Short Fiction
Once Human: Stories
A manga artist who is afraid that she herself is slipping into a cartoon version of life, a lab technician who makes art with the cloning technology she uses at work, a sociologist hunting for the gene that makes some people want to take risks—these are some of the characters that populate the stories in Once Human.
Featured
“The Atlas of Man”
in McSweeney’s, No. 8, 2002
A single photo of a nude man is mute. But photograph 50,000 nude men, nude women also, and just as celestial bodies divulge their temperatures to astronomers, so the bodies of the jealous, the bed wetter, the murderer, the pickpocket, and alas, also the heart-sick, will speak themselves. Or so Dr. Johnson, our director, maintained. For my part, I couldn’t help but recall an anatomy lesson from my undergraduate days. Directing our attention to…”
“Self Portrait(s)”
in The Iowa Review. Vol. 33, No. 1 Spring 2003.
“The neck of a mouse is easier to snap than a pencil, Mary had said. Hundreds of necks later, it was the ease of the words that most bothered Jim. He laid the mouse stomach-down on the lab bench, whiskers twitching, the mouse curious about what its nose was against, though of course, oblivious to the big picture descending from above. Like all of us, Jim thought, wishing he hadn’t been so quick to tell Mary he’d help her make an embryo…”
“The Risk-Taking Gene as Expressed by Some Asian Subjects”
in The Denver Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2004.
“Their shirts had the uniform neatness of suburbia: chemically fortified green, polo. White father, mother, symmetrical child: a Family Unit (FU) with n members where FUn = π (the mother was pregnant). Contrasting their statistical tidiness to the thrown-together character of the Three Happiness #1 Chinese Restaurant we had each in turn stumbled upon, I couldn't help but wonder if the great fattening in…”
Other Stories
“The Fish’s Tale” in Paraphrase (Australia) Summer 2024 pp. 4-7.
"“A Puddle, a Field, a Rock, a Mound of Dirt” in Ninth Letter, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2019 pp. 200-209.
“Entanglement: Fish Not Stories” in Dalhousie Review (Canada), 97.1 Spring 2017 pp. 99-93.
“The Atlas of Man (If by Man We Also Mean Woman)” in Narrating Life: Experiments with Human and Animal Bodies in Literature, Science, and Art. Elisabeth Friis, Stefan Herbrechter, Cristina Iuli, eds. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2016. pp. 211-243.
“Mem” in Litscapes: Collected Writings 2015. Caitlin Alvarez and Kass Fleisher eds. Normal IL: Steerage Press, 2015. pp. 371-376.
“TOC: A New-Media Novel” featured in “DP-DB: Digital Poetry for Drunken Boat,” Drunken Boat. Issue 19, Winter 2014.
“from IN & OZ” in The Knife Sharpener Or On Interaction of Literature, Music, and the Art / Ostrzyciel noży czyli o wzajecmnyh związkach sztuk pięknych. Jerzy Kossek ed. and trans. Katowice, Poland: Wyższa Szkoła Zarządzania Ochroną Pracy w Katowicach, 2013.
“iSpace: from My America” in The Sonora Review. Vol. 62, Spring 2013. pp. 19-28.
“Our Moon Poem” in Puerta del Sol: A Journal of New Literature. Vol 47, No. 2, Fall 2012. pp. 192-204.
“WeKIA” in Quarterly West Issue 74, Spring 2012.
“The Historian” in Booth: A Journal. May 18, 2012.
“Mem” in Rampike (Canada) Vol. 20, No. 1, 2011. pp. 63-65.
“The Color of Flesh” in Boulder Pavement: Arts and Ideas (Canada) Issue 3, 2011, pp. 1-23.
“Endurance” in BOMB. Issue 113, Fall 2010, pp. 72-73.
“The Kingdom’s Good” in The Fairytale Review. The Aquamarine Issue, 2009, pp. 181-82.
“from The Book of Portraiture” in Forms at War. R.M. Berry ed. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009. pp. 269-286.
“Medieval Land” in Not Normal, Illinois. Michael Martone ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. pp. 233-245.
“Skin Deep” in The Black Warrior Review. Fall/Winter 2008, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 79-101.
“Medieval Land” in The Western Humanities Review. Spring/Summer 2008, Vol. 62 Issue 2, pp. 117-128.
“DarkAges.2” in Ninth Letter. Vol. 5, Spring-Summer 2008, pp. 111-123.
“Lo que un cuerpo sabe” in Acido (Mexico City). Edgar Hernádez trans. Mayo a Junio de 2008, p. 8.
“Medieval Times” in American Letters and Commentary. Vol. 19, 2008, pp. 117-135.
“Fairy Tale” in The Mad Hatters’ Review. May 2008, p. 19.
“The Color of Flesh and Other Words” in Mandorla: Nueva Escritura de las Américas/New Writing from the Americas. Vol. 9, 2006, pp. 89-102.
“The Risk-Taking Gene as Expressed by Some Asian Subjects” in The Year’s Best SF #10. NY: Harper Collins, 2005. pp. 422-452.
“Ink” in Review. Issue 67, Vol. 7, No. 4 March 2005, p. 36.
“The Color of Pain and Suffering” in Chelsea. No. 77, Spring 2005, pp. 67-87.
“The Untransmission,” in Fugue. No. 2, 2004, p. 163.
“The Risk-Taking Gene as Expressed by Some Asian Subjects” in The Denver Quarterly. Vol. 39, No. 1, 2004, pp. 153-177. (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize; Finalist for the Sturgeon Award).
“Self Portrait(s)” in The Iowa Review. Vol. 33, No. 1 Spring 2003, pp. 33-52.
“Tales of Constraint” in Laundry Pen: A Journal of Experimental Fiction. Vol. 1, No. 1 Summer 2003, pp. 44-49.
“The Atlas of Man” in McSweeney’s. No. 8, 2002, pp. 189-211.
“The Sad Case of Mr. C.” in 580 Split: A Journal of Arts and Literature. Issue 3, 2001, pp. 10-17.
“Ars Humanum” in Berkeley Fiction Review. No. 21, Summer 2001, pp 107-109.
“Bodies in Flatland” in Hard_Code, Eugene Thacker ed. Boulder: Alt-X Press, 2001. pp. 264-93.
“C-U See-Me” in The Iowa Review. Vol. 30, No. 3 Winter 2000-2001, pp. 3-28. (Awarded the Iowa Prize)
“Lullabies of Constraint” in Fiction International. No. 33, Winter 2000-2001, pp. 157-167.
“Glock” in Fiction International. No. 31, Winter 1998-1999, pp. 163-176. (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize).