Recent
Cabinet of curiosities
The Baffler (2026)
A review of Richard Cooke’s The Last Best Place on the Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia.
The return to orality
The Drift (2026)
A short essay arguing against the popular idea that we have “returned” to “pre-literate” orality.
Hiring squad
The Baffler (2025)
A report from the HR Technology Conference about the tools companies use to surveil, sort, and profit from people who need jobs.
FAVORITE
Poets in the machine
Longreads (2023)
An essay on why the literary world still holds online writing at arm’s length.
Beware the digital whiteboard
Wired (2023)
A short argument about a workplace scourge.
The art of work
The Baffler (2023)
An essay on the difficulty of balancing art-making and job-having.
Seen by
Real Life (2021)
An essay about what happens when you can see who sees you online.
Head in the cloud
The Baffler (2021)
A review-essay on Maël Renouard’s internet memoir, Fragments of an Infinite Memory.
Easy answers
Real Life (2020)
An essay about the relationship between knowledge and looking things up on the internet.
Look who’s talking
Real Life (2020)
An essay on the language of interfaces and what “clarity” can conceal.
Rapture of the shallows
Times Literary Supplement (2020)
A review-essay on Eve Babitz, whose work I also discussed on an episode of the TLS podcast.
Personal stories of the exodus from Christianity
Washington Post (2020)
A review of Empty the Pews, a collection of essays by people who abandoned right-wing Christianity.
Nuance, humanity, blackness
Times Literary Supplement (2019)
A review of Tressie McMillan Cottom’s essay collection, Thick.
How should an advice column be?
The Point (2016)
An essay on recent attempts to make literature out of advice.
Ban en banlieue
Full Stop (2015)
A review-essay on Bhanu Kapil’s hybrid book Ban en Banlieue and the question of what a “hybrid book” is.
Archived
At the Baffler
At the Times Literary Supplement
At Real Life
At Full Stop
