Essays
Public writing on books, art, memory, teaching, family, place, and cultural inheritance
This page gathers essays, reflections, criticism, and teaching notes that move between literary life and lived history. For new readers, the best place to begin is with a few featured pieces below, then the latest writing, then the section pages.
Start Here
Featured Writing
A few pieces that offer a strong introduction to my voice, concerns, and recurring subjects.
The Program That Changed My Life
A personal reflection on Project 2000 and the kind of practical support that can alter a life’s direction. The essay moves from memory into a larger meditation on educational access, public investment, and how a writer and teacher is often made not only by talent, but by timely help.
Who Gets to Speak—James by Percival Everett
A reflection on teaching Huckleberry Finn and reading Percival Everett’s James as a book that gives language to an older silence. The piece brings together classroom experience, family memory, and the idea of performance as survival, asking who gets to speak and under what conditions.
Saving Your Life with Bullet Journaling
A candid meditation on bullet journaling as both discipline and mirror. What begins as a reflection on productivity becomes something deeper: a piece about procrastination, self-knowledge, creative hesitation, and the strange way a daily practice can keep a person attentive enough to continue living and working.
Recent Writing
Latest posts and essays
The newest writing appears directly below this section. That stream includes recent essays, reflections, criticism, and other public-facing work.
Browse by Section
Explore the archive by type
If you’d rather browse by interest, these section pages gather related work into broader categories.
Essays & Posts
Writing rooted in lived experience, literary reflection, and the social histories that continue to shape voice, community, and imagination.
Teaching Notes
Notes on teaching writing and literature, helping students enter serious conversations, and thinking through the craft of language in the classroom.
Reviews & Criticism
Public writing on literary craft, visual art, criticism, and the books and cultural works that continue to matter across time.
Podcast
Audio conversations on writing, books, teaching, memory, and the movement between spoken voice and the written page.