Writing Samples
Bits of writing I’ve done over the years you might like.
A Gathering of Karens
I wrote this over the summer of 2020, and it’s so, so of its moment, blending political tensions with COVID anxiety in a backdrop of a super-bougie book club.
Admittedly the middle part is not finished, but I think what is there is some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever written. Despite its embeddedness in mid-2020 zeitgeist-y stuff, I might still finish it, as a fun exercise in trying to rediscover a simpler time – wait, was it really a simpler time? Who am I kidding. It wasn’t.
Tea Crime
This is a ten-shot, one minute film I made for a filmmaking class in the spring of 2022. Other films I did there I didn’t have as much involvement in, but using the claustrophobic hallways of the Foster-Walker complex, NU’s token all-singles-all-the-time dorm was a total blast and I still am immensely proud of the cinematography.
Record of a Barbarous People
I wrote this for a class called ‘The Art of The Tale’, where we were to focus on the inverse of that golden writing rule: Tell, and not show. So a fairly simple yarn about a revolt on an asteroid mining colony became a tale told through distant mnemonic recollection in the fourth person (I had just read ‘What The Forest Remembers’, an excerpt from ‘The Candy House’ and sought to repurpose perfect memory recollection in way that could suit the story’s themes).
Creative Process Co-Host: David Simon
This was a co-hosting I did with Mia Funk for the Creative Process podcast when I was an intern there. Simon is a developmental geographer with a focus on African urban development, mapping how the world’s fastest-growing continent will respond to the challenge of climate change stymieing that growth. It was fascinating from start to finish, especially when Simon talked about how we already are dealing with ecologically motivated refugees in Africa and India.
Creative Process Co-Host: Jonathan Newman
Another Creative Process Co-hosting, this time with a professor who specializes in grasslands ecology, and who had some very interesting opinions on what biodiversity really is. Learn about the symbiotic fungi that make grasslands possible, listen to me express Zoomer-era climate despair in response to Newman’s grim forecasts… It’s good fun.
Creative Process Co-Host: Donald Hoffman
Oh man, this one was a blast. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk, but Hoffman’s take on consciousness as the most fundamental element of reality, the only explanation for the observer problem in physics, is some of the most interesting theoretical stuff I’ve heard in a long while. I strongly encourage you listen to this one.
Nighthawkery
A little still-image essay I made for a video essay class, focusing on Edward Hopper’s iconic painting Nighthawks. Building on a theory my dad has about it being printed improperly, and subsequently misinterpreted, I talk about how the painting is actually more intimate than most people think it is, how it embodies a certain quiet sociality that some people will misunderstand.
Nekropol: Broken Throne
Another screenplay draft, this time inspired by the idea of making the Anti-Dune: A hyperfeudal space opera that wasn’t so focused on Herbert’s bizarre masculine fetishism and instead on how empires justify themselves. It’s… unfocused. I’ll admit that. But I think there are some good ideas in there.
Post West Pilot
I just wrote this for a summer class on writing television. It’s longer than the original Post West draft, and I think it’s a much more creatively realized version of the story to boot.
As far as this hypothetical show goes, I keep wondering if I should expand this into a 60-minutre drama. Maybe that’ll pop up in the future?