selected nonfiction

When Suffering Goes Viral: Down the YouTube rabbit hole of tranq addiction in Philadelphia’s Needle Park (Orion)

Fatphobia is the Literary World’s Final Frontier (Substack)

The “Unhinged Bisexual Woman” Novel (Lux Magazine)

What The Lesbian Best Friend Trope Leaves Out (Mother Jones)

Looking for Home in ‘Hurricane Girl’ (The Boston Globe)

Hot Fat Summer: An Ode to Beach Bodies at Every Shape and Size (Philly Mag)

I Tried to Find a Size 20 Wedding Dress. Why Is It So Hard? (The Cut)

The Unsolved 1996 Murders Still Haunting Women and Queer Communities (Outside)

Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing. Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It? (Esquire)

The Tale of Queer Appalachia: A popular Instagram account raises funds for LGBTQ people in Appalachia. But does the money really go where it’s supposed to? (Washington Post Magazine)

I was an AmeriCorps Member in West Virginia: The Benefits and Limitations of National Service (TIME)

The Bliss Point (Tin House)

Both Ways (Gulf Coast)

The TSA’s Technology is Discriminating Against Trans People (Pacific Standard)

How to Write a Feminist "Dead Girl" Story (The Paris Review)

The Bloody Catharsis of Femme Revenge (Literary Hub)

Soft Men with Hungry Hearts (Electric Literature)

When White Supremacy Gets Road Rage (Guernica)

'I Am a Girl Now,' Sage Smith Wrote. Then She Went Missing (Splinter) 
• nominated for a GLAAD media award for Outstanding Digital Journalism
• winner of the New York Association of Black Journalists award for Online Media/Investigative
• nominated for a Deadline Club award for Newspaper/Digital Feature Reporting
• named Best Crime Reporting 2017 by Longreads

Notes on Frump: A Style for the Rest of Us (Alma)
• republished on BUST Magazine

Notes From a Young Professor: Writing and Teaching Through Charlottesville’s Culture Wars (Catapult) 

Three Decades After Philly Dropped a Bomb on Its Home, MOVE Org Survives (VICE)

Public Record, Astronomical Price (The Marshall Project)
• republished on Slate 

Help Me or Soon I Will Die: On the Electrosensitive Community of Green Bank, West Virginia (Logic)

The Ritualized Anger of a Queer Poet (Hyperallergic)

We still don’t know how to talk about Pennsatucky (Salon)

Why I Helped Search for Missing UVA Student Hannah Graham (The New Republic)