"To Be Fair: Life Lessons From Letterkenny" in Drunk Monkeys

 As per usual, dusting this space off when I have a new publication, and yeah, it's been awhile. My last one was way back in February 2020, the eve of the pandemic, with lots of upheaval, moving, and creative frustrations, dry spells along the way. 

However, I fell in love with the TV show Letterkenny, and the kind people at Drunk Monkeys let me write an essay about it for their glorious, varied tenth anniversary issue. It's a cornucopia of fiction, essays, poetry, and film/TV writing, and I'm honored to be a small part of it. Thank you to editor Kolleen Carney-Hoepfner and the Drunk Monkeys staff for putting together such a terrific journal. Not just this issue, but also the ones before, and the ones to come. 

You can read my essay here. It's a look at the show and how an absurd Canadian comedy represents what I wish were the ideals of Southern living. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I hope you spend time with the rest of the issue; you won't run out of things to read for a good while. 

Again, no promises about updating this space consistently. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll eventually upgrade to a big boy website. But this blog, thirteen years strong, was my foundation, and I'm keeping it active, even if it's just a resource for my own personal news. 

Stay safe, y'all. If you're out there. 

2020 Readings

2020 sucked. You know it. I know it. Here are the books I read this year. Annually, I do a detailed recap, and set 2021 goals, but since our goal is to merely make it to the end of this pandemic, I don't feel right with wide-eyed optimism.
1.) Trust Exercise: a Novel by Susan Choi

2.) The Sky Isn't Blue by Janice Lee

3.) Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

4.) American Dirt: a Novel by Jeanine Cummins

5.) My Year of Rest and Relaxation: a Novel by Ottessa Moshfegh

6.) And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges by Amber Sparks

7.) Anklet and Other Stories by Shome Dasgupta

8.) The Bonesetter's Daughter: a Novel by Amy Tan

9.) Weather: a Novel by Jenny Offill

10.) Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

11.) So We Can Glow: Stories by Leesa Cross-Smith

12.) Our Alternate Universes by Rachel Tanner

13.) Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today by Rachel Vorona Cote

14.) We the Animals: a Novel by Justin Torres

15.) Now We Haunt This Home Together: Stories by Madeline Anthes

16.) Lakewood: a Novel by Megan Giddings

17.) The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland by Walter Thompson-Hernández

18.) Blacktop Wasteland: a Novel by S.A. Cosby

19.) All My Mother's Lovers: a Novel by Ilana Masad