M.F.A., Nonfiction Writing Program, University of Iowa, 2004

M.A., Humanities, University of Chicago, 2001

B.A., English and Art History, James Madison University, 1996

Editor, Come and Eat: Essays on Food and Care for the Dispossessed (UVA Press, forthcoming).

Co-editor, with Jack Greer, Life's a Wander: Martha Woodroof in Her Own Words, (Cove River Press, September 2026).

"What the Living Do," Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World (UVA Press, 2023).

“To the Inescapable Teacher,” Off Assignment. Web. April 2016. Reprinted in Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us (Algonquin, 2022).

"The Dream of No Small Thing." Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, Fall 2021.

"The Last Nude Photographs." The Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2. Spring 2019.

"Oranges," Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2014.

"Come and Eat," Gastronomica, Summer 2013.

"Possible Us,” The Wilson Quarterly, 2012. Web. 4 September 2012.

"Feeding the Future,” The Wilson Quarterly, 2012. Web. 27 April 2012.

“Stop,” North American Review, Summer 2010.

“The Country They Lost,” The Iowa Review, Winter 2007/2008.

“Obedience,” The Missouri Review, Spring 2006, winner of the Editors' Prize.

Advancing the Arts Creative Inspiration Grant, Arts Council of the Valley, 2020

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow, Millay Colony, 2016

Millay Colony for the Arts, a 1-month artist residency, Austerlitz, NY, June 2016

Feminist Scholarship, Women’s and Gender Studies, James Madison University, 2015

Innovative Diversity Efforts Award, James Madison University, 2008

Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Literary Nonfiction, The Missouri Review, 2006

Iowa Arts Fellowship, full tuition scholarship, University of Iowa, 2001–2003

Ruth Murray Prize for the essay, “Rituals of Initiation in Benin, West Africa,” Center for Gender Studies, University of Chicago, 2001