I'm from Dayton, Ohio, originally, and wound up at Southeast after receiving my Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University. While working on my Ph.D., I wrote a number of short stories that have been published in venues including Zoetrope: All Story, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hobart, The Normal School, Indiana Review, Booth, the Beloit Fiction Journal, Web Conjunctions, the Collagist, and in the Gigantic Worlds, anthology, among other venues. I also completed two manuscripts (story collections, both) while working on my Ph.D., both of which were published in 2014: Liner Notes (Subito Press) and Pilot Season (Sunnyoutside Press). I'm also the author of a story collection called Black Magic Death Sphere: (Science) Fictions (Urban Farmhouse, 2018) and a novel called The Taxidermist's Catalog (Braddock Avenue Books, 2019). I recently finished a new novel, tentatively called We Are Ghost-lit, which I've just recently started submitting to publishers.

I am also the director of Southeast Missouri State University Press and the editor of Big Muddy. Before that, I was a founding and associate editor of The Collapsar (2013-2017), and served as music section editor of The Fiddleback for that journal's entire run (2010-2013).

I tend to write a great deal about popular culture in my fiction, as I'm very interested in the intersection of identity and culture, and the ways we make meaning from the texts we interact with. To that end, I'm an voracious reader and record collector, and I watch as many films as I have time fore.