I’m a writer from Denver. I received my MFA from Syracuse University, but in a cool way and not like all those other MFA grads. In my MFA, we ate concrete and one guy lost a finger using the jigsaw. I wonder what happened to Burt, that old son of a gun. I keep his pinky on a keychain to remind myself that education is a dangerous world. I currently work as a public librarian.

Occasionally I write essays, but I’ve never been able to force the issue on that front. I’m unoriginal as a reader, and all the writers you’ve heard of and which everyone thinks are good, I also think are good, but especially: Muriel Spark, Penelope Fitzgerald, Leo Tolstoy, Denis Johnson, Ted Chiang, Gene Wolfe, Joy Williams, Frederick Buechner, Charles Portis, Barbara Pym, Les Murray, G.M. Hopkins, P.D. James, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, J.F. Powers, J.L. Carr (bit of an alphabet soup, there), Saul Bellow, Zadie Smith, Daniel Woodrell, Don DeLillo, Shirley Jackson, Ross Macdonald, Susanna Clarke, Annie Dillard, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Austen, Bulgakov, your mom, your dad–everyone! I’m a lover. Except for Grapes of Wrath. What a trash-heap. I’d probably be more of a hater but my filter is very strong and I no longer bother with books I don’t want to finish unless absolutely necessary.

I’ve written for LitHub, The Millions, Electric Literature, and more. I’ve got a newsletter and (I get bored, okay!) a podcast with my friend Bill Coberly.

The below is a poem I think is fun.

FABLE FOR BLACKBOARD by George Starbuck

Here is the grackle, people.
Here is the fox, folks.
The grackle sits in the bracken. The fox
hopes.

Here are the fronds, friends,
that cover the fox.
The fronds get in a frenzy. The grackle
looks.

Here are the ticks, tykes,
that live in the leaves, loves.
The fox is confounded,
and God is above.