This coming summer, I’m delighted to join the lineup of faculty for the Colgate Writers’ Conference being held June 16-22, 2019. I’m leading an intensive novel-writing workshop, as well as giving a craft talk and reading. I’m thrilled to work alongside other faculty such as CJ Hauser, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Jenny Xie, Naomi Jackson, Angela Palm and Brock Clarke. Many, many thanks to director Jennifer Brice for inviting me to Colgate this summer. Registration is open until March 30th!

Hello from Santa Fe, where I’ll be in residence until late January as a Fellow with the Women’s International Study Center. I’m working on a new novel set in Santa Fe and making use of the state archives for research, and I’m also enjoying the space and time this month to draft and structure this new manuscript. Enormous thanks to director Jordan Young and the WISC board for providing me with this amazing opportunity! Here’s to beginning 2019 with creativity, generative energy, peace and joy.

First pre-pub alert! This past month, Library Journal published its Emerging Stars preview for Literary Fiction, which included The Desert Sky Before Us for its May release radar. Many thanks to editor Barbara Hoffert for including me on this list!

This week I’ll be traveling to SUNY-Fredonia for the Mary Louise Visiting Writers Series, with many thanks to creative writing faculty Eric Schlich for inviting me. I’ll be giving a craft talk today and a reading tomorrow. Very much looking forward to visiting and to meeting Fredonia’s students!

This week I had the phenomenal pleasure of visiting the University of Alaska-Fairbanks for the Midnight Sun Visiting Writers Series, where I gave a craft talk and reading and had the chance to meet with the program’s really talented MFA students and work with them on fiction manuscripts. It was such a wonderful visit, and I’m so grateful to Sara Eliza Johnson for inviting me – and also for taking me out to see Denali National Park, Chena Hot Springs and the northern lights!

Here is the official Publishers Marketplace announcement (and title change alert)!

The Desert Sky Before Us is due out from William Morrow/HarperCollins in May 2019. Many, many thanks to Kerry D’Agostino, Margaux Weisman and Jessica Williams. Cover coming soon!

In advance of BookFest 2018 this weekend, St. Louis Magazine was so kind to interview me about Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down, about writing about my hometown, and about this weekend’s Fresh Fierce Fiction panel where I’ll be discussing fierce fiction at 12pm on Saturday with Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Rebecca Makkai and Deborah Eisenberg. Huge thanks to editor Amanda Woytus for taking the time to chat with me!

BookFest 2018 is coming up the weekend of September 21-23 in St. Louis, and I’m beyond thrilled to participate in the Fresh Fierce Fiction panel on Saturday, September 22 at 12pm with Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Rebecca Makkai and Deborah Eisenberg. BookFest is sponsored by my favorite hometown independent bookstore, Left Bank Books, and will feature an amazing lineup of authors including Sally Field, Gary Shteyngart, Jacqui Germain, Tessa Fontaine, Dana Levin, Callista Buchen, Michael Nye, and many more. Looking forward to seeing you in STL!

Left Bank Books has been my favorite independent bookstore since I was a kid and they do such wonderful work in St. Louis, which now includes putting on BookFest St. Louis each fall. I’m beyond thrilled to join the lineup of this fall’s #BookFestSTL, which includes readings and panels by Sally Field, Gary Shteyngart, Sarah Kendzior, and Tessa Fontaine, among many others. I’ll be discussing literary fiction on a panel with Rebecca Makkai and Blair Hurley on Saturday, September 22, with more details to come. See you in September, St. Louis!

I’m tremendously grateful for my short story, “Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down,” which first appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review in 2014 and eventually became my debut novel, to be included in the just-released Best of Iron Horse Literary Review issue. This issue celebrates the journal’s twenty years with the editors’ favorite pieces of short fiction, non-fiction and poetry that they’ve published across two decades, and I’m so honored for this story to appear in these pages alongside six other stories by writers such as Lucas Southworth, Gina Ochsner and E.M. Tran. Many, many thanks to founder and editor Leslie Jill Patterson, who is one of the most generous, hardworking, supportive and passionate people in the entire literary world. This issue is gorgeous, and I’m beyond delighted to be included!