Tell Me Your Stories – My New Column at Pacific Standard

Pacific Standard is a publication with a mission to tell stories, “across print and digital platforms about society’s biggest problems, both established and emerging, and the people attempting to solve them.” I’ve been working them since I saw a tweet from Ted in 2015 calling for Halloween pieces. I wrote about my son and his dislike of Halloween, the social model of disability, and my need to at once respect his desires while exposing him to new things. I followed with essays (largely collected here) on school abuse, sexual violence, food culture, speculative fiction, crowdfunding, murder, and politics.

I’m especially excited about the different kinds of pieces I’ll get to produce for Pacific Standard, encapsulating many components of the idiosyncratic body of work I’ve produced over the past four years. Reported pieces, reactions to breaking news, interviews with people trying to make a difference in this world, analysis of new studies and findings, and cultural criticism of all sorts. Disability rights, higher education, the ways that history infuse contemporary subjects.

I am, of course, especially worried about the human impact of our new government. I’ll be watching carefully. I want to hear your stories, your ideas, your questions, to be intentional in the voices I highlight and to hold myself accountable for the essays I write.

This blog will continue in 2017, but more as a place for links and quick ideas that I may later expand into full pieces. I’ve never had a writing home, so this may take some getting used to, but I am grateful to Pacific Standard for this opportunity. I don’t plan to waste it.

And I’m grateful to you for reading.