Growing up, I never wrote about Dallas. In the bedroom where I felt closest to happy, I scribbled stories on college-ruled notebook paper about a precocious girl in Maine (like Stephen King) or a troubled teen in Los Angeles (like the actresses I hoped to resemble) or a sophisticated woman in New York who probably . . . Read More

Many years ago I began collecting old postcards. I found them in vintage stores, stacks upon stacks of messages once sent, or never written, and I’d settle into an armchair and leaf through them, wafting with the smell of other people’s basements. I never knew what I was looking for, but then something caught my . . . Read More

On Saturday I went to the most popular mall in Dallas, and I wrote this piece. I hadn’t planned to report on my state’s controversial re-opening, but I was overwhelmed by the oddness of the spectacle and the unprecedented nature of the moment. When I posted the story to Facebook, my college best friend commented, . . . Read More

I was driving the long solitary highway to Alaska when the guy in the passenger seat asked if I knew Fountains of Wayne. Was that a statue? Was that a waterfall? It was a band, he explained, named after a store in New Jersey. That guy was not my boyfriend, but I hadn’t given up . . . Read More

A few years ago, I was talking with a couple female writers about what we’d do during a zombie apocalypse. One claimed she’d be good with a sword, and she clasped her hands and pantomimed slicing through the air. The other said she could forage. She could scour the cabinets and make dinner from any . . . Read More

I drove to Palo Duro Canyon, because I had to go somewhere, but I couldn’t go far. I was on deadline for my book, due in September, and the more extravagant trip I had envisioned — out to the northern rim of the Grand Canyon, the quieter and more profound side of the great gash . . . Read More

A few years ago, I threw my clothes in the bright green suitcase with the broken zipper, slung my guitar in the back seat, and drove to Uncertain, Texas. I had searched for cabin get-aways within a few hours’ drive from my home in Dallas, places like Broken Bow and Beavers Bend and Turner Falls, . . . Read More

I started getting low around the holidays in my 20s, probably. Something about feeling spat out from the optimism of childhood. It’s almost charming to me now, how early I started feeling old. I liked holidays parties, of course, with their cranberry-colored cocktails, one endless glass of red wine, a little dose of amnesia to . . . Read More

The road back from a road trip can be a drag. I’d taken three luxurious days to drive out to West Texas, drawing a crooked line to the left corner of the state, but I was returning to Dallas in one long afternoon, a mostly straight line along the bright blue vein of an interstate. . . . Read More

Last July, Texas Highways magazine asked if I had anything to write about, well, Texas highways. Oooh, I did. At least, I had an idea for a trip I’d like to take — out west, where the stars burn so brightly in the sky they look like pinholes punched in black velvet. (A line I . . . Read More