My debut novel, Green, won the American Library Association’s Alex Award, was named “One of the Books We Loved in 2018” by the New Yorker, and was a New York Times Editors’ Pick.

My nonfiction writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and The Nation. I’ve been featured on PBS News Hour, the Modern Love podcast, and other outlets.

In an other life, I was the chief blogger on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. For a few surreal years after Obama won, I traveled all around the world giving speeches about my experiences on the campaign.

My enthusiasms include: public pull-up bars, National Parks, small-town newspapers, marathon walks, podcasts hosted by people who are not like me (e.g. hardcore Navy SEALs, chill Buddhists, ), 90s rap, and Borscht Belt humor. I am drawn to Thoreauvian simplicity, Falstaffian excess, and Whitmanesque self-contradiction. As Philip Roth said, “Sheer playfulness and deadly seriousness are my closest friends.”