Book

This Is Not Your City, forthcoming from Sarabande Books in Spring/Summer 2011.

Stories

“This Is Not Your City” The PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, ed. Laura Furman,
Anchor Books, available here and elsewhere.
Story originally published in Third Coast.
-- A Russian mail-order bride living in Finland learns that her daughter is missing.

“Zolaria” The Southern Review (read it here in pdf format, and then check out the alternate ending)
-- Childhood and friendship, with ogres.

“At the Zoo” The Paris Review (read an excerpt)
-- I love zoos. I probably shouldn’t, but I do. Also, time machines.

“Jan Palach in Prague” Colorado Review (read it here in pdf format)
-- An affair in Central Europe, with martyrdom and beach volleyball.           

“It Looks Like This” Blackbird (read it here)
-- With pictures!

“On the Oregon Trail” Hobart (read it here)
-- Check out the ‘80s Oregon Trail computer game, preferably before reading. Or play it online.

"Sissy, Of Corint" Fogged Clarity (read it here)
-- Sisyphus got a really raw deal.

“In the Gulf of Aden, Past the Cape of Guardafui,” The Gettysburg Review
-- I was writing pirate hijackings before pirates were cool. Yar.

“Somewhere in America a Man Named Jason Brockman Weighs 470 Pounds
and I Am Going to Save Him” Phoebe
-- One summer, I watched too much Wife Swap on TV.

“Going to Estonia” Tin House

“Steal Small” Prairie Schooner 

“World Champion Cow of the Insane” Epoch

“23 Months” Epoch

“Embodied” The Cincinnati Review
-- The more I thought about reincarnation, the more being able to remember past lives sounded like a really terrible prospect.

“Excerpts from Lesser Poets” LIT

“The Hobart Chronicles” Crab Orchard Review

“Zero Conditional” Passages North

“Safety for Life” Roanoke Review

“Herzenboogen’s Theory of Collective Truth,” Café Irreal (read it here)
-- This is a goofy one. But you’ll learn the word “otter” in four languages. Sort of.

 “Mermaid Parade” Pindeldyboz (read it here)
-- The characters are mine, but the Coney Island Mermaid Parade needs no embellishment.

Essays

“Pesäpallo: Playing at the Edge of the World,” Anatomy of Baseball,
Eds. Andrew Blauner and Lee Gutkind. Southern Methodist University Press. Buy it here or elsewhere.
Also appeared in Creative Nonfiction (read an excerpt)
-- I’m terrible at baseball. But in Finland they play a strange type of baseball that I’m… not quite as terrible at. You just have to remember to run the bases backwards.

“Seben, crudele” The North American Review

Sample Reviews & Articles

“The Second Hat: Using Your Writer’s Notebook” The Southeast Review Writer’s Regimen

Review of Alex Rose’s The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales, DIAGRAM