a Cherry Tomato

18. You will understand and properly use the term “brown out” in every day conversation.

"We’re sorry. We’re not sorry. It was that kind of year, our year in the dumpster, our year in the occult, our year of the amateur séance."

"As a term, postmodernism came into my vocabulary in 1988.  It had not yet moved from art and English and music into theology the way it has in recent years by then, but it was, of course, still extant in the visual codes of culture."

You’re in a car tunneling in the wake of its own headlights. Last you remember, you were in a bar, in Oxford, Mississippi, and you had walked there. As you come to, you realize the car is full, and

In an interview with Luna Park in 2009, I was quoted as saying this:

I really do believe in the whole write-what-you-know thing. One time I wrote a story from the point of view of an old sick

Here is one photo for each story in my story collection, Happy Rock. It is available now. 

All the stories in Happy Rock are set in Upper Michigan. Most in the towns of Gladstone or

on page 97, between sections that detail time Paul and Erin spend in Ohio with “Calvin” and “Maggie” (Jordan Castro and Mallory Whitten), I wrote: Manson Family, in large black letters.

FLYING SAUCER ATTACK: “Beach Red Lullaby” (b/w “Second Hour,” 7. single, Planet, 1995) 

Driving westbound on the Massachusetts Turnpike’s thirty-mile Berkshire run between Exits 3 and 2,

It started that stupid night you convinced me to walk with you over the bridge and along the river. I shouldn't have done that and I knew it—even before we left, I knew it—and I thought to

I can take just about anything now.

Like how I returned from Christmas vacation to an inch of melted snow and a gaping hole above where I pee. Lake Effect, my landlord said, simply, squinting

I fell in love with Lena Dunham from the first scene of the first episode of her hit TV show, Girls. I connected with her instantaneously, and knowing that she also wrote the script for the show

I. There’s a message from home—a place we call Pineapple for the two kinds of trees that hide it from the river. It’s a clipping from my father. No greeting, just a photo and a little

The Atlanta AWP was the first one that I attended. Among many memories that explode to mind: perhaps the worst breakfast served by a restaurant to four people in the history of restaurants,

It’s the 26th of September 2007. I’m driving from work to pick up my daughter at school. On the radio Melissa Block is telling me that “From NPR News, this is All Things Considered” and that

Here in the US, it’s often said that the best way to experience the so-called “real” America is to visit small towns. Right along Main Street, sipping low-grade Arabica bean coffee at the counter

The night before you were born, your mother and I watched Knocked Up downstairs in the family room.

1) Technically, everything remains but the stereo, circa 1998, a sound system so old it couldn't play CD's for more than an hour without overheating into unbearable skips...

a short comic 

The Ship: Behind the bar is a small window, and behind the window, a small room. On the left side, stacked within metal lattices, are wooden barrels tilted on their sides and filled with unknown

It’s a different gator every year, but we talk like it’s the same one.

I remember one robot was called a SENTRY and it guarded the door...

It’s 10:57 Albuquerque time, eight minutes before kickoff, and I’m already flustered. I hosted a party last night, which means I woke up this morning with a clogged kitchen drain and beer bottles