A couple years ago when we were all feeling restless from quarantine, I started thinking about a trip to Mexico. My mom was going through cancer treatment, so I knew that I didn’t want to go anywhere for more than…
Stereotypes, First Impressions, and a Complicated Story About the Most Dangerous Place I’ve Ever Been
The first time I ever left the United States was on a mission trip to the Mexican border when I was in 9th grade. When I think about how I started traveling, I often accidentally overlook this trip. I think…
The Coziest Weekend at Front Beach Cottages in Ocean Springs, Mississippi
My favorite professor in college taught a Travel Writing class. I was obsessed with traveling, but I worried that I hadn’t traveled anywhere worth writing about. One of my classmates had spent the past several years circumnavigating the world in…
The 15 Best Books I Read in 2023
2023 was a strange year for reading. I spent more time writing than reading, but then I’d feel sudden reading withdrawals and scramble to binge short audio books. (Yes, audio books count!) I read 80 books in 2023, but I…
2023 Recap, A Year of Recalibrating
2023 was a year of recalibrating. I came home from Europe in mid-December of 2022 with no job, no savings left, and no plans. What I had instead was 50,000 messy words of a fiction manuscript and months’ worth of…
An Unwelcome Home and the Most Dangerous Country of My Trip
We caught the earliest train out of Strasbourg before 5:00am. It took us straight to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris through a high-speed tunnel that I didn’t know existed. I cried in the airport, both because I was terrified…
