Writing

I primarily write literary and cultural criticism. In addition to book reviews—I’m down to cover practically any genre—my work focuses on a range of topics from literary and cultural histories, Victorian literature, emotion and intimacy (especially female friendship), popular culture (90s nostalgia is particular love of mine), and, broadly, gender and sexuality.

Here are many of my clips from the last several years, with the most recent at the top.

Letter of Recommendation essay on children’s author Jon Klassen — The New York Times Magazine, November 28, 2023 (in print on December 3, 2023)

“Oscar Wilde’s Art of Disobedience” — The Nation, October 9, 2023

“The Mere Fact of Her” (on Emily Dickinson’s legacy) — Poetry Foundation, May 15, 2023

“The Case Against BoyMom” — The Washington Post, May 4, 2023

“Viewer Discretion Advice: On Lytton Strachey’s Biographical Legacy” — Lapham’s Quarterly, December 5, 2022

“The Passion and the Agony of the Bibliophile” (a review of Claire-Louise Bennett’s Checkout 19) — The Nation, June 6, 2022

“The Life, Death, and Rebirth of MTV Books” — Hazlitt, May 4, 2022

“The Sound of Settling: Rachel Greenwald Smith’s argument against compromise” — Bookforum, November 30, 2021

“Is There a Better Way to Tell the Story of Nonhuman Life?” — The Nation, September 23, 2021

“Tell It Slant” — Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2021 issue

“From the Victorians to Anthropologie: Stuck in the Parlor’s Games” — Jezebel, December 8, 2020

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Catastrophe” — The Nation, August 27, 2020

“The ‘Invincible Innocence’ of Whiteness” — Jezebel, June 24, 2020

“The Unashamed Empathy of Literature’s Original Horse Girl” — Jezebel, March 30, 2020

“Carly Rae Jepsen’s Exhilarating, Emotionally Intelligent Pop Music” — Longreads, February 18, 2020

“The Dawn of the Era of Feminine Excess” — Literary Hub, December 20, 2019

“On Jane Austen, Elizabeth Warren, and the Legacy of the Stoic Woman” — Literary Hub, November 18, 2019

“Finite Love: What Lesbian Period Dramas Lose When We Project Our Fears on Them” — Bitch Media, October 24, 2019

“Pelvic Exams and the Death Drive” — Gay Magazine, September 17, 2019

“What Makes Somebody a Mother? On the New Season of The Handmaid’s Tale” — Literary Hub, June 4, 2019

“The Fraught Culture of Online Mourning” — Longreads, May 21, 2019

“Persona Non Grata” — Poetry Foundation, May 20, 2019

“Why I Embraced Skin Care After My Mother’s Death” — SELF Magazine, April 18, 2019

“A Single Life Full of People” — The New Republic, March 4, 2019

“Love At First Sight: On Christina Ricci and Queer ‘90s Nostalgia” — Nylon Magazine, February 19, 2019

“In ‘My Brilliant Friend,’ Companionship and Survival Are Forever Linked” — Bitch Media, February 1, 2019

“Everything Is Possible in Mary Poppins Returns” — The New Republic, December 19, 2018

"Mothering and Unmothering" — The New Republic, August 7, 2018

"The It Girl Allure—And Limitations—Of Eve Babitz" — Buzzfeed Reader, August 2, 2018

"Painted Ladies: Christina Rossetti Versus the Male Gaze" — Poetry Foundation, July 23, 2018

"Does 'The Handmaid's Tale' Want Us to Empathize With Ivanka Trump?" — Literary Hub, July 12, 2018

"In GLOW, Who Gets to Be Empowered?" — The New Republic, June 28, 2018

"Volunteers of the Ivory Tower: How academia exploits the labor—and love—of aspiring scholars" — The New Republic, May 1, 2018

"The Complicated Comforts Of Marilynne Robinson" — Literary Hub, April 13, 2018

"The Reality of Women's Pain" — The New Republic, March 7, 2018

"Dead Mom Soundtrack, or the Top 5 Songs About Losing Your Mother" — Pitchfork, February 12, 2018

"Justice for Maggie: On George Eliot's Most Underrated Heroine" — Literary Hub, November 22, 2017 

"My Mother Has Terminal Cancer, and I Can't Seem to Stop Buying Sweaters" — Catapult, November 20, 2017

"Guster's Ambivalent Nostalgia" — The Awl, July 7, 2017

"I Came Out As Queer Two Years Ago—But I Didn't Leave My Husband" — Refinery29, June 21, 2017

"My Fictional Nemesis: Why Thomas Hardy's Angel Clare Is The Worst" — Literary Hub, June 2, 2017

"Why a Women's-Only Wonder Woman Screening That Sparked Male Outrage Is Absolutely Vital" — Rolling Stone, May 26, 2017 

"In Big Little Lies, Female Friendship Seems as Hard to Solve as Crime" — ELLE, March 31, 2017 

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the Greatest Show in the History of Television" — The Week, March 10, 2017

"The Many Bad Moms of Charles Dickens" — Literary Hub, January 5, 2017

"How Tori Amos Taught Me the Beautiful Power Of Anger" — The Week, November 3, 2016

"Blank Books and Letting the Ink Dry" - Catapult, September 26, 2016

"Our Lady of Sensuality, Sarah McLachlan" — The Hairpin, June 16, 2016

"Searching for Salvation in Charlotte Brontë's Villette" — Literary Hub, April 21, 2016

"The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Ugly Cry" — The New Republic, April 1, 2016

"Virginia Woolf's Philosopher of Novelty" — Hazlitt, January 25, 2016

"Learning to Hate 2015" — Jezebel, December 29, 2015

"Devon Sawa, Can I Keep You?" — Jezebel, October 31, 2015

"A Friendship You'd Kill For: The Twisted Fantasies of Heavenly Creatures' Pauline and Juliet" — Jezebel, September 23, 2015

"The Art of Loving and Losing Female Friends" — Pacific Standard, August 29, 2015

"Taylor & Karlie & Lena: The Romance Of Celebrity Female Friendship in the Feminist Selfie Generation" — The Los Angeles Review of Books, July 16, 2015

"The Love Story of Orange Is the New Black's Taystee and Poussey" — Jezebel, June 11, 2015

"There's No Crying in Graduate School" — Curriculum Vitae, June 5, 2015 (also printed in the Chronicle of Higher Education)

"Don't Mistake Your Best Friend for a Mirror: On Sophie and Francis Ha" — Jezebel, April 21, 2015

"The Misanthropic Love Story Of Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane" — Jezebel, February 2, 2015

"How to Talk About Divorce in Your Twenties" — Jezebel, November 25, 2014

"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Second Wedding" — The Hairpin, June 30, 2014