Hot Sauce Marketing Is So Aggro, But the Community Behind It Is Surprisingly Sweet

(first published at Food & Wine)

“Until the second half of the 20th century, many white Americans were suspicious of lively-tasting food, believing it to be a mark of dangerous subversiveness.”

My Attempt to Cook the Dreaded Viral ‘Beef Hand’

(first published at MEL Magazine)

“I think my attempt honored the vision of working really hard for a really long time to produce a dish that tastes okay and looks like a violation of the Geneva Convention.”

Cheating Is Wrong. I’m Still Glad I Did It

(first published at Glamour)

“At some point, my marriage stopped being a relationship. I stopped caring about salvaging or respecting the marriage; I only hoped that mine would be one of the bodies recovered from it once it collapsed.”

After My Dad Died, I Started Sending Him Emails. Months Later, Someone Wrote Back

(first published at Glamour)

“I shot the signals of my mourning into space for months, fully expecting them to die unreceived. And when I least expected it, someone sent signals back that said, ‘You are not the last living witness to the relationship you had with your father.’”

Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri

(first published at Catapult)

“The day I left my husband I devoted myself, with the single-minded purpose of a Talmud scholar, to the show that made Guy Fieri famous: Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.”

It’s Time to Let Meat Loaf Into Your Embarrassing Little Heart

(first published at Electric Literature)

“Meat Loaf has no time for you if you can’t hang, or if you need to pretend you’re spending time in his universe as a joke. There’s work to be done. Throw open the doors to the castle instead, and walk through his towering hallways with him, and allow yourself to feel every feeling in its highest degree.”

Fiction

Rivka and the Jew Strangler

Drunk Monkeys, 2019

"Rivka turns murdered daughters and sisters into television by researching (in this case) the Jew Strangler’s victims and then finding their families on the private database that costs her boss Shelly $24.99/month. She then cold-calls these family members from her office phone, which smells like old popcorn, and tells them that they seem like the sort of people who would like to make a real difference. Some family members grant her interviews for her miniseries. Most don’t…”