Before I learned how to lie (write fiction), I spent three decades as an award-winning speechwriter. Now, equipped with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, I am working on modern-day adaptations of fairy tales. Queer, of course.
I received a 2023 grant from the Mass Cultural Council and my unpublished memoir was shortlisted by the Santa Fe Writers Project. My creative nonfiction has been published in The Nasiona and Autostraddle, among others.
I wind down with needlepoint, including the little-known Norwegian art of Hardanger. You can see a bit by scrolling to the bottom of this page. I have an unhealthy attachment to a perennially disappointing baseball team. And I am definitely not the lady from Seinfeld, whose last name is Benes.
Photo by Sandra Costello: She coaxed me into my old backyard by promising we wouldn't stay long. I love Nature best from the other side of a window. (Less sneezing.)
My Writing
Red Pill
“I took your winter coat to the dry cleaner today,” he bellowed.
What’s the proper response to that? “Um…thank you?”
“When I cleaned out the coat pockets, I found—THIS.” Producing a carefully folded tissue, he opened it to reveal something red nestled inside. READ MORE
New-Fashioned
My mother developed some unusual habits while I was away at college. Most glaringly: after decades of teaching the rules of phonics to elementary school students, she started making up her own.
Take, for example, a name that somehow filtered into her consciousness, the fashion designer Liz Claiborne. Should be simple: short i Liz, followed by a long A for Clai; the silent e at the end turns the o vowel long, CLAY-bōrn. But that’s not where Ma went rogue. She placed the sounds far in the back of her throat—like she was trying to speak while swallowing a spoonful of tapioca—and it emerged as, pretty much, GLI glay-BUHHHH. READ MORE
My Writing
Red Pill
“I took your winter coat to the dry cleaner today,” he bellowed.
What’s the proper response to that? “Um…thank you?”
“When I cleaned out the coat pockets, I found—THIS.” Producing a carefully folded tissue, he opened it to reveal something red nestled inside. READ MORE
New-Fashioned
My mother developed some unusual habits while I was away at college. Most glaringly: after decades of teaching the rules of phonics to elementary school students, she started making up her own.
Take, for example, a name that somehow filtered into her consciousness, the fashion designer Liz Claiborne. Should be simple: short i Liz, followed by a long A for Clai; the silent e at the end turns the o vowel long, CLAY-bōrn. But that’s not where Ma went rogue. She placed the sounds far in the back of her throat—like she was trying to speak while swallowing a spoonful of tapioca—and it emerged as, pretty much, GLI glay-BUHHHH. READ MORE
On My Bookshelf
Blast from my past
"You have a terrific ear and you turn straight thinking into straight writing."
—Warren Buffett