A Memoir in Essays
The Nueces River crosses South Texas a few miles north of the Meischen family farm. I was twenty when I crossed the river and discovered a new life, new possibility, in Austin. Over the following decades, I crossed back and forth between one version of my story and another. The river serves as a metaphor—for the internal divisions that I have spent my life addressing.
Several essyas have been published, one of them in Pushcart Prize XLII.
- “Not a Word Among Us,” opens with my grandfather’s suicide, seven years before my birth, and traces the shame and silence associated with his death into my own formative years, examining how shame and silence shaped my identity. “Not a Word” is live at The Common ⇒
- “How to Shoot at Someone Who Outdrew You” begins with the day in 2009 when I heard of Hank Locklin’s death—the impetus for reflections on the country music and dancing of my childhood and adolescence. A Pushcart winner, published originally in The Gettysburg Review (Autumn 2016), this piece is available as one of the Review’s Selections ⇒
- Also Published: “Crossing the Nueces,” Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men Who Came Out Later in Life, Eldredge Books, 2016. “I Am, I Said,” The Common, Spring 2024. “Is Anyone Home?” South 85, Spring / Summer 2022. “Nines and Elevens,” Chautauqua: Wild and Tame, Issue 15, 2018. “A Thief in the Night,” Cholla Needles 85, 2024. “The Ties That Bind,” Rappahannock Review, Issue 9.2. “A Voice Among the Contradictions,” The Gettysburg Review, Summer 2018.
Guest Blogs
- “Do We Need Prose Poetry? Forché’s ‘Colonel’ vs. Hemingway’s ‘Lieutenant'” — at Talking Writing ⇒
- “How a Literary Critic Slapped Me Awake: Half an Hour with Leslie Fiedler” — also at Talking Writing ⇒
- “Trusted Others and the Editor’s Eye” — Guest Blog Post for Superstition Review ⇒
- “Hiding in Plain Sight: How Ambient Noise and Clutter Feed a Story” — Guest Blog Post for Superstition Review ⇒
A Pushcart Prize
“How to Shoot at Someone Who Outdrew You” is in The Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Small Presses 2018 Edition.
