Publications
Essays, Articles, Reviews, Criticism, and Assorted Nonfiction
“Arthur Schnitzler, Jordan Castro, and
The Literature of Masculinity”
from Athenaeum Review (print edition Issue 13, Summer 2026)
“Weirdness All the Way Down: Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut”
from Bright Lights Film Journal – July 9, 2026
“Roy Lichtenstein in Dallas. The Literature of Masculinity. A Conversation with Sean Hooks”
podcast by Athenaeum Review – May 27, 2026
“With the Future Looming Up in Such Utter Chaos Before Us: On The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride”
from Hobart – October 30, 2025
“What Are You Doing After the Orgy? A conversation with Ilya Gridneff and Helen DeWitt”
from The Baffler – October 21, 2025
“All Sporting Endeavor Aspires to the Condition of a Fight: Harry Crews and Body”
from Athenaeum Review (print edition issue 11, Spring 2025)
“A Synthesizer of Complexities Within the American Medical-Industrial Complex: on The Paregoric Realism of Anna DeForest”
from Vol 1 Brooklyn – April 2, 2025
“‘Who Made These Rules?’: Claire Messud on What’s Distracting from Good Writing”
from Public Books – February 18, 2025
“Leonard Gardner’s Fat City: Exposing Masculinities Toxic, Mythic, and Otherwise”
from Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature Volume 41, Issue 1 – Fall 2023/Winter 2024
“Cosmopolis: A DeLillo–Cronenberg Mutation”
from Bright Lights Film Journal – March 22, 2024
“Recital of the Dark Verses – Luis Felipe Fabre”
from Full Stop – January 26, 2024
“untitled essay” from Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears
edited by Brandon Stosuy, illustrated by Rose Lazar – November 14, 2023
“Tenderness and Ferocity Go Hand in Hand: A Conversation with Jane Wong”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – May 16, 2023
“Not Furnishing Factual Answers: Robert Trammell’s Jack Ruby & The Origins of The Avant-Garde in Dallas and Other Stories”
from Athenaeum Review (print edition Issue 7, Summer 2022) – November 9, 2022
“Newton’s Appletini: The Rich Literary Cocktail that is Ancestor Trouble”
from Washington Independent Review of Books – October 21, 2022
“Meaning at All: Emily Hall | The Longcut”
from Cleveland Review of Books – September 8, 2022
“The Important Thing Is to Keep Moving: A Conversation with Tom Perrotta”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – August 11, 2022
“Elvia Wilk: On not being afraid to make difficult art”
from The Creative Independent – July 8, 2022
“Opposing Groupthink without a Template: Erika Krouse Interviewed by Sean Hooks”
from BOMB Magazine – March 18, 2022
“One Berry at a Time, You Fill the Jug: A Conversation with Anthony Doerr”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – January 8, 2022
“And There Will Be Conflagration: Grandeur and Empathy in A.S. Byatt’s Possession and the Films of Terrence Malick”
from Socrates on the Beach – December 13, 2021
“Aiming for the Unmediated Response: A Conversation with Brandon Taylor”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – September 10, 2021
“Acute Cases of Loneliness and Frustration: Matthew Specktor Interviewed by Sean Hooks”
from BOMB Magazine – August 24, 2021
“Quirk to Spare: The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven”
from Quarterly West – July 1, 2021
“Interview with Rosecrans Baldwin”
from Full Stop – June 15, 2021
“An Interview with John Brandon”
from Southeast Review – June 10, 2021
“A Flight of Three Fine Hungarian Sours: László Krasznahorkai’s The Last Wolf and Herman”
from Vol 1 Brooklyn – May 12, 2021
“Deacon King Kong by James McBride vs. Memorial by Bryan Washington (The 2021 Tournament of Books judgment)”
from The Morning News – March 19, 2021
“Fake Accounts and the Reality of Fiction: A Conversation With Lauren Oyler”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – March 2, 2021
“Hunting Down Repositories: A Conversation with George Saunders”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – February 5, 2021
“Books Like Pictures in a Gallery: A Conversation with Jonathan Lethem”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – January 21, 2021
“The Inceptions Of Deception:
Reconsidering Philip Roth’s Most Underrated Book”
from Athenaeum Review – December 31, 2020
“Book Review: Directory by Christopher Linforth”
from Necessary Fiction – October 05, 2020
“Thick with Noir: Tom Lutz’s Born Slippy”
from CRAFT – August 11, 2020
“Textualizing the Quiddities – Review of High Weirdness by Erik Davis”
from 3:AM Magazine – April 23, 2020
“Epistolary Exposure, Embodied Critique, and American Identity: On Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Hitter’”
from Athenaeum Review – October 15, 2019
“Dine and Dash: The diner as an avatar of working-class identity in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree”
from The Smart Set – August 12, 2019
“The Dizziness of Freedom, A Worldhood of Words: Pond, A Phenomenological Non-Novel by Claire-Louise Bennett”
from Entropy – July 15, 2019
“Pointless and Essential: On Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – March 17, 2019
“Sparing No Pains: The abiding consciousness of Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others”
from The Smart Set – October 4, 2018
“Michael Clayton: Hollywood’s Last Movie for Adults”
from Bright Lights Film Journal – June 7, 2018
“The Novels of David Mitchell and Tom McCarthy: Depictions of Beings in Time—Origami or Cicatrix?”
from The International Journal of the Arts in Society Volume 13, Issue 1 – May 2018
“The Operating Theatre: Contemporary Fiction & Las Vegas”
from 3:AM Magazine – April 19, 2018
“A Hole is Not a Burrow: The Epiphanic Horror of Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes and its Line of Literary Descent”
from The Scofield – Winter 2018
“Why We Write”
from 1888 Center – July 12, 2017 [not currently available]
“Protean Miniatures: The Adaptability and Sustainability of Flash Fiction”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – June 12, 2017
“Terrence and Joni Redeem L.A.”
from The Smart Set – May 24, 2017
“The Propagation of Empathy, the Absence of Bathos: On Alexander Payne’s Sideways”
from Bright Lights Film Journal – October 19, 2016
“Authenticity in the Contemporary Creative Writing Landscape”
from The International Journal of Literary Humanities Volume 14, Issue 3 – April 22, 2016
“Revisiting Jurassic Park”
from Heavy Feather Review – August 12, 2015
“Palter & Prescience – On David Mitchell and Ghostwritten”
from Substance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism Issue 136, Volume 44, No. 1 – 2015
“The Radiant Minute, The Gisted Particular: The Combinatory Aesthetics of William Carlos Williams”
from Intellectual Refuge – Fall/Winter 2014 [not currently available]
“The Soul of London is The Heart of the American Midwest: a review of John Lanchester’s Capital”
from The Journal Issue 38.2 – Spring 2014
“The Art of Digression: J.D. Salinger’s ‘Seymour: An Introduction’”
from Los Angeles Review of Books – September 15, 2013
“Here at Last! An Ode to Dunkin’ Donuts”
from Las Vegas Weekly – November 21, 2007
“Pop Culture: Idol Democracy”
from Las Vegas Weekly – May 18, 2006
“The Invisible Nobelist”
from Las Vegas Weekly – March 3, 2005
Stories and Flash Fiction
“Put Your Kids to Work”
from Socrates on the Beach – April 20, 2026
“This World That Has Taken So Long To Become Itself”
from The Molotov Cocktail Volume 10, Issue 2 – May 3, 2019
“The Sound of a Shot (off-stage on right)”
from Wisconsin Review Volume 52, Issue 1 – Fall 2018 [print only]
“The Caterwaul”
from Rougarou: Journal of Arts and Literature – Winter 2018
“The Sad Mafioso”
from Rougarou: Journal of Arts and Literature – Winter 2018
“Tea Lesson”
from Ginosko Literary Journal Issue 18 – Fall 2016
“A Job Down in Danville”
from Akashic Books’ Mondays are Murder: Noir Series – June 20, 2016
“Deponent”
from The Manhattanville Review – May 24, 2016 [not currently available]
“Daily”
from Pif Magazine – January 1, 2016
“I Found It Hard, It’s Hard To Find”
from Superstition Review Issue 15 – Spring 2015
“In The Café Adjacent to the Art Gallery”
from FORTH Magazine – March 16, 2015 [not currently available]