Creative Nonfiction

I received my M.F.A. from ODU with a concentration in Fiction, but thanks to my professor, Molly McCully Brown, I fell in love with Creative Nonfiction. Through nonfiction, I honed my voice, and came to terms with things about myself that I was too afraid to face before. It’s thanks to writing nonfiction that I got therapy for PTSD that was undiagnosed and untreated. And it’s through nonfiction I learned to love myself harder than ever before. Some of these essays come from my memoir in progress, Wet Behind The Knees. Get ready for essays about my life, trauma, addiction, and recovery all to the backdrop of late 90s Nu Metal

Looking Back To Get A Portrait of The World:

An Interview with Program Founder Mike Pearson

“This study abroad trip to Ireland was my chance to find peace and inspiration. If this was the land that created brilliant artists like Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, Rooney, and McDonagh, then maybe it would help me. Maybe I had a shot at being a writer one day.”

Thank you Barely South Review for publishing my first interview/essay

Grief Like Waves

“The ocean picks up around us, so I scurry back with care to my coffin rack. The poor excuse for a bed at least has a tiny privacy curtain to shroud me. Inside it, I try not to cry as I’m rocked in the darkness.”

Thanks to Ponder Review for publishing this flash essay. Found in Volume 8, Issue 2

Gently

“For once, he leans on me, and my steadiness returns, while my sight sharpens. There’s an explosion of lemon-scented Pine-Sol. We laugh and pretend we’re caught in the rain. Intimate, wet, laughter. I’m safe.”

Thanks to The Common for accepting this piece and publishing it!

Last Mixed CD

“Louder than everything. Louder than my heart. Louder than children scream. Louder than dings from mallets kissing levers. Louder than this song singing from speakers around us. That’s when it hit me. When I knew. 

I loved you.”

Thanks to Permafrost Magazine for accepting this essay. This should be published very soon.

Fallin’

“Dante’s head blocks the sun partially, leaving only a halo of light around his long, straight, black hair. I’m safe, and he’s magnificent.”

Wide Open

“There, rolling around in the grass and dirt, are three laughing maniacs bathed in sunlight.”

Running Away From Me

“I’m not sure what came first, my disgust at how I looked in the mirror, or someone calling me fat and ugly.”

Coming Soon

Everything Caught,

Everything Lost

“The pat on the back was just a little extra. I’ll always remember that moment he took out of the frenetic show to say, you’re alright kid.”

Kathryn Hannan, Myself, Gabriela Szczepankiewicz. Ireland, 2019