On reading and music, childhood and parenting, and being out of the loop.

My story, “How to Become a Publicist,” is featured this week in Storyville. A little bit about it can be read at the link. To read the story (and many others by amazing writers), download the wonderful Storyville App.

Amazon UK asked me to write a blog post to accompany the Kindle Single published this week. This month is the 69th anniversary of the disaster at Bethnal Green, so I wrote about how I found the story of THE REPORT and how the book seems to be helping those who want to build a permanent memorial at the site.

My UK publisher, the wonderful Portobello Books, is publishing a new short story of mine as a UK-exclusive Kindle single. It’s called “American Lawn” and will be included in the new collection being published in the US by Graywolf next year.

I wrote a guest post for the wonderful literary blog, Beyond the Margins, on the question of writing while parenting.

Very happy to announce a new story of mine, “The Essentials of Acceleration,” was named a finalist in the 2012 competition. It will be published in the Spring prize issue of The Missouri Review and is part of the new collection I’m working on for Graywolf, which will be published in 2013.

The Halloween special edition of The Morning News is an annual tradition wherein the writers complete a classic scary story. So much fun.

…is my made-up word to describe the heartless pruning of trees around power lines. I wrote an essay about it for The Morning News, wonderfully illustrated by Jacqui Lee. Don’t miss her moody trees.

I wrote the latest Non-Expert advice column over at The Morning News. Based on years of research, the piece should help writers of the world (and others) get more work done on their vacations.

I wrote an essay for The Morning News, “Caught Telling Fiction,” about meeting a survivor of the accident my first novel is based on.

A little love letter to the great R.J. Julia bookstore in Madison, CT, for the Tin House blog’s “Book Clubbing” feature.

I’m honored to be a judge again this year in the 7th annual Tournament of Books. For those who don’t know, it’s a NCAA-style book contest run by The Morning News. I was a first-round judge and had to decide between James Hynes’s NEXT and Lionel Shriver’s SO MUCH FOR THAT. Read my decision here.

A recent essay for The Millions about the literary merit of government reports.

I have a new piece up on the McSweeney’s site. Tips for finding more time.

I love everything about 5c: the premise of serializing a short story every week in five parts, the enthusiasm of editor Dave Daley, and the fact that Five Chapters is about to become a book publisher, too.

I’ve been writing a series of essays for The Morning News about my battles to have an urban balcony garden. The latest installment.

I wrote an essay for the great Powell’s Books about the long road taken toward writing a first novel.

An excerpt from THE REPORT appears this week in The Morning News. August 31 is the book’s official pub date. Less than a week away!

Where to write? It is a difficult question. I wrote an essay about it for The Millions.

An exclusive extract from THE REPORT appears in Granta.

Slightly longer than a tweet, faster than a sonnet…It’s an iStory! I wrote one (a 150-word short story) for Narrative.

A personal essay in Salon about my mother’s smoking.

An archive of all of my pieces in The Morning News is here.

I’ve had a couple of humor pieces on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: My Life on Ice and Conversations with Hockney.

“The Inquiry,” a short story, appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.  The archive of all of my work in VQR can be found here.

I published a short story in Swink magazine in 2009. You can read “Lucky Boy” here.

My short story, “How We Move,” was published in FiveChapters.com and can be read here.

A personal essay in Babble.com about the unanticipated results of sharing parental duties is here.

“In Medias Res” appeared in Swivel‘s Issue #3. You can order a back copy here.

A humor piece about poetry and Virginia politics is here in Yankee Pot Roast.

A short short story that appeared in Opium magazine is available here.