Writer, editor, consultant.
Writing
Creative Nonfiction
The Dress Promised Me Something the Doctors Couldn't, New York Times, Modern Love
​
"A few weeks later, the first dress arrived. I spun around in it, watching the hem rise and fall. Something about it made me feel less like a haggard patient and more like the kind of woman who went to cocktail parties dripping with perfume and family money."
​​
​
​​
To tie down a ghost, JMWW
​
"You drive down I-85 with the windows down and a dead cat in the passenger seat. This is a habit of yours. Not letting dead things rest."​
​
​
​
I Won't Be Your Cancer Poster Child, HuffPost
"Then there are the friends, the co-workers, the well-meaning churchgoers who want to know if I’ve been taking a multivitamin and aligning my chakras and visiting their cousin’s boyfriend’s best friend’s naturopath three times a week. They ask me if I’m practicing positivity and tell me that my words have the power of life and death. I revel in my untapped psychokinetic abilities and talk a lot about how I plan to find $10,000 wedged in the back of my dryer, along with that sock I lost last month."
​
​
Brand Stories
Duke University
​
Discovering a World in Books: A Librarian's Journey from Detroit to Duke
​
"At eight years old and four feet tall, Karen Jean 'KJ' Hunt climbed aboard a city bus to the public library, not for the books, but for the air conditioning — a rare luxury in 1960s Detroit."
Taking Air Quality Research to New Heights
"La Paz, Bolivia is both literally and figuratively breathtaking. The city begins at the edge of a cliff and spills down a nearly vertical canyonside, nearly two and a half miles above sea level. To descend into the frenetic city center on a hazy morning is to descend through the clouds."
​
​
University of North Carolina
​
"Ovul Sezer knows how not to be a jerk, according to science. Specifically, Sezer studies how behaviors you think will impress your boss or your mother-in-law, like name-dropping, actually make you really unpleasant to be around."
​
"Mike Levine grew up in a seaside community in New Jersey best known as the birthplace of Bruce Springsteen. His dad was a music instructor who played the alto-saxophone and conducted the local concert band. It was a given that when he became a teenager, Levine would start a terrible rock band in his garage."
​
UNC Children's Hospital has a sweet new car
"Surgery can be scary for kids and their parents, but the pint-sized, remote-controlled car is making the trip easier for everyone. Pediatric neurosurgeon Carolyn Quinsey donated the car — equipped with working headlights, engine sounds and a few Carolina bumper stickers — to bring laughter and joy to her patients as they head into surgery.
​
​
​
​
​