I'm pleased to announce that my essay, "Gunplay," a chapter in my book manuscript entitled If You Give a Man a Gun, has been selected for inclusion in Writing Texas, Volume 7--the annual anthology of essays, stories, and poems, published by the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers.

I'm so pleased that my essay, "In the Moments Before Gunfire," was selected by guest nonfiction editor, Toni Jensen, for publication in Issue 24 of Hunger Mountain. Jensen is the author of the forthcoming memoir-in-essays, Carry, about gun violence, land, and indigenous women's lives.

A followup interview with Sweet editors in their weekly reconnection series with contributors: I talk where I am now and where I'm headed. Read it here!

A big thank you to Kelsie Peterson for reviewing my flash essay, "Study in Self-Defense: Lubbock, Texas" (published in Brevity) for NewPages.com. Read it here!

On September 26, Betsy Blaney, producer at KTXT and former AP reporter, talked with me about my narrative work with death penalty lawyers on the radio show For the Pages. You can listen here!

My essay, "Remote Control," published in Issue 25 of under the gum tree, was listed as a "Notable" essay in the BEA 2018 anthology (series editor: Robert Atwan; guest editor: Hilton Als). ​​

My story, "Brace Yourself," originally published in Prime Number Magazine, received a 2018 Pushcart Prize. Thanks to Kevin Watson (editor at PNM), David Jauss (judge of the PNM fiction contest), and Ayse Papatya Bucak for nominating me. And thanks to Bill Henderson for selecting my story for inclusion.

My story, "Target," won the 2017 Able Muse Write Now Prize for fiction. The competition was judged by Jill Alexander Essbaum, and "Target" was published in Volume 24.

In the fall 2017, I received the Richard J. Margolis Award for Social Justice Writing for essays written for my in-progress collection entitled I Have Failed to Tell This Story Fifty Times. The prize included a $5,000 honoraium and a month-long residency at the Blue Mountain Center.

At NonfictioNow in Reykjavik, Iceland, I joined a panel of writers--Ayse Papatya Bucak, Sarah Viren, and Kathleen Blackburn--to discuss how writers craft narratives that work to generate genuine social reform instead of simply capitalizing on the suffering of vulnerable people and places.

My story, "Brace Yourself," received the 2017 Prime Number Magazine Fiction Prize, judged by David Jauss.

In 2016, I wrote a monthly column for The Ploughshares Blog, featuring textual reviews and video book trailers. The column focused largely on just-released books that are considered literary and which participate in the larger conversation about issues of social justice.

Hours after receiving a death verdict in the Eric Williams trial in Kaufman, Texas, I completed the last step of a 2014 interview with the ABA Journal, regarding the use of storytelling in capital defense. The photo shoot was surreal and inappropriate, given the timing. Most bizarre experience of my life.

In 2014-2016, I served as a Soros Justice Fellow, working to develop the use of narrative law as a method of defense in capital litigation to avoid death sentences. I worked with attorneys from the Regional Public Defenders Office for Capital Cases in Texas, as well as with other habeas and appellate attorneys across the country.

Larry and Maria Chmielewski host The Time and Place Prize in Gourin, France, providing the winner with a month-long residency in their beautiful "baker's" cottage. I'm pleased to announce that Splitting, my hybrid memoir about my relationship with three horse trainers in the Colorado mountains, was selected as the 2014 winner.