Published Writing

AWARDS

My novel A Box Came for You won The Black List’s 2025 Unpublished Novel Award in the Horror category. There is more information about the award and the winners here.

My feature screenplay Summer Clubbing, adapted from my novel, was an Official Semifinalist in the Los Angeles Crime & Horror Film Festival 2021, a Quarterfinalist in the Screencraft Horror Screenplay Competition 2020, and an Official Selection in the HorrorHaus Film Festival 2020.

My book-length essay American Mutt Barks in the Yard won the Winterhouse Award for Design Writing in 2008.

NOVELS

American Home Life, 2007 (So New)

Johnny Red, 2005 (Word Riot Press) | Illustrations by Kim Battista

THE BUSINESS OF LAW

Legal Visionaries, 2013, and Unbound, 2009 (Lumen Legal, now Lexitas)

THE CULTURE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN

There’s Nothing Funny About Design, 2009 (Princeton Architectural Press) | Ellen Lupton interviewed me about the book.

American Mutt Barks in the Yard, 2005 (Emigre); | Full text in PDF at Emigre | Winner of the 2008 Winterhouse Award for Design Writing

Little Book of Love Letters, Volumes 1-3 (Emigre) | I wrote the text for three type specimens for Emigre.

FICTION COLLECTIONS

We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things, 2003 (Word Riot Press) | Introduction by Steve Almond | Cover art and interior illustrations by Eduardo Recife

Twisted Fun, 2006 (Word Riot Press)

Terminally Curious, 2005 (So New)

The Human Case: 29 Stories, 2002

The Leap & Other Mistakes: 35 Stories, 2000

MISCELLANY

The Dead Bug Funeral Kit, 2003 | I created a kit that included poems for eulogizing your dead bug.

I was the graphic designer for the literary magazine Opium Magazine. See issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Humans Make Robot Movies to Feel Better About Being Human in a Robot World, 2011 | I made this book for a senior seminar I taught in the Visual Communications Department at Winthrop University. I guided students in selecting their themes, creating their lettering, making their illustrations, and designing and publishing their books.

I designed the cover and typeset the 2010 New Jersey anthology What’s Your Exit?

I edited, designed, and published the anthology of writing during the Bush years entitled What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years? (2008)(Goodreads).

JOURNALISM

I have worked as a freelance journalist for over twenty years and published articles, features, cover stories, profiles, interviews, and essays in periodicals such as Details, American Bar Association Journal, New York Times, Men’s Journal, Men’s Fitness, Mademoiselle, Detroit Free Press, Detroit Monthly, American Prospect, Playboy, Metro Times, Massage Magazine, Coffee Journal, and many others.

DESIGN WRITING

My design writing has appeared in ID Magazine, Print (1, 2, 3), Emigre (issues 68, 69, and 70), AIGA’s Voice, Eye Magazine, SpeakUp, Looking Closer 5, Design Disasters, Designing Magazines, Design Observer (“Is There Bauhaus in IKEA?”), and others.

I also wrote entries on Simplicissimus-B040, Lucky Strike-G007, and McDonald’s-I013 for The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design (2012).

I reviewed children’s books for The New York Times Book Review (1, 2, 3) and was even a judge.

For Eye Magazine, I reviewed books by Chip Kidd, Edward Tufte, and Kenya Hara. I also wrote this.

My essays and stories have been anthologized many times, including in textbooks, and have been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Polish, Chinese, and Serbo-Croatian.

Photo: An excerpt of my book-length design essay American Mutt Barks in the Yard (2005) was included in a Polish anthology of international design writing.

I have written hundreds of short stories over the years, and they have appeared in Quick Fiction, Nerve, Epoch, Wisconsin Review, Opium Magazine, Barrelhouse, Sweet Fancy Moses, Word Riot, Dezmin’s Archives, Pindeldyboz, Eyeshot, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Small Spiral Notebook, Carve Magazine, Drunken Boat, Del Sol Review, Failbetter, Haypenny, In Posse Review, Tatlin’s Tower, CrossConnect, 3AM Magazine, The Furnace, The Styles, Raised in a Barn, Taint Magazine, Foliate Oak, Spoiled Ink, The Edward Society, Flak Magazine, Konundrum Engine, The Paumanok Review, Prose Toad, Cenotaph, Outsider Ink, Spoken War, 42 Opus, Punchline Magazine, Minima, Ballyhoo, and Blue Planet.

Photo: The author not writing for a moment