Selected Writing

Essays

Review of Katherine Dunn’s Near Flesh / Los Angeles Review of Books / January 2026

Review of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Bewitching / Los Angeles Review of Books / July 2025

Review of Naomi Falk’s The Surrender of Man / The Brooklyn Rail / June 2025

Review of Julia Armfield’s Private Rites / Strange Horizons / March 2025

Sky Daddy Takes Airplane Fetishization to New Heights / KQED / February 2025

Review of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium / San Francisco Chronicle / September 2024

Review of Kelly Link’s The Book of Love / San Francisco Chronicle / February 2024

Silicon Valley Gothic: Putting the Ghost Back in Big Tech’s Machine / Tor.com / July 2023

On Garance Marillier as Justine in Titane (2021) / Goodnight, Sweet Prince / January 2023

Polychromatic Perversity: Hypercolor, Vice, and Violence in Horror / Tor Nightfire / March 2022

To Lose My Chronic Pain, I Had to Find My Rage / Ms. Magazine / February 2022

Your Inside(s) Aren’t Safe: Killer Color in the Domestic Gothic / Tor Nightfire / August 2021

Teaching William E. Stafford’s “Traveling through the Dark” / Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) online / July 2021

“An Unhaunted Landscape: The Anti-Gothic Impulse in Ambrose Bierce’s “A Tough Tussle” / Fear and Nature: Ecohorror in the Anthropocene, Pennsylvania State University Press / May 2021

Phantom Wavelengths: Three Tales of Invisible Color / Tor Nightfire / February 2021

“American Psycho,” “American Beauty,” “American Pie”: White Male Rage at the Turn of the Millennium / Los Angeles Review of Books / October 2020

Sicko Doctors: Suffering and Sadism in 19th-Century America / Public Domain Review / July 2020

Why We Keep Getting New Adaptations of “The Turn of the Screw” / Electric Literature / April 2020

The Rise of the Downfall of the Dirtbag Heiress / Literary Hub / December 2019

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Reporting

The War of the Worlds: The Many Afterlives of an 1897 Mars-Attacks Novel / Stanford Live / 2021

New Indigenous Writers Lecture Series Showcases Contemporary Native Voices / Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences website / 2020

Stanford historian traces military’s influence on U.S. nutrition / Stanford Report / 2019

Stanford scholar traces the roots of South Korea’s cosmetic surgery surge / Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences website / 2018

Pagodas and Dragon Gates / 99% Invisible / 2015

Dreading Nature / Out There / 2015

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Interviews

Kristina Ten on her provocative story collection about immigrants, bodies under siege, and the horror of being perceived / Electric Literature / 2025

Anna Biller on How the Gothic Gives Voice to Women’s Pleasure—and Pain / Electric Literature / 2023

On The Edge Of The Abyss, Putting Our Skincare Creams On: An Interview with Mona Awad / Electric Literature / 2023

Interview with Lydia Kiesling / The Racket / 2023

Kelly Link Makes Fairy Tales Even Weirder Than You Remember: A Conversation with Kelly Link / Electric Literature / 2023

Just Let Women Be Horny Monsters: A Conversation with Kathleen J. Woods / Electric Literature / 2022

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Substack

Shrieks & Howls: my essay series examines the connections between the comedy and horror genres, two films at a time. I choose pairs of movies whose titles share a common word. You can peruse the archives, subscribe, or check out a few of my favorites: