During Zinequest 2021, I wrote a piece at Mere Orthodoxy about the design choices and theology behind Back Again from the Broken Land, a game I wrote together with my husband. The game is Tolkien-inspired—it's about small adventures walking home from a big war. Part of our goal was making it Tolkien-like in the action… Read More
Category: Articles
Snow Days and Slack
The covidtide winter was already hard, and then schools started doing away with snow days in favor of digital school. I'm at Breaking Ground defending the snow day and its power to interrupt our overscheduled, strained routines. Slack is a necessary part of life, both for the individual and for the community. In Prayer as a… Read More
Writing Back Again from the Broken Land
My husband Alexi and I have written our first game together! Back Again from the Broken Land is a Tolkien-inspired role-playing game about small adventures walking home from a big war. We launched the game on Kickstarter as part of ZineQuest. In the game, you and the other members of your fellowship are making your… Read More
In Defense of Boring Time with Friends
I was honored to be a guest writing for Gracy Olmstead's Granola newsletter, and I wrote a defense of storge—the love marked by affection and fondness. Inviting people into the quotidian parts of your day isn’t just, as I used to think of it, a way of staving off boredom or loneliness. It’s a pledge… Read More
The Wasted Potential of Wonder Woman 1984
I was a fan of most of the first Wonder Woman film, but sadly disappointed by Wonder Woman 1984. At First Things, I wrote a little on how the film failed to live up to its promise. In her second film, the recent Wonder Woman 1984, Diana isn’t facing down an enemy power, but a distinctly… Read More
All Aboard the Generation Ship!
Nearly a year into the pandemic, I wrote an essay for Breaking Ground on how we can persist in hope by drawing on sci-fi stories of generation ships. A generation ship spans the wide gap of time between planets. No one aboard at the beginning of the journey expects to see the destination. They commit… Read More
Sing Out, America! An appreciation of Listening for America
One of my favorite books I read this year was Rob Kapilow’s Listening for America, a tour through the genius of American musical theater. I was delighted to get to write an appreciation for Fare Forward. Reading Kapilow took me one step further into appreciation. He has a gift for worked examples and teaches by rewriting… Read More
Searching for Other Feminisms
Gracy Olmstead and I had a conversation about the gaps in mainstream feminism for Mere Orthodoxy. I run a substack community, Other Feminisms, for sustained conversation on these topics. Gracy: My husband has struggled to get paternity leave, and experienced a lot of pushback when striving to carve out time to care for our children and… Read More
Defending Dependence
My essay, "Dependence: Toward an Illiberalism of the Weak" is part of Plough's Family issue. Everyone is dependent (at least some of the time) but women have a much harder time than men pretending not to be. Hiding dependence hurts us all. On January 21, I'll be joining Ross Douthat, Sarah C. Williams and Peter… Read More
Bridging the Divide Within Feminism
At Newsweek, I'm discussing some of the tensions within modern feminism, and where we can find common ground across the abortion divide. Women are divided over how to respond to a world that treats us as defective men. Do we try to elbow our way in by adjusting our lives to a norm that may… Read More