Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

I am a critic, essayist, editor, and maybe eventual fiction writer with a background in academic philosophy and too many interests to name. I am just as fascinated by twentieth-century German philosophy as I am by the films of David Cronenberg. In my academic life, I studied the aesthetic—that is, that which we access through our senses. Accordingly, my work draws on a range of literary, cinematic, and philosophical forces to examine both the pleasures and perils of embodiment.

While at Headlands

While at Headlands, I will work on my book in progress, A Curious Monster. The book takes its title from a line of Katherine Ann Porter’s 1939 novella, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, in which a character suffering from the Spanish flu thinks, “the body is a curious monster, no place to live in, how could anyone feel at home there?” I asked myself a similar question in 2022, when I was diagnosed with pernicious anemia, a rare autoimmune disease; again in 2023, when I was diagnosed with microscopic colitis, a second rare autoimmune disease; and again in 2024, when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. My book weds memoir, philosophy, cultural criticism, science writing, and just a touch of fiction to ask about the philosophical implications of autoimmunity. What does it mean for a person to experience her body as its own antagonist?

“All Good Sex is Body Horror in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/all-good-sex-is-body-horror

“Unnatural Gifts” in The Point: https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/unnatural-gifts/

“Stalking: The Quest to See Without Being Seen” in The Yale Review: https://yalereview.org/article/stalking-1