My debut poetry collection, SMOLDER, won Ex Ophidia Press’s Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Contest, judged by Felicia Zamora, and will be published in early summer 2026!
The Problem of Happiness…
My memoir manuscript was one of ten finalists for the 2025 AWP Award Series Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction, judged by Cheryl Strayed.
Congrats to the winner and my fellow finalists!
The Problem of Happiness is about moving from one of the world’s most beloved and big-hearted cities, New Orleans, to one of the most populous and politically repressed—with a depressed boyfriend and an unresolved grief in tow. From the Big Easy to the Big Hard.
I did that. In the mid 1990s.
The book is about how love failed me, and how I failed it, and ultimately – how our definitions of happiness limit our experience of happiness itself.
Want to be awestruck?
Visit my list of recommended Books That Fill Me with Awe on Shepherd.com.
Founder Ben Fox hopes to make it easier to find books you’ll love online while helping authors grow their audience.
While I still love a bricks and mortar bookstore–and I urge you to support yours–I’m all in on any endeavor to support writers in this difficult publishing market and that aspires “to improve the world by increasing our understanding and empathy for complexity.” Plus, I found myself just really enjoying browsing the virtual aisles at Shepherd.
Remembering Hozan Alan Senauke
In late December of 2024, Lion’s Roar published this tribute I wrote to the late abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center, Hozan Alan Senauke. For twenty years, Hozan was a teacher, friend, and inspiration to me. He opened doors–literal ones and the passageways of the mind. I’ll be forever grateful.
A Planet on Fire
KQED’s Erin Baldassari wrote this probing piece in November 2023 about the intersection of climate change and wildfire. She came over to chat about Fire Monks, and a brief excerpt from our conversation appears at the end of her thoughtful piece.
(Erin Baldassari/KQED)
Fire Monks don’t stop
It’s been ten years since Fire Monks was published! With Tassajara facing another wildfire threat just last month and the drought-dry west bracing for another relentless fire season, this story of a Zen community’s wisdom, humility, and grit continues to inspire. NowThis interviewed me for this short video about the natural affinities between Zen and firefighting: https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/1443536685998814
Willow Fire & Next Generation Fire Monks
The Willow Fire burning in the Los Padres National Forest is a long day hike away from Tassajara. The good news is that a professionally trained resident crew of fire monks is in place, ready for whatever comes. A silver lining to the pandemic is that it offered time to step up fire training and preparations: no guests had to be evacuated, only residents not on the fire crew. The Dharma Rain sprinkler system from 2008 is fortified and on duty. Forest Service and Cal Fire engines have been in the valley assisting with training and prep. Please keep these monks and firefighters and all beings in the Los Padres in your well wishes.
KQED’s Lakshmi Sarah wrote up this report:
Follow updates here:
My late father’s ballot
Read my Washington Post piece about my family’s deliberations over what to do with my father’s Michigan mail-in ballot when it arrived one day after he died. And please vote!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/29/dad-died-michigan-ballot/
If you can’t penetrate the Washington Post paywall, you can read the article here.
