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!

I have a new essay, “The Male Gaze: Objectification in the Narrative World,” up today at Catapult. This essay constellates the male gaze in film, in writing and teaching, and also in nature. In the midst of writing fiction, I’ve been thinking a lot about objectification, power, complicity and pain. Many, many thanks to editor Mensah Demary for publishing this piece.

I am delighted to have been chosen as a mentor for AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship Program this spring. The program began this past week, and I’m so excited to be working with Christina Consolino on short fiction, novel-writing and publishing. Many, many thanks to AWP’s Diane Zinna for pairing us together!

While I’ve mostly been novel-writing as of late, I have a new essay, “No Girls Allowed,” up at Fairy Tale Review about the Berenstain Bears book of the same name. This was one of my favorite books when I was little, and rereading it as an adult, I was shocked by its messaging regarding gender roles. This essay is about the book, and also about the same messaging in literary and academic worlds. Many thanks to editor Joel Hans for publishing it!

I’m delighted to be reading at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Tampa on Thursday, March 8 with a lineup of amazing, fabulist writers. Please join me and Sequoia Nagamatsu, Adrienne Celt, Tessa Mellas, Jason Teal, Daniel Hoyt, Dana Diehl, Anca Szilagyi and Melissa Goodrich at the 5 Star Dive Bar from 7-9 p.m.

I’ll also be serving on a panel the following day, Friday, March 9, at the AWP Conference on the teaching of undergraduate creative writing with Laura Van Den Berg, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Shane McCrae, and Sequoia Nagamatsu. Please join us at 12-1:15 p.m. in the Marriott Waterside’s Meeting Room 4!

This week, I’m visiting my home state as part of the annual Missouri Author Series, which brings in writers who are from or who write about Missouri. It’s a true honor to have the chance to read at several Missouri universities from a novel set in Missouri, and as someone who grew up here. I read last night at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, which was such an amazing evening and event, and today I’m headed to the University of Central Missouri as part of the Pleiades Visiting Writers Series. Tomorrow, I head to the University of Missouri, and on Friday I’ll be in Springfield at Missouri State University as part of the Moon City Press Reading Series. Many, many thanks for Brad Modlin, Michael Czyzniejewski, Phong Nguyen, Jenny Molberg, and everyone at each of these institutions for a week of fantastic events.