Selected journalism,
essays and fiction
Journalism
I’m a queer travel writer, food writer, and inclusive personal finance writer. I get to write about my favorite things – food and travel – and talk about money and finance for LGBTQ people, artists and writers, and others who are often disempowered by traditional personal finance writing and financial systems.
As a freelance LGBTQ writer, I am selectively taking on new clients in my niche. If you have a project in mind that involves food, LGBTQ travel, DEI, or inclusive personal finance, contact me!
Jump to my freelance journalism clips by niche:
Food writing: Reported features and service content for consumer and trade food magazines including The National Culinary Review, Restaurant Startup & Growth, Eater, Sift, and SimplyRecipes.
Queer travel writing: LGBTQ travel writing for consumer magazines, trade magazines, and digital publications including AFAR, Longreads, Condé Nast Traveler, and TripSavvy.
LGBTQ writing: Personal essays and reported stories on LGBTQ life, with a focus on uplifting and empowering LGBTQ communities.
Personal finance writing: Inclusive personal finance writing for Business Insider, NextAdvisor, The Penny Hoarder, Daylight, Altruist, Sound Dollar, and others.
Essays
Selected writing
Kitchen Table Quarterly: Silk Island. While I usually enjoyed the defamiliarization of travel, which got me out of my head, in Cambodia I had the self-consciousness of a teenage girl.
AFAR: Why I’m Grateful for Global Entry, as a Gender Non-Binary Traveler. “What’s that?” a TSA officer barked, touching my shirt near the shoulder.
“Queer Potlucks Offer Food for Capitalist Critique and Collective Action,” Nourishing Resistance: Stories of Food, Protest, and Mutual Aid (PM Press): It’s no surprise that previous generations of LGBTQ people found one another through food: in a world where queer sexuality was alternately closeted and coded, access granted through signals such as hanky flags or queer slang, LGBTQ people were hungry for connection. (2023)
“Twenty-Five Years Later, This AT Lesbian Double Murder Still Haunts Me,” The Best New True Crime Stories: Unsolved Crimes & Mysteries (Mango Publishing, available now): My dream of one day thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail disintegrated in high school, when a friend showed me a newspaper clipping: a lesbian couple had been murdered while camping in the backcountry at Shenandoah National Park. (2022)
Barzakh: Ghost Houses. My great-grandfather owned a beach house in Rhode Island, and it fell into the sea one winter, the victim of shoreline erosion or maybe a hurricane. (2022)
TripSavvy: To Complete a Bucket List, I Needed to Go Where Queer Travelers Weren’t Welcome. North Dakota, Minnesota, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Hawaii: These were the states I was yet to visit after three cross-country road trips and a month living in an Alaskan ghost town. (2022)
Hobart: A Foil Grip: Lessons in Fencing & Other Indoor Sports. I was sixteen when I first wrapped my fingers around a foil grip in an attempt to get a woman’s attention. (2022)
Catapult: How Stand-Up Comedy Helped Me Craft a Public Writer Persona. When I dreamed of being a published author, I’d imagine giving NPR interviews or public readings. (2022)
Undomesticated: On a Closeted Honeymoon, the Chance to be Seen. A bell clanged when we entered the shop, which was empty except for the trio of shopkeepers watching us expectantly. (2021)
Eater: It Took Leaving the Restaurant Industry for Me to Understand How Wrong I Was to Stay Silent About Its Abuses. For decades now, the dining public has understood restaurant kitchens to be tough places to work. (2021)
Fodor’s: I Survived Getting Lost in the Florida Swamps. It should have been a red flag when we set up a tent camp behind a highway rest stop halfway between New York and Florida, in defiance of the “no camping” sign. (2020)
Condé Nast Traveler. For Gender Nonconforming Travelers, Airports Are Particularly Stressful to Navigate. Whenever I fly, TSA officers think I’m hiding something. (2020)
AFAR. Why I Did a Vacation Redo. The worst vacation of my life started with Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house, near West Palm Beach. (2020)
Vittles. Cooking for Labor, Cooking for Love. People who love cooking are sometimes warned not to pursue it as a career. (2020)
Longreads. Where are the Gay Ladies of Cambodia? Since the new road is open, the bus ride to Siem Reap will only take eight hours. (2019)
Verity La. Forty Days and Forty Nights. Forty days and forty nights: a biblical honeymoon for an interfaith queer couple. (2019)
Taproot. Reviving Seeds, Rebuilding Connections. At the end of a documentary screening about a local seed-saving initiative, we audience members are offered sunflower seeds to take home. (2019)
Roads & Kingdoms: The Taco Truck is Where the Action is. All I know is, I’m not going back to Ridgecrest, a naval-base town where what passes for coffee is hot water that tastes like charred, wet paper. (2018)
The Manifest Station: We Are All North Carolina Now. This summer, I prepared to visit North Carolina by growing out my hair for four months. (2017)
Cognoscenti: In Massachusetts, Repeating History, Hoping For Redemption. I still remember how I felt when my neighbor warned me about the homophobic graffiti someone had scrawled in the hallway of my apartment. (2016)
Fiction
Selected writing
Flash Frog: Hunger. For months, Catherine has craved the sour salt tang of pickled cabbage. (2024)
Existére Journal of Arts & Literature: Wing Night. Wednesday is wing night, and between Dmitri’s triple garlic parmesan wings and the college basketball playoffs, work is slammed. (2023)
Voyage YA by Uncharted: People Like Us. Erica’s in our spot, her gold hair shining in the sun. (2023)
Oyster River Pages: Dish Fairy. Dad’s in the kitchen when I get home from school, instead of hiding out in his study. (2021)
Voyage YA by Uncharted: Fault Lines. I can tell it’s going to be one of those nights when I walk in the back door of Salerno & Sons to find Dmitri hunched over a stack of pizza boxes, flipping through tickets while the new cook slaps together pies. (2021)
(mac)ro(mic): The Way a Person Does One Thing is the Way They Do Everything: Eggs. When you crack eggs, is the yolk whole or runny, is it yellow like buttercups, yellow like an Easter dress, or is it gold instead? (2021)
The Sunlight Press: Orange Blossom Flower Water. Saturday mornings I bake rustic fruit tarts, blood-red with cherries and skin-on nectarines from an organic fruit farm in the East Bay (2020)
New World Writing: Wait Before Sending. Hey dude, I know your birthday is coming up and I was thinking of you. (2020)
Mortar Magazine: One Truth, Many Lies. These are some things you should know: I did not steal soymilk from dry storage, if by dry storage you mean the utility closet stuffed with exploding sacks of paper bags, white foldout bakers’ hats and retired cash registers, a wadded-up rubber mat turning floor space into mountains. (2017)
Sediments Literary-Arts Journal: Heart of Gold. You walk the narrow footpaths at night, your heels kicking up dust clouds. (2017)
Queen Mob’s Teahouse: Late Summer, Yellow Jade. The first time Sal hands me the slim joint, I take it and breathe in and then I cough. (2017)