I’m a writer, teacher, punk-enculturated queer femme anarchist, ex-academic, and forest witch living in Cleveland, Ohio on Erie and Mississauga land. My writing focuses primarily on sex, gender, class, media, and social movements.
My memoir Rust Belt Femme (Belt, 2020) was the winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction, an NPR Favorite Book of 2020, and a runner-up for the Heartland Bookseller’s Award.
Outside of the newsletter, my essays, criticism, and reporting have appeared in The Baffler, Bitch Magazine, In These Times, Autostraddle, Mask Magazine, Teen Vogue, Belt Magazine, among others. During an awarded residency stay at The Future Minneapolis, I co-wrote, edited, and printed The Prison Arcana Tarot Zine. The zine was created in collaboration with the incarcerated writer c.l. young and incarcerated artist Jamie Diaz. I hold a PhD in Critical Media Studies from the University of Minnesota and an MA and BA in Culture and Communication from DePaul University.
Essays (love letters, 1-2x a month)
As a primarily creative nonfiction writer, my essays tend toward autotheoretical accounts of social/political happenings and how they intersect with my life, and all of our lives. I may vary in topic —from film criticism, to social movement history, to musings on sex work, and fungi — but all the essays are written with a commitment to radical (anarchist, feminist, queer) analysis. My hope with these essays are to pique curiosity and reflection, provide a hearty dose of interesting citations, and, generally, to offer some hope. I believe that “what you pay attention to grows” can be a mantra of liberation work, and I want to use this space to pay attention to imaginings of all of us getting free.
These essays are available for free, most Mondays.
Friday Love Notes
Paid subscribers will receive additional offerings every Friday. These will usually be shorter notes, sometimes more personal, sometimes more niche. Every Friday note also includes “little lists” of what I’m Reading/Watching/Listening, and also a list of “Joy & Attention” (which is kind of like a gratitude list in the service of the above “what you pay attention to grows”). Sometimes the Friday offering will include an interview with a person of interest (for me that means witches, writers, activists, rabble-rousers of a variety of stripes), audio or video content, and other unique goodies.
If you’re interested in the Friday Love Notes but can’t afford the subscription, please email me with a request to be on the list. I’d love to have you here, no questions asked.
Why though?
I have been in radical organizing spaces for twenty years and I long for more personal in the political. I have been in academic spaces for almost twenty years and I long for more poetry in the theory. I have been in witchy spaces for a decade and I long for more commitment to anti-oppression. My hope is that these essays can speak to all those missing pieces—and can use the gifts of those spaces— to create a new assemblage of possibility.
Also: I call these letters and notes because I want them to be an exchange — I love when readers reply to the emails or leave comments. Writing (and reading) can be a way to combat alienation, which, I think, is one of our greatest tasks in an ongoing apocolypse. If this writing can help you feel less alone, that’s enough. <3
