On Growing Up With ‘America’
Critical Quarterly, January 2025
“So what had I really learned from West Side Story during those formative years? In the end, I didn’t actually want to be in America. I wanted to be onstage, and I wanted to be the star.”
Read on here.
The Borders of Biography: Lucia Berlin and Me
The Cambridge Quarterly, March 2024
Dr Emily Hull and I co-edited this special issue on biography, which features an interview with Professor Dame Hermione Lee, plus several academic articles (including one by me).
You can read all of this here.
Lucia Berlin’s Roots in Spanish and Chilean Literatures
Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, October 2023
Because Lucia Berlin wasn’t really an Anglophone writer after all — at least, not exclusively.
You can read this academic article here.
Stationery in Motion: Letters from Hotels
The Paris Review, March 2023
“The Boulderado letter stood out to me because of the paper on which it was written. I got to Harvard in the third week of my research trip, and along the way I’d become obsessed with hotel stationery…”
Read on here.
The Short Autofictions of Eve Babitz, Lucia Berlin and Bette Howland
Watching America from Islamabad
The Oxford Review of Books, March 2021
“I’ll never fully understand how it felt to face Covid in Trump’s America, just as my parents and sister will never fully understand how it felt to move to Pakistan during a pandemic…”
Read on here.
Lucia Berlin Writes Home
Granta, October 2018
“If Lucia Berlin’s collections were houses, their hallways would change direction without warning, and their rooms would be bright and dark at the same time…”
Read on here.