The Me, Too movement inspired me to re-examine the “romantic” story of Heloise and Abelard, her teacher who got her pregnant. I was thrilled when my contrarian version of their story, “Historia Calamitatum Mearum,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Ferries are wonderful places to write, wonderfully inescapable, inescapably metaphorical, and metaphorically liminal. This story came to me on the crossing to Ocracoke Island

One summer evening, walking back from our shared dinner at the wondrous Hambidge Center—a long uphill slog—the question popped into my head, “What if this climb went on forever?” That what-if led me to my story “Limits.” Thanks to Jed Hartman’s peerless editing, this story received an honorable mention in Gardner Dozois’ Best of the Year anthology in 2008–I cried when I found out. The story kept going, and eventually grew into The Braided Path.

PodCastle later honored the story with a fine audio version.

Every season of life is its own coming-of-age story.

But if you’re just not willing to “come of age,” there are alternatives. (And some of them are pretty ugly.)

“So what IS speculative poetry,” you ask?

Occasionally—not often!—I step away from fiction, poetry, and dreams into what we laughingly call “the real world.”

Even though The Night Field is a fantasy novel, it is inspired by real-world ecological science—and the real-world suffering caused by pesticides and monoculture.

A quick dash at the theoretical framework I work from when I’m invited to teach creative writing.