Published Essays:

The Rumpus, August 2019 – “Training (with) My Cats.”
The Rumpus, May 2018 – “On Birds, Cats, and Children.”
The American Literary Review: Fall 2016 – “Pet Love.”
Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women, anthology edited by Marcia Aldrich (University of Georgia Press, 2017) – “Cat Stories.”
The American Scholar: Winter 2017 (pages 70-81) – “Homebodies.”
Essay Daily: Advent Calendar – “Repetitions.”
The Harvard Review: 2015 – “Pet Grief.”
Conjunctions: 2013- “Cat and Bird.”
Washingtonian, April 2013 – “Alone in the Garden.”
Fourth Genre: Spring 2012 – “Through the Bamboo Blinds.”
Ploughshares: Fall 2010 –“The Pleasure of Letting Go.”
The Southern Indiana Review: Fall 2009 – “Cardigans.”
The Missouri Review: Winter 2008 – “Shawls.”
The American Scholar: Summer 2008 – “Pullovers.”
Conjunctions: 2008 – “Between the Forest and the Well: Notes on Death.”
The Chattahoochee Review: Winter 2008 – “The Language of Flowers.”
Salon.com: Summer 2006 – “Destination: Japan.”
Columbia: 2006 – “Yakudoshi.”
The Harvard Review: 2005 – “Imagining a Memoir, Remembering a Novel.”

Anthologized Essays:

Writers and Their Notebooks (the University of South Carolina Press, 2010): “Forgetting to Remember: Why I keep a Journal.”
Dirt: the Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House (Seal Press, 2009): “The Beauty of Help.”
Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (Random House, 2007): “Nonfiction Time-Travel Exercise.”
The Best American Essays 2004 (Houghton Mifflin, 2004): “Yarn.”
The Book of Help (Cricket Books, 2002): “Doorways in the Air.”
Becoming American: personal essays by first-generation immigrant women (Hyperion, 1999): “Becoming Midwestern.”
Body (Bard, 1999): “What Anchors Us.”
33 Things Every Girl Should Know (Brown, 1998): “The Wider Your Tires, the Better.”
When I Was Your Age (Candlewick Press, 1996): “Learning to Swim.”

Published Short Stories:

Prairie Schooner: Winter 2001 – “The World of Weather.”
Prairie Schooner: Summer 1992 – “Home-Making.”
Cross-Currents: 1991 – “Grievances.”
The Kenyon Review: Fall 1991 – “Winter Sky.”
Footwork: 1990 – “Floating Circles.”
The Maryland Review: Fall 1988/Spring 1989 – “Yuki.”
The Mystic Muse: 1987 – “Points of Light.”
Sun Dog: Summer 1984 – “Pink Trumpets.”
AURA: Spring 1983 – “Wishbone.”
The Apalachee Quarterly: 1982– “The First Cicada.”
The Cream City Review: April 1979– “Green Glass.”

Anthologized Short Stories:

Open to Interpretation: Water’s Edge (Taylor & O’Neill, 2011): “The Other Woman.”
The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Contemporary Women Writers on Forerunners in Fiction (Lewis Clark Press, 2008): “Starlings.”
Face Relations: 11 Stories that See Beneath the Skin (Simon and Schuster, 2004): “Black and White.”
Forbidden Stitch: an Asian-American Women’s Anthology (Calyx Press, 1988): “Yellow Mittens and Early Violets.”