writer for children
(& grown-ups, too!)
Essays
Don't Let Me Get Too Deep — March 15, 2023, Marchxness.com
My daughter shows me her friends’ BeReals and they’re charmingly narrative: shopping for dorm rooms at Target, packing for college, eating family dinner. When she last visited I didn’t expect her to ask, “You wanna be in a BeReal with me?” but she did.
Bus Stop — May 21, 2022, Brevity
Bus horns wake you, alone in bed with the kids — you drove up for his conference, you knew he’d be gone all day — last night he said “All of Chicago is your playground,” while you fussed about the room searching for bus fare, your head drowning with worry
Self Portraits — May 16, 2018, Harpur Palate (print-only)
Winner, Harpur Palate Prize for Creative Nonfiction
Mom and I were folding clothes on her bed, when she confessed, "You know, I wanted to study design at Pratt.”
How Does Your Garden Grow: A Garden Lexicon — May 15, 2018, Flyway Journal
Honorable Mention, Notes From the Field Creative Nonfiction Contest
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Under the canopy of sprawling, spiky leaves, I find the first summer cucumber of my garden. It is misshapen, bulbous on one end and angular on the other, but it looks for all intents and purposes like a cucumber. A garden is like a lottery ticket. For a small, up-front investment and a little bit of time, you either receive the prize of food, in the best scenario, or a deformed cucumber, in the worst.
Let's Co-Sleep On It — August 27, 2016, Salon
That will never be me, my former self claimed — and then we had kids who wanted to sleep in our bed.
Live to Tell, Tell to Live — July 2016, Hippocampus Magazine
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Reading Winik helped me stop ruminating alone; I started to share.
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I’m on hold with the doctor’s office. I’m on hold with the diagnostic center. I’m in limbo in the elevator for just one floor, hanging perilously between my life as it is now, in the present, and whatever comes next.
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See Amy read this essay on Accents: A Radio Show for Literature, Art, and Culture
The Nose On Her Face — Spring 2015, The Louisville Review (print-only)
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It was the middle of a gloomy afternoon at the end of January, but Dad had closed the curtains and turned down the blinds as if it were midnight.
Swimming Lessons — Summer, 2014, Motif, Volume 4 (print-only)
The first time I drowned I was four. I was taking swimming lessons in the indoor pool at the Jewish Community Center. The air was so thick with chlorine a blue haze settled over the water. Children’s chatter echoed off the tile walls while I sank at the eight-foot marker, one hand still grasping the dark blue kickboard.