Writing

Essays

Death is Only the Beginning

published by New South, Spring/Summer 2020
available in Print

Within four minutes after death, decomposition begins. The heart stops. The body cools, or warms, to match the environment...

And I Will Give You As Many Roast Bones As You Need

published by River Teeth, Fall 2019
available in Print

Our father drives a county bus and often works a double until midnight. On these nights, our mother ignores our bedtime...

published by Fourth Genre, Spring 2019
available in print

Dianne calls me the doggie uncle. Every June, when she and her husband meet family at the beach for a week away from routine and responsibility, I move into their guest room to dog-sit...

Chasing Something in the Night

published by Salt Hill, Summer 2017
available in print

Mara unwrapped the towel from her hair and lay with her back to me at the edge of our bed. I reached for her, but she rolled onto her stomach and tapped the cherry bed frame, calling her puggle, Miley...

Canal

published by Palooka, Spring 2016
available online & in print

Mrs. Stafford says our classroom used to be a swamp. Thirty or forty years ago there were only sawgrass marshes and mangroves up above the water on tangled fat roots looking like giant broccoli...

Hank Canine Ironman

published by Superstition Review, Summer 2015
available online

The stoplight went red. Was blowing it worth the risk of getting T-boned? No, but you still hesitated and calculated the delay between your light going red and the other going green...

How to Kill a Mouse

published by Redivider, Summer 2015 winner of Redivider's inaugural Flash Nonfiction Contest
available in print

First, call them pinkies, never mice, never baby mice. This allows for them to be thought of only as objects. Peek at the three pinkies, hairless and huddled, at the bottom of the brown paper bag...

Writing the Z-Azis: Reflection and the Nonfiction Workshop by Sean Ironman

Writing the Z-Axis: Reflection and the Nonfiction Workshop

published by The Writer's Chronicle, Summer 2014
available online & in print

In the past few years, fiction and poetry students in the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Central Florida have been switching to creative nonfiction. In the same time span, there have been no writers moving away from nonfiction...

Fatherhood

published by Redivider, Summer 2013
available in print

The next day, he joined his father in the backyard. His Boxer puppy chased lizards, while his father cut bananas to feed the tortoises. He sat on the brick wall bordering the turtle pond his father spent much of his time building over the past couple of years...

Glass and Road Tar

published in Thoreau's Rooster, Spring 2010
available in print

I sat silent in my sparkling blue Ford Ranger and watched the headlights of approaching cars grow larger and brighter through the cracked, wet windshield...