Funding Housing First

Since the advent of health care reform in 2010, Illinois Medicaid enrollment has grown to over 3 million people. The bill for that care came to $14 billion in 2014 alone. But almost half of that was spent on care for just 100,000 people—many of them emergency room frequent fliers who are poor and suffer from high … Continued

The Ground Rules: A Manual to Reconnect Soil and Soul

Very happy to announce the publication of Nance Klehm‘s The Ground Rules, a 70-page newsprint broadside inspired by her ongoing community composting project (of the same name) in Chicago. I’ve been helping Nance and intern Jacob Blecher structure and edit the book off and on for the last six months. It’s a holistic, hands-on guide to composting … Continued

Poseidon’s Children

[A revised version of July’s Letter in the Mail, performed for the Marrow series at Chicago’s Whistler on August 16. A work in progress.] Have you noticed there aren’t that many good stories about Poseidon? Here he is one of the most powerful gods in all of Greek mythology – Brother of Zeus! Lord of the sea! – and … Continued

Here, there

I looked at a calendar the other day and realized that since New Year’s I’ve barely been home in Chicago for more than four solid weeks at a time. Some of this travel was for fun, some for work, some for family — and while it may sound wildly jet-set, I have to say all this bouncing around has left me … Continued

Words Fail

I wrote about running away with the circus, and about the end of empires and the functions of nonsense, for the Rumpus this past week. I’ve been trying to write about circus for a while, and my first few tries read like very stiff and random book reports. This piece is different (I hope) — and pretty personal, … Continued

Halloween with Leslie Jamison

In which the author of the bestselling essay collection The Empathy Exams and I discuss Frozen, Taylor Swift, the limits of empathy, the problem of happiness, and why we listen to sad songs over and over, with critical attention given to the importance of acquiring your own “personal flurry.” The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Leslie Jamison

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights

I was honored to be asked to review Katha Pollitt’s latest for the Tribune’s Printer’s Row books supplement this fall.

Seed or weed?

[Originally written for and performed at Theater Oobleck‘s June 3, 2014, residency at the Hideout. Perhaps to be revised, or turned into a chapbook. We’ll see. Gently revised version republished September 22, 2014, by Belt Magazine, and later in the anthology Voices From the Rust Belt (Picador, 2017).] Down the street from my apartment there’s … Continued

The Big Lie?

About two months ago I agreed to review Tanya Selvaratnam’s The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism, and the Reality of the Biological Clock for the Tribune‘s book supplement. And then, once I got into the book, oh boy did I regret it. Not because it was bad – the book actually has much to recommend it. … Continued

On day jobs and daydreaming

This is a (lightly) revised version of a piece presented February 20, 2014, as part of Day Job, a night of stories about work (and, it turned out, play) organized by artist Dmitry Samarov, in conjunction with his exhibit at LivingRoom Realty. When people ask me what I do, I often joke that I have … Continued