Essays, Articles, and Reviews
A (Rediscovered) Joy of Cooking, in Real Simple, April 2022
My father should be in surgery rehab. But with beds full of the unvaccinated, he died in covid quarantine, in The Washington Post, September 2021
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,” in Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century, March 2021
“Lolita Isn’t a Love Story: It’s a Gothic Horror Novel,” CrimeReads, March 2021
“How the Pandemic Is Altering Book Publishing” New Jersey Monthly, May 2020
“Shelving ‘Christina’s World’” Boston Globe op-ed, Jan. 2020
“Why You Can’t See Maine’s Most Iconic Painting” by Bob Keyes, Portland (ME) Press Herald, Jan. 2020
“Historical Fiction: The Pleasures and Perils of Writing About Other Eras” Poets & Writers, Sept.-Oct., 2019
Review of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, New York Times Book Review, Nov. 2018
“Christina and Me: Three years immersed in Wyeth’s most famous — and divisive, and enigmatic — work” DownEast (ME), July 2017
“Trespassing in Christina’s World” New York Times, Feb. 2017
“On the Genesis of a Great Novel” Read Her Like An Open Book, 2017
“What Does it Really Mean When People Say Your Character is Unsympathetic?” The Center for Fiction Literary Magazine, 2017
“A Suitcase of Tomatoes” Edible Jersey, Aug. 2017
“Where Does Inspiration Come From?” Psychology Today, Mar. 2017
“The Book That Made Me a Reader” The Center for Fiction Literary Magazine, 2017
“In My Library” New York Post, Feb. 2017
“Why Libraries?” Library Love Fest, Feb. 2017
“An Island in Maine, Four Sisters, Four Houses” New York Times, July 2016
“Writing Acadia: A Personal Memoir” Portland Monthly (ME), July 2016
“Why I Won’t Boycott North Carolina” Fortune, April 2016
“Why Should Cancer Make Me Want to Knit?” New York Times, April 2015
“The Best Gift I Ever Bought Myself” Money, Dec. 2014
“Taking My Son To College, Where Technology Has Replaced Serendipity” Newark Star-Ledger (NJ), Sept. 2013
“Hard Choice: Going Straight to Softcover” San Francisco Chronicle, May 2013
“Looking Into the Sun” Psychology Today, Feb. 2013
Poets & Writers Craft Capsules, 2017
“Tolstoy’s Short Chapters”
“Visual Prompts”
“Making Conversation”
“Deny the Accident”
“Good Sense”
“The Egg in My Pocket”
SheWrites Summer Series: Expert Advice, 2017
“Settling In”
“Only Commit”
“Use a Monkey Wrench”
“It’s the Writing, Stupid”
The Craft of Writing
“The Book That Brought Writers’ Fears and Self-Doubt Into the Open,” LitHub, Oct. 2020
Fiction
“The Runaway,” in Stories from Suffragette City, Fall 2020
“Cats” (story), Slice Magazine, Issue 20, Spring 2017
“Stranded in Ice: Exclusive Outtake from A PIECE OF THE WORLD” (story), LitHub, Feb. 2017
“Vivian’s Choice: An Expanded Scene from ORPHAN TRAIN” (chapter), HarperCollins, Dec. 2016
“Tiffany Blues” (story), Inside Jersey Magazine, July 2014
“House of Dreams” (story), Portland Monthly (ME), Summer 2014