Critic, Public Humanist, Abolitionist, #actuallyautistic

I am a queer enby disabled Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. I study Southern Black art forms as resistance to incarceration (think Dirty South hip hop, street art, prison memoir). This means I am trained to read and write and think about Black queer poetics, Black and Brown literature writ large, feminist theory and American history. But I also write and think about teen TV, Vampires, Susan Sontag, Gilmore Girls and American Girl Dolls. My goal is to take everything (cheesy teen soaps, reality Television, the twee revival, queer home decor, Gilmore Girls) seriously. I am also the co-host of Gilmore Gays, which y’all should listen to.

I was a 2021 LARB Publishing Workshop Fellow and am a freelance journalist, critic, and content creator. My most sustained gigs have been writing listicles and sponsored content for Book Riot (see witches!), writing about academia and class for Unsweetened Magazine (may it RIP), and blogging for the US Society for Intellectual Historians where I tried to make straight white men care about queer prison writing and street art. I also write a substack, “What is Much,” which I would love for you to subscribe to.

In my free time, I volunteer for the phone lines at Critical Resistance. I am a committed prison abolitionist and am trained in the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program. This year I have been honored to teach in the Coleman Unit, a women’s minimum security prison in Lockhart Texas.

From 2017-2018 I served as the Outreach Coordinator for the FieldFamily Teen Author Series at the Free library of Philadelphia.

I have written for Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, The LA Review of Books, Jacohin, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Contingent Magazine, Public Seminar The Rumpus, Bustle, and many other places.

I have also been certified in Layperson Naloxone by the Purdue University College of Pharmacy.

On the following pages you will find my lifestyle blog, academic CV, links to my writing, my educational history and my reading lists!