WRITING & EDITING
CRAFT WRITING
Through craft’s embodied labor histories, I investigate what work looks like.
FOOD WRITING
I write about food as aesthetic experience and intellectual history.
EDITING
Editing is a way to think with others and platform their work.
Jelly head screenshot, 2020 CAA conference panel: “The Gelatinous, the Slimy”
CRAFT WRITING
A selection of writing on craft, work, and labor.
This is not a Food Studies Program
This essay recounts my work (with Ben Lignel) teaching food studies in the MA in Critical Craft Studies (MACR) program and lays out my argument for treating cooking as a craft practice.
Nick Cave: Until
A review for the Journal of Modern Craft of Nick Cave’s exhibition Until at MASS MoCA.
Pay Attention
For an issue of Norwegian Craft’s magazine The Vessel, guest edited by Åsa Dybwad and Ben Lignel, I wrote about why we tend to see only some kinds of work as “skilled labor.”
Hear Me Now
A review for the Journal of Modern Craft of Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MFA Boston.
The Tent-Dweller: Visual Markers of Migration in Art
A paper on the migrant crisis and the changing meanings of tents in art and design, delivered at the 2018 Textile Society of America symposium in Vancouver.
FOOD WRITING
A selection of my writing on cooking and eating.
Syl Anagist Was a Garden: Food and Vitalism in The Broken Earth
A paper on jelly obelisks in 18th c. tablescapes and N.K. Jemisin’s speculative fiction trilogy The Broken Earth, published in the proceedings of the 2024 Oxford Food Symposium.
Download the PDF (2.1 mb)
World Building with Blobs
The story of a jelly river tablescape, made at Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist’s Residency in August 2024.
Researching Radical Hospitality
Editor Leanne Prainne interviewed me for her book The Creative Instigator’s Handbook: A DIY Guide to Making Social Change through Art.
Download a PDF of the interview (1.7 mb)
New Recipes: Cooking, Craft, and Performance
This monograph examines the ways food has formed the culture of craft schools. It pairs essays, recipes, and videos to examine what occurred during Haystack’s 1968 culinary session, imagine what could have happened but didn’t, and what might yet happen in the future.
In the Land of Jelly Crystals
This zine illuminates jelly’s role in philosophical vitalism, the idea that living things are animated by some kind of spark or vital energy.
Vampire Clubs
With Maike Statz and Matilda Moors, I wrote about hospitality, nourishment, and violence in vampire clubs.
EDITING
Screenshot of Ekphrasis, illustrated by Kenji Nakayama
I view editing as a way to think with others and platform their work.
Dilettante Army is an online journal for critique, feminism, visual culture, and writing that expands boundaries. I co-founded DA in 2013 with two brilliant friends from grad school, my co-editor Christine Elliott and graphic designer Jeremy Stephen Shedd. Rebecca Ariel Porte later joined Christine and me as co-editor. From 2018 to 2025, DA published quasi-quarterly themed issues.
EKPHRASIS
Ekphrasis, (Fall 2025), posits that ekphrasis—the literary description of a visual phenomenon—can work against the immediacy and over-certainty of images.
Contributors: Julia Alekseyeva, Robby Bishop, Lauren Camp, Krushna Dande, Bruce M. King, Andrew McInnes, Kate Nesin, Emily Singeisen, Louis Shankar.
REBUILDING YEAR
Rebuilding Year (Spring 2025) mounts a salvage operation after a storm-tossed season, reckoning with destruction and marshaling resources for future struggles.
Contributors: Brittany Dennison, Kelly Pendergrast, Dania Rajendra, Kate Thomas, Sam Thompson.