This month, I went backpacking in Costa Rica without much of an itinerary but with a typhoid vaccine and a reading list. As I was preparing, friends were surprised that I was traveling alone, even though I speak Spanish and have lived abroad. It hit me that what I was doing would have been an aberration even a generation ago. Continue reading →

Indiana looks too flat for anything to stick. There aren’t hills or rises, barely a ditch to lie in if a tornado blows through. When I fly home, I expect the plane to bounce along the runway like a skipping stone and end up back in the air because the ground is too frictionless for the wheels to grip. Continue reading →

Whenever DC rent is breaking my heart, I read Zadie Smith’s a “Find Your Beach,” to remind myself why I live here. Continue reading →

This summer, I haven’t been able to get enough of recent first-person creative nonfiction. Continue reading →