I believe that the diversity of ideas in this country can be the source of our strength if we let it—and don’t kill each other first. I believe it’s always worthwhile to try to see things from a different perspective—even if only to strengthen our own conviction. And when we do, I believe we should take care not to dehumanize our opposition. Our neighbor’s “repugnant” ideas might hold the missing link to the problems we care about most. 

My book Hate Hunters depicts a US that has peacefully split into the Patriot Federation and the Virtuous Federation. In the Virtuous Federation, where the left’s ideas run unchallenged, a group of flawed idealists tries to live up to an exacting moral code. But as the nation grows more and more zealous in its reckoning with its past and present sins, they all struggle to keep up, and they all end up on the wrong side of the ideals they cherish.  

In my fiction, I try to combine my love of portraying imperfect characters who make sense to themselves, my enjoyment of escalating absurdities, and my desire to explore what makes people and cultures tick. 

My goal is to make people think, laugh, and feel a little bit less like categories on a government form.

I began adult life as that most hopeful of things, an English major. My first jobs after college were teaching English as a second language to adults. As a culture and language junkie, I was in my glory. I joked with Japanese, coffee'd with Koreans, and ate with Armenians. I imagined with Italians, chatted with Chinese, and rambled on with Russians. 

After a few years, I decided I wanted to teach literature to high school students, so I got my master's in education from Columbia. Their education program wasn't my first exposure to woke thought, but it was among the most egregious. The philosophy was very much, "Let's teach Shakespeare in rap to black kids," and “Let’s not shove the white man’s knowledge into the beautiful, fully formed, magical, unsuspecting brains of black and brown children.” 

And indeed, during my student teaching days, I observed that no knowledge whatsoever was being transmitted into the brains of black and brown children.

After a harrowing first year of teaching in New York City public schools, I decided to pursue writing. I got a job working for a group of trade publications covering the home building and home improvement industries. I learned the industries, learned how to write, learned how to interview, and learned how to edit. When I left a few years later, a fellow writer in the field paid me one of the greatest compliments I've ever received. She told me she would miss reading my articles because “I was the only person who could make hardware exciting.” To this day, it's my biggest writing flex.

I took my newly acquired writing skills and returned to helping people, taking a job as an analyst at the Office of Policy and Planning of the New York City Department of Health. I have since held several patient-facing public health positions, the most notable of which was on Rikers Island. 

In addition to my book Hate Hunters, I've been published in Journal of Urban Health, and Intima: a Journal of Narrative Medicine.

I had a delightfully unconventional childhood in the restaurant business, where we adhered to regular nightlife hours and my little friends knew never to call the house before noon. I shattered glass ceilings at the age of thirteen when I became the first “busperson” at our family's restaurant, and it was only a few years later that I learned to pull up a barstool and listen to the stories of people's lives.

It's always been about the characters for me.