las vegas

“Fun Home” Ain’t Fun

It’s dangerous.

Unpopular opinion: Fun Home, the off-Broadway Tony award-winning hit based on the graphic novel by MacArthur genius grant recipient Alison Bechdel, commits harmful erasures.

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This is a belated posting, but my review of Fun Home explores the ways silence and ignorance reify oppressive social structures.

*TW sexual violence, pedophilia

The Second Coming

second coming

September’s issue of Las Vegas’ Downtown Zen magazine is here, and ya girl’s on the cover & the homepage as the fiction feature. My short story about Elvis returning to Sin City, “The Second Coming,” with original illustrations by Salvatore Napoli, is available in the print magazine throughout downtown Vegas & online now!

sep cover dtzen

Melissa Etheridge & First Drafts

On Friday, August 7, I had the opportunity to review Melissa Etheridge’s solo tour, This is M.E., at the Palms Casino.  I have been a fan literally my entire life!

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The review went live yesterday and is available here!

PS: This happened.

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Finished my first full draft of the novel, baby!  Yeehaw!

2014, Literarily

2014 has been such an amazing year — one of the most exciting and surprising of my life. In it, I finished up my first term in UNLV’s MFA program & started my second, traveled my ass off, and got a few stories/essays published, too.

January: Published the essay “in an effort to resist leaving every piece ‘untitled'” in Gravel Magazine and the story “Love Letter to Lady Lazarus” in the Winter Issue of Five [Quarterly]. Road-tripped with Ms. FILA to Los Angeles, California to read at Five [Quarterly]‘s Winter Issue launch party. Saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

Five Quarterly LA readingScreen shot 2014-01-23 at 9.22.57 PMFebruary: Published the story “When the Animals Turned on You” in the “Monsters” special issue of Gesture Literary Journal and read at the Fort Collins, Colorado issue launch party digitally via Skype.

March: Visited the Pacific Northwest for the first time to attend AWP in Seattle, Washington. Road-tripped to present a creative reading at the University of Nevada, Reno’s interdisciplinary conference on the material implications of risk. Visited Lake Tahoe while in Reno.

IMG_2781IMG_2953April: Presented a creative reading at the Far West Popular Culture Association’s conference in Las Vegas.

IMG_2697May – June: Traveled to Spain! After being awarded the University of Memphis’ Talbot International Scholarship, I spent over a month writing in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, and Alicante, Spain.

IMG_1655 IMG_1587 IMG_1505Also in June: Won Five [Quarterly]‘s second-annual E-Chapbook competition with my short collection of stories, See & Be Seen & Be Scene. Was interviewed by the Las Vegas affiliate of NPR, KNPR news, regarding the contest & publication.

millerphoto-page-001-791x1024July: The essay “Coronation of Mrs. Presley” was published in the print journal Soundings Review.

presleyAugust – September: Visited the Grand Canyon for the first time!  Also, started my second term at UNLV.

IMG_6023IMG_6243IMG_6268October: Published the essay “Still Writing About Grief” in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review and completed their “Selfie Interview.”

November: Friendsgiving, finals, FILA.

December: Published “Chimp” in Tahoma Literary Review, in print and online, in addition to a digital reading of the work.

Creative nonfiction

Over the summer, an essay of mine about my Nana, “Coronation of Mrs. Presley,” was published in print in Soundings Review‘s Spring/Summer 2014 issue.

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Yesterday, another of my creative nonfiction pieces, “Still Writing About Grief,” was published online in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg review!  It’s live on their website now, and so is my “Selfie Interview,” y’all.