Writing
Growing up as the youngest of five kids, I started life with stories. My siblings and I created elaborate figure games in our basement, spreading small plastic worlds across the cold concrete. When they outgrew “playing pretend,” I turned to writing, creating stories of Martian teachers and magical dollhouses that echoed the books I loved to read. As I grew older, I continued to tell stories, growing into my own voice. Across a variety of forms including fiction, poetry, research articles, plays, and creative nonfiction, I make sense of the world by making words.
In 2024, I was a finalist in Button Poetry’s annual spoken-word video contest. I was also a 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow in Young Adult Fiction as well as the recipient of the Stone Soup Community Press Scholarship. Currently, I am working on a poetry chapbook as well as a short story collection that uses magical realism to explore intersections of illness, identity, trauma, and queer experience.
Below, you can view a few samples of my writing.
“Living History”
In June 2023, I was invited to perform as part of the Queer Writes showcase co-hosted by the Missouri History Museum and That Uppity Theatre Company. (Check out a video from that event below). I wrote “Living History” for that event, celebrating the legacy of LGBTQIA+ people in Missouri, the U.S., and beyond. This performance of the poem was filmed at a fundraiser for CHARIS, the St. Louis Women’s Chorus.
“Call it a Catch Breath”
I first wrote this poem in 2021, as CHARIS, the St. Louis Women’s Chorus, began to meet in person for the first time since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. This performance was part of the Queer Writes showcase co-hosted by That Uppity Theatre Company and the Missouri History Museum in June 2023.
“Mother Hunger”
Strange Horizons published my short story “Mother Hunger,” in September 2022. The full piece is available to read at their website.
“Reflections on an Invisible Girl” (excerpt)
On August 12, 2021, I read an excerpt from my short fiction piece, “Reflections on an Invisible Girl,” (formerly '“Phantom Pain”) as part of the Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Writers Retreat reading series. The complete short story was published by Catapult and can be read here. The full 2021 Lambda reading series—which features 62 poets, playwrights, fiction and nonfiction writers—is available on YouTube.
“On Intersectionality”
On March 17, 2021, I posted an explanation of intersectionality to Facebook. Within a week, it had been shared more than 20,000 times. I wrote this piece in direct response to the murders of Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Yong Ae Yue in Atlanta, Georgia on March 16, 2021. I also wrote it in response to my own misconceptions of intersectionality and the misconceptions I had seen circulating in higher education and online. Since the piece “went viral,” I have received numerous requests to make it available in a more permanent form. You can download a .pdf of this piece by clicking the button.
