Video March 2026
Why Readers Can't Put Down The Dream Keepers
A conversation about The Dream Keepers — what the book is about, why readers keep turning the pages, and the ideas that drove it.
Published in Video
The Journal
Notes from the writing life.
Occasional dispatches on reading, writing, place, and the long business of finishing a novel. Posted when there is something worth saying.
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Journal March 2026
On the Fourth Novel: Where It Stands
Eighteen months in, two false starts, one chapter that survived both of them. A brief account of where the new book currently lives and what it is refusing to become.
Published in Journal
Reading February 2026
What I Read in January
Penelope Fitzgerald, a Norwegian novel about a lighthouse, and a collection of essays about grief that I keep putting down and picking back up.
Published in Reading Notes
Journal January 2026
The Desk Has Moved Again
A small essay about the superstition of writing spaces and why I keep rearranging mine instead of finishing the chapter.
Published in Journal
Reading December 2025
Books of the Year, Such as They Were
Ten books that stayed with me through 2025. Not a ranked list. More like an inventory of what the year left behind.
Published in Reading Notes
Journal November 2025
On Giving a Reading When You Have Nothing Finished
Asked to read at a festival with no new pages to show for it. What I read instead, and what the audience made of the situation.
Published in Journal
On Writing October 2025
Why I Still Write by Hand in the First Draft
Not a manifesto. Just an explanation of a habit I have tried to break several times and keep returning to, for reasons I am only now beginning to understand.
Published in On Writing
Journal September 2025
London in September: A Walk I Take Every Year
The same route, different weather, different thoughts. Notes from this year's version, which was wetter than most.
Published in Journal
On Writing August 2025
The Problem of the Second Chapter
Every novel I have written has required a different second chapter by the time it was finished. Some notes on why chapter two is where books decide what they are.
Published in On Writing
“A journal is not a diary. A diary records what happened. A journal tries to find out what it means.”
— ZENA