Writing

My work covers a wide range of topics, from stories of weird animals to investigations of digital archives. Some of my recent articles, essays, and reviews can be found below.

Academia is Sublime

The Washington Post

To study literature is to acknowledge your own creaturely vulnerability. None of us would call ourselves butterflies — not because we are not arrogant, but because, in our arrogance, we know the limits of our own beauty. We are, all of us, moths, though, carried on dusty wings to the scenes of our eventual destruction.

The Emptiness of the Covid Commercial

The Washington Post

Whether they’re celebrating the human spirit or simply offering us a bargain, these commercials are alike in their refusal to acknowledge with any specificity why things are so strange. They mention our separation, but not what we risk if we violate it; the broad fact of illness, but not those who have fallen ill; our “heartbreak,” but never the reality of death.

What Were Screensavers?

Slate

Now largely forgotten, these once ubiquitous programs let us imagine that our computers were dreaming. Revisiting their oneiric power helps us understand the early days days of computing—and how we've changed as our technologies have developed.

The Strangest Thing About the Pandemic

The Washington Post

This is where we are, then: To see the yeast, whatever the yeast is for you, is to resign yourself to stasis, to know that this is the way things are going to be. We have learned to live with the pandemic by accustoming ourselves to the reality that we will eventually be able to live a little better, but not quite as well as we once did.

Apocalypses Now

Slate

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is often described as a safeguard against doomsday. Instead, it serves as a reminder that the world is always ending. 

The Loneliness of an Abandoned Moon Colony

Slate

Tom Gauld's Mooncop follow a police officer living on a lunar colony after almost all of the other residents make their way back to earth. It hollows out a space within those evacuated visions and invites us to dwell within.

When John Berger Looked at Death

The New Yorker

The critic an novelist John Berger wrote of death in much the same way he did about art—with an eye toward the fact of its materiality. I revisited those writings for the New Yorker after Berger's own death.

Behind the Scenes at the National Zoo With the World’s Most Dangerous Bird

Cassowaries are notoriously strange creatures, but what's it like to spend decades with one? I talked with the keepers of one of these peculiar and rare birds.