Profile
I am a US-born writer most at home in the realm of the imaginary, theoretical, uncanny, and cataclysmic. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honor List and winning a Firecracker Award, my debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts was a finalist for a Lambda, a Hurston/Wright, and a Locus Award. My second book, a novella, The Deep, was the winner of the 2020 Lambda Award and was on the shortlist for a Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award. Emerging out of a collaboration with experimental hip-hop group clipping, fronted by Daveed Diggs, The Deep investigated Toni Morrison's incantation in the novel Beloved: 'this is not a story to pass on.' My third novel, Sorrowland, the story of a young woman's godlike metamorphosis after escaping a cult, won the Stonewall an Otherwise Award and was shortlisted for an Ignyte Award. Model Home, my latest novel, has recently released to critical acclaim.
I completed my undergraduate studies at Stanford University in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and directly after went on to do a fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers, earning an MFA in Fiction Writing. Since, I’ve worked professionally as an author and joined Queen Mary in 2023.
Research
Research Interests:
- Queer and Feminist Poetics
- Critical Race Studies
- Speculative Fiction
- Hauntings, Ghost Studies
Recent and On-Going Research
I primarily write longform fiction but also short stories and essays. My work investigates and interrogates themes of generational trauma, social change, environmental cataclysm, gender desertion and queerness more broadly, and religion - specifically Judaism and Black ancestral spiritual practices and folk practices.
I am curious if the novel has potential to do more than entertain and comfort, and whether Walter Benjamin’s thesis in ‘The Author as Produce’r is correct, that the novel form itself within traditional publishing cannot be revolutionary. I tend to believe he is correct but wonder about potential uses of the novel.
Publications
Novels
• Model Home, MCD/Macmillan USA, MerkyBooks/Penguin UK, 2024
• Sorrowland, MCD/Macmillan USA, MerkyBooks/Penguin UK, 2021
• The Deep, Saga Books/Simon & Schuster USA, Hodder/Hachette UK , 2020
• An Unkindness of Ghosts, Akashic Books, 2017
Selected Stories
• “This Is Everything There Will Ever Be”, The Paris Review, 2023
• “A Brief Note on the Translation of Winter Women, Written by the Collective Dead, Translated by Amal Ruth”, Small Odysseys forwarded by Neil Gaiman, Edited by Hannah Tinti, 2023
• “Prudent Girls”, The New York Times Magazine Decameron Project, 2021
• “St Juju”, The Verge, Better Worlds Project, 2019
• “Whose Heart I Long to Stop with the Click of a Revolver”, Best American Short Stories, 2018
• “Prior to Being Swallowed Up,” Black Warrior Review, Spring 2018
• “Whose Heart I Long to Stop with the Click of a Revolver,” Emrys Journal, Spring 2017
Supervision
I would welcome enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in any of the areas of my research.