You have to understand that my family went into Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day with high hopes. We love movies, especially a good, traditional Jewish Christmas Day movie watching, and my almost-seven-year-old, especially, adores Wonder Woman. Blame my own childhood nostalgia. A few months ago, I bought her one…

When we say “Girl Scouts” what do we mean? Do we refer to the corporate entity, Girl Scouts USA? Do we mean the trefoil-bedazzled brand that appears on coffee creamers and dog cookies? Is Girl Scouts the property of our CEO, or our board of directors? Or is Girl Scouting…

I’m an author — but then, if you’ve been following me here on medium, you already know that. My newest book, Strange Creatures, comes out on June 1st from Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins. What you might not know is that a few years back, I had a side gig making book…

As a novelist, I’ve spent the last six years leaning heavily into my ambitions, trying to craft novels that are bigger, more ambitious, and stranger than anything you — or I — have read before. There were times this seemed like a foolish path, moments when I doubted my ability…

The hit Netflix series wants us to think it’s pretty gay. But is it? — The Queen’s Gambit, Netflix’s record breaking, utterly bingeable hit mini-series which tells the story of Beth Harmon, an orphaned, addicted chess prodigy in the 1960s, has been hailed as the newest queer TV hit. If you haven’t watched it yet, you’re the last one — and please do, before reading…

Content warning: this essay contains discussion of passive suicidal ideation. — It started out as a joke. Or at least I thought it was a joke. Last summer, my book club read The Hours. This group of Hudson Valley mothers and parents discussed how we were struck by Michael Cunningham’s sensitivity to the plight of new mothers. …

In 1996, I wrote fanfiction. As an author today, when I tell teenagers about my youthful predilection for stories set in other peoples’ world, they barely blink. Fanfic, if a little nerdy, is expected of people like me, people who wear big glasses and ironic t-shirts, people who make books…

These views are not the official stance of Girl Scouts USA. This September, I found myself abruptly at the helm of a Daisy Girl Scout troop of twelve five- and six-year-old girls. Full of energy, challenging and sometimes exasperating, our troop has quickly swelled to seventeen Girl Scouts over the…

At the edge of the apocalypse, we all make jokes about it being the apocalypse, we all carry hand sanitizer in little bottles to trivia night at the bar and then, after we high five, give our red, ravaged knuckles a squirt and we can’t help but notice how the…