SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BooksTEACHER: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta. Jackson, Mississippi.University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Essays/Creative Nonfiction “My Mother’s Randori.”  Stanford Magazine.  May/June 2017. “My Flights of Angels.”  Oregon Quarterly: The Magazine of the University of Oregon.  Winter 2016. “Letters from the Children of the Future.”  The Goodmen Project.  December 9, 2016. “Schools of Hope.”  The Goodmen Project.  December 8, 2016. “Stories from a Teacher.”  The Goodmen Project.  November 28, 2016. “Order.” What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher.  CNF/In-Fact Books, Norton Anthology.  Fall 2016. “Not Even Asian.”  The Goodmen Project. October 21, 2016. “Letter to My Brother the Day He Shaved His Head.”  Waxwing 10.  Fall 2016. “Because There Are No Guarantees.”  The Goodmen Project.  October 3, 2016. “School Desegregation: It’s Not Just a Mississippi Problem.”  The Hill.  May 24, 2016. “Home at the China King Buffet.”  Rethink Mississippi.  May 19, 2016. “La Boheme Portlandia.”  The Rumpus.  November 10, 2015. “Lessons Learned.” Waxwing 8.  Fall 2015. “What Remains.”  Waxwing 8.  Fall 2015. “Going Downhill with My Father.”  The Goodmen Project.  October 16, 2014. “Why I Hate Bullies.”  The Goodmen Project.  August 27, 2014. “Hope in What Work We Do.”  The Goodmen Project.  February 23, 2014. “Family Dinner the Week of the Newtown Shooting on the Sunday Jake Adam York Died.” Salonzine.  August 2013. “Do No Harm.”  Creative Nonfiction.  48.  “True Stories of Southern Sin.”  Spring/Summer 2013. “True Zeroes.”  Gulf Coast.  25.2.  “The Issues Issue.” Spring/Summer 2013. “Inadequate Elegy for Jake Adam York.”  Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics.  Issue 26.  February 2013. “A Letter to J., Who I Used to Mentor.”  The Goodmen Project.  November 26, 2012. “Give Something, Get Something.”  The Rumpus.  October 3, 2012. “Reading the Water.”  The Sun.  April 2012. “So If You See The Vulture Coming.” The Rumpus.  June 15, 2011. “To Cut.”  Gulf Coast. Spring/Summer 2011. “Want.”  The Literary Review. Winter 2011. “The Book.”  GOOD Online.  August 25, 2010. “A Lesson In Fortitude.”  GOOD Online.  July 28, 2010. “What You Would Give.”  New Madrid. Summer Issue, July 2010. “Thanks For Everything.”  GOOD Online. July 14, 2010. “A Girl Named Jacqueline.”  GOOD Online.  June 16, 2010. “Listening to Leo London.” The Rumpus.  June 2, 2010. “Race and Response.”  The Eugene Weekly.  April 15, 2010. “The Files of the Living.”  Eclectica.  April 12, 2010. “Finding the Story.”  GOOD Online.  April 7, 2010 “A Name.”  GOOD Online.  March 3, 2010. “Height.”  Stanford Magazine.  January/February 2010. “The Possibility of Ocean.”  Post Road (17).  January 2010. “Teaching To Student Interest.”  Teachers & Writers.  Fall 2009. “I Can’t Answer.”   Best Creative Nonfiction III (Creative Nonfiction). August 2009. “Hungry for Eden.”  Intermat.  August 2009. “Hurt to Read.”  Guernica.  June 2009. “The Lost Coast.”  Anderbo.  April 2009. “A Perfect Test.”  The Oxford-American (64).  March 2009. “Echoes from the Voice of Change.”  The Oregonian.  October 24, 2008. “Something Once Learned.”  Brevity. September 2008. “Hope Is Already Here.”  The Register-Guard.  June 29, 2008. “What Was Good.”  The Eugene Weekly.  May 15, 2008 “Reverend Wright and the Politics of Race.”  The Oregonian.  May 10, 2008. Craft  “The Great Canadians: Review of The Dark and Other Love Stories.”  Cincinnati Review.  Forthcoming Fall/Winter 2017. “Big Loves: On Willa Cather’s Five Stories.”  Memorious Blog. September 12, 2016. “My First Time.”  The Quivering Pen/David Abrams.  August 22, 2016. “Among the Wild Mulattoes and Other Tales by Tom Williams.”  The Rumpus.December 7, 2016. “Retrospection.”  Triquarterly Online.  June 12, 2014. “A Letter to My Talented Writer-Friend, A., Who Fears She Never Will Be Published.” Luna Park.  June 29, 2011. “Race, Authenticity, Culpability.”  Copper Nickel (14).  Fall 2010. “Total Effect.”  Willamette Writer.  July 2010 “Writing Race.”  Luna Park.  January 2010. Fiction “Ghostface Aunty.”  Boston Review.  April 21, 2017. “First Orders.”  The Arkansas Review (47).  Spring/Summer 2016. “In Every Song We Sing.”  UNSAID 7.  Summer 2014. “True Conditions.”  Camera Obscura (4).  Winter/Spring 2012.  “It.”  Copper Nickel (14).  Fall 2010. “Pipe.”  Unsaid (5).  Fall 2010. “Harm.”  Southword (17).  December 2009. “Some Things I Know.”  34th Parallel (6).   March 2009. “Gone.”  The Arkansas Review (39).  Winter 2008.  

I teach writing to at-risk students of color at the University of Oregon, where I was recently awarded a Faculty Excellence Award from the Center for Multicultural Academic Success for my work in equity and diversity. I also have a B.A. in English with Creative Writing from Stanford, where I was a Presidential Scholar. My prose has appeared in The Oxford-American, The Sun, Creative Nonfiction, Salon, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Triquarterly, and Copper Nickel, among many others, and has won awards and garnered fellowships from the Munster Literature Center, Breadloaf Writer's Conference, Oregon Literary Arts, and the Oregon Arts Commission.
 From 2002-04, I taught fourth grade in the rural black public schools of the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America. My memoir forthcoming from University Press of Mississippi concerns that experience.