Nonfiction
Los Angeles Review, “The Fourth Definition of Love” – July 2024
“The sun’s rays slip through the gaps in the gate, and your children ask for a snack to hold off hunger until you finally decide to leave the pool behind. Fruit snacks, ritz crackers, goldfish. A boy at a table next to you is crying—he does not like his snack, and his brother wants yours—and so you offer to trade. Thank you, says the boy’s parents as he munches goldfish from the bag and his brother pulls saltines from the sleeve.
You get to talking, as parents tend to do when in close proximity for this many hours, and you say that they look familiar. He has a hipster haircut and cool glasses, which you read as falling on your side of the Lynchburg divide. She has the hands-off parenting style of most of your close friends.
“From church, maybe?” they ask, and you say no, that can’t be it.
They exchange a look, and you know that you have already taken a wrong turn.”
Read more here.
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Gargoyle Online #4 – “Fancy” – February 2023
“You are trying to rewire your brain.
You want to be one of those people who requires little—who sits on their porch on the weekends and watches the bees pollinate the goldenrod. You want to save money, and eat cheaply, and use your time to observe the way the wolf spiders move through the thick grass.
When people ask how you’re liking it here, in this small Alabama town, especially coming from such a big city before, you want to say that at first you miss so many things, but now you’ve forgotten what they were.
For now, you are trying to lie.”
Read more here.
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Gargoyle Online #3 – “Calf Poetica” – October 2022
“High on the list of unlikely possibilities that have now become truths: your closest friend is a cattle roper. She is many other things too, like artist and reader and photographer and mother, but that arena in her backyard on top of the steep hill you climb in your sandals because you didn’t know how to properly dress while your children call to you from the Gator is a powerful definer. There she is on her horse, swinging her breakaway rope. There she is in the box, entering her zone as the calf in the chute beside her strains against the metal barrier. Such concentration. You have never seen it, not humanely possible, not with the baby rocking in his car seat on the rope swing and her daughter and yours giggling from the bench and you spectating or probably just staring, not possible, not when you can barely make a crustless quiche with your two children pulling at your legs.
And yet she holds the gaze of her husband at the release lever with such intensity that the world goes quiet.
You are alone with them.”
Read more here.
Southern Humanities Review – “Acclimated” – September 2022 (vol. 55.2)
“When your parents look up your new address on Google maps, they call back to ask, “Do you know there’s a train behind your house?” They ask as though there is anything to be done—as if you have not already signed the lease for the only available house in the small town in Alabama where you will soon work as the Visiting Assistant Professor of English because you have been hired at the last minute, thank god, during a bad market year and a global pandemic. No, you say, you haven’t bothered to look at the map, or check the median income, or click through photos of the closed movie theater or the empty buildings you will later walk by on Washington Street, because what difference will it make? You are moving. You have purpose.” Read more by buying the issue here.
XOJane – “I Didn’t Let Skin Cancer Scars Stop Me From Wearing a Strapless Wedding Gown” – March 2016
“The Expanded Universe: Crossing Genres, or Dear Robot as Literary Science Fiction” by Kelly Ann Jacobson, Fantasy Literature (January 2016)
Maxim – “How to Keep Track of Your Dates” – October 10, 2014
Through the Hourglass: A Collection of Literary Essays – original essay “The Challenge of Eggplant” and the reprinted essay “Notes from the Basement: My Almost-But-Not-Quite-In-Law-Experience” (Originally published by 20 Something Magazine) – October 21, 2014
Christmas with Bestselling Authors Cookbook – September 30, 2014 “Pizza alla Puttanesca“
XOJane – Online Magazine – July 7, 2014 “How to Wear Your Office Wardrobe After You Quit Your Job”
20Something Magazine – Online Magazine – October 28, 2013 “How to Write (or Fix…) Your Online Dating Profile”
20Something Magazine – Online Magazine – June 12, 2013 “Notes from the Basement: My Almost-But-Not-Quite-In-Law-Experience”
Outsideinmagazine – Editorial – Editorial about poetry. April 2013Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I have to disagree with Joseph Epstein’s pronouncement of the death of poetry…
20Something Magazine – Online Magazine – February 25, 2013 – Uncharted Territory: The Concert that Changed a Father-Daughter Relationship
………… Review of “Uncharted Territory”:
One of my faves: I think my favorite article was Kelly Jacobson‘s “Uncharted Territory” post about her trip to the concert with her father. It was one of the first I ever read on the site and really set the tone for the quality and style of what to expect from future stories. It’s well written, universally approachable, and probes the weird world of interacting with our parents as 20-somethings. Oliver Gray, Editor
life2pointoh.com – online magazine four part story – September 3, 2012 Part 1 “Dating A Man Many Years Older Than Me” Part 2 “Our Relationship Progressed Slowly” Part 3 “More Occurrences of Putting His Priorities Before Mine” Part 4 The Hardest Dating Recovery I Have Ever Been Through”