Fiction & Poetry

Short Fiction

“Latibule” – Midway Journal, 19.1, 2025; finalist, Midway Journal‘s 2024 flash fiction contest

Inspired by the form of T.C. Boyle’s classic story, “The Hit Man,” this flash fiction story follows the banal, daily realities of an unnamed man’s work from home routines, ultimately opening up space to consider today’s complex relation of labor, connection, and purpose.

“The Keeper of Numbers” – J Journal: New Writing on Justice, Fall 2024, vol. 17, no. 2, CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice

An aging man who reconciles dining receipts for a university decides to record all of his thoughts before he dies.

“Rituals” – Winner of University of Michigan Press’ 2024 Millions of Suns Writing Contest.

“Rituals” is a flash fiction slice of life that vacillates between the narrator’s unconventional baptism as a child and his own parenting decisions as an adult father of a young daughter.

The contest judges, M. C. Benner and Sharon Fagan McDermott who authored Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life, wrote the following about “Rituals”:

“This story engages a painful and complicated moment in a person’s life with an inventive approach to storytelling. The writer straddles past and present, threading them together with the power of ritual. This story speaks to the possibility of reinventing one’s identity and healing trauma by letting go of the past.“

“The Pearl” – Oak Tree Journal, 1.1, 2023 (faculty spotlight)

A woman mourns the death of her grandmother through a series of personal objects left to her, ones that open up a space of reflection about her queer identity and relation to her family.

“Chronotopes of Power” – University College London’s Moveable Type Journal, Fall 2022

In a Zoom therapy session, a young man named Devlin considers the philosophical implications of virtual versus in-person therapy sessions all while struggling to get to the heart of his struggles.

The publication of “Chronotopes of Power,” while a completely fictional story, marked the author’s coming out to friends and colleagues as bisexual.

Poetry

“Midwest Sneakers” – The Sandy River Review, 2024

“Hillbilly Rituals” – The Sandy River Review, 2024

“Melancholy: The Game” – Impost: A Journal of Creative and Critical Work, Volume 17, 2024

“Switchful Lives” – Poem, Midway Journal, 17.2, April 2023

“Gamer Theory” – Poem, Midway Journal, 17.2, April 2023

“Dragon Blood Tears” – Poem, Midway Journal, 17.2, April 2023

“The Collector of Angels” – Poem, The River, 2023

“Daughters” – Poem, The River, 2023

Midwest Secrets

Poetry Book Available for Publication

Forged under fires of dominant Midwestern “family values,” Midwest Secrets offers poems that transgress the cherished spheres of family, faith, work, health, and love. In favor of irreverent bodily sensations once repressed, this collection of midwestern sacrilege exposes narratives once concealed by decades of prayer in a Christian church. These eclectic poems traverse themes of love, dissatisfaction, abandonment, depression, bisexuality, bliss, and apostasy in the context of rural, suburban, and city spaces, leaving readers with an overarching sense of the beautiful suffering and purpose that comes from refusing silence in the face of dogmatism.

Let the Dead Bury the Dead

Short Story Collection Available for Publication

Let the Dead Bury the Dead would be the outcome if Jacob Appel met Grant Faulkner for drinks at a meeting for survivors of childhood religious abuse, with Mauve from Karen Russell’s “The Cloud Lake Unicorn” presiding over the meeting. This short story collection immerses readers in stories of surviving religious trauma, bureaucratic living, authentic bisexuality, and desires that deserve affirmation. The glue that binds these stories—many of them, coming of age stories—is a commitment to pressing on (in the Beckettian sense) in daily life amidst discrimination, humiliation, scandal, depression, and the changefulness that accompanies someone committed to growth. From flash fiction vignettes of life to longer stories that take place in the Midwest, Florida, Michigan, and Lebanon, this collection pays homage to those who bravely forsake the comfortable path of religious extremism in favor of a life of little truths, friendship, and exploration.

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