NonFictionEscapism – Nonfiction book reviews, stories, and ideas

Favorite Articles Issue 4 – China

April 16, 2025

China This week I have dug up three articles on the one country at the forefront of people’s minds: China. Despite my best efforts to understand the country, China remains a mystery. Like my own birth country (the USA), China is too large to easily understand at a glance. Although I have read much about China and tried to understand some of its nuance, I still feel as though I am the proverbial blind man piecing together an elephant. Thus, having only touched the surface, I must admit that I have no idea what China is. However, I hope that the three articles linked below provide some insight and help you understand what China might be and what it may have become. Chabuduo James Palmer’s 2016 essay, “What Chinese Corner-Cutting Reveals about Modernity”, offers insight into China’s economic boom and its potential for bust. Palmer’s essay centers on the mandarin term chabuduo meaning ‘good enough’. Read more…

My Publications

The End of Instruction in The Sandy River Review

April 2, 2025

I am pleased to announce publication of my flash fiction story, “The End of Instruction,” in The River Online. I would like to thank the editors for recognizing my writing and finding a place for it in their journal. This is my sixth publication since July 2023. I’ve published four nonfiction essays and two flash fiction stories. At my current rate I’ve published two essays or stories per year, and as it’s only April and I’ve already published twice in 2025, I expect to publish at least one more piece before the end of this year, giving me more momentum to publish at an even quicker pace moving forward. What I don’t always share in these blog posts about my recent successes, however, is the process of publication and how rife with failure it can be. Therefore, I thought it might be useful to reflect on this topic now. As you may know, publication is Read more…

My Publications

The Hedonists’ Checklists in LIT Magazine

March 29, 2025

I want to show my appreciation to nonfiction editors Sarah Persons and Vicky Oliver at LIT Magazine. They both worked hard to shepherd me through the publication of my most recent essay “The Hedonists’ Checklists“. Seeing potential in the essay, they prodded me to rewrite the ending, and if it wasn’t for their note, the essay may have languished in publication purgatory, otherwise known as Submittable, forever. I’ve now had two excellent experiences with publications run out of The New School in NYC. Christine Ro at The Inquisitive Eater (another New School publication) was equally amazing to work with when she helped me polish “Ready to Gorge” in 2024. Rather than simply publish the essay, Christine provided extensive notes, even recommending the title. It was her suggestion that I pull the phrase “ready to gorge” from the last paragraph of my essay in order to front load the intent of my message and capture more Read more…

My Publications

How I Love You in Litro Magazine UK

January 12, 2025

Eric Akoto at Litro Magazine UK published my most recent essay, “How I Love You,” on January 11th, 2025 for the Editor’s Pick, Essay Saturday feature of the website. I’m grateful that Eric and his team provided a home for this essay and I was overjoyed when I read their description of my essay as “a meditation on love, mortality, and existential fear.” The essay is all of these things, and if you take the time to read it, I hope you understand that it is ultimately a love letter written in a strange and discomfiting form.

Favorite Articles

Favorite Articles Issue 3 – Food

October 25, 2024

Food Food. We need it. We live for it. We love it. Food is an integral part of existence–but it’s not just physical dependence that makes it important; food also plays a significant role in our inner lives, becoming associated with pleasure, pain, joy, and grief. Food fits occasions and colors our moods, and somehow it also identifies us regionally, politically, and economically. The four articles below highlight our strange and complicated relationships with food offering a bit of fun, a touch of heartbreak, and a wallop of intrigue. Overindulgence Two essays by B.R. Meyers, his 2011 “The moral crusade against foodies” and 2007’s “Hard to swallow” look at the gluttony driving popular food culture. Although written more than a decade ago, Meyers’ writing is more relevant now than ever, for in the afterglow of the invention of mukbangs, it’s hard to argue that Meyer didn’t hit the nail on the head when he wrote Read more…

My Publications

Ready to Gorge in The Inquisitive Eater

June 30, 2024

The Inquisitive Eater, an online publication run by the Creative Writing Program at The New School, published my most recent essay, “Ready to Gorge,” on June 20th, 2024. The essay focuses on beef intestines and other seemingly disgusting Korean meats. Special thanks to Nonfiction Editor Christine Ro for help with this essay. The Inquisitive Eater publishes online year-round. If you like my essay also check out Hannah Walhout’s amazing 2023 essay “Year of The Egg.”

My Publications

Lofty Heights in The Corvus Review

April 26, 2024

I am pleased to announce that I have published a flash fiction story in the Winter 2023 issue of Janine Mercer’s Corvus Review. I would like to thank her for recognizing my writing and finding a place for it in her journal. You can directly download the pdf of issue 21 here and you can find my flash fiction story, titled “Lofty Heights” on page 33.

My Publications

An Acquaintance with Geumjeong Mountain in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature

January 23, 2024

I should have written and posted this six months ago when the news was still fresh. Regardless of how tardy I am, I’m extremely grateful to have had my writing recognized by the the editors at Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. My nonfiction essay, An Acquaintance with Geumjeong Mountain, was published in the July 2023 issue. In addition to my piece, you can read works by other wonderful authors such as Kimberly Hoff and Leslie Carol Roberts. There are too many essays and stories to list here, so please peruse the journal at your leisure. I hope you enjoy reading as much as we have enjoyed writing.

Favorite Articles

Favorite Articles Issue 2 – Disasters

July 10, 2023

Disasters This week I gathered three articles that highlight disasters. One disaster is entirely man made, and the other two are forces of nature. However, it is the human component of each story that makes them unforgettable. Fallout John Hersey’s (1946) “Hiroshima” gives a vivid account of the horrors suffered by the atomic bomb. This disaster, born out of war, bears scars inflicted by human hands (a scientific-technological elite consisting of physicists, chemists, politicians, and generals), but Hersey’s article focuses on the survivors to put the human toll into perspective. Like no other writer, Hersey humanizes the other and makes their pain our pain. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima Wave “The Clock is Ticking: Inside the Worst US Maritime Disaster in Decades” by William Langewiesche (2018) details the disappearance of a cargo ship, the El Faro, after it sailed into the eye of a hurricane. Langewiesche puts together emergency distress audio recordings, interviews with experts, and information gleaned from Read more…

Book Review

Text as Substance and Style in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

October 26, 2021

The style of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is not the least bit out of the ordinary for writers of the beat movement, but Wolfe may have captured the pulse of the art better than any of his contemporaries by selecting a perfectly evocative subject matter in the guise of a straight edge reporter following one of North America’s most profound cultural awakenings, or, in layman’s terms, he wrote one heck of a great book—widely acclaimed because of the way it conveys facts on the ground as well as vibes in the air. However, whether you are the aforementioned layman, a psychedelic drug aficionado, or a historian of 1960’s counterculture, be wary of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, because you may come to hate it. The warning above is in no way meant to state that the book lacks merit. Instead, the shot across the bow is merely intended to point out that Read more…

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