She has in the last decade shifted from teaching courses in American literature to teaching workshops in creative writing, both fiction and nonfiction. Her writing, too, now takes the form of short stories and personal essays. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her stories and essays have appeared in Southern Review, LaurelReview, North Dakota Quarterly, Christian Science Monitor, Chronicle of Higher Education, Eclipse, Red Rock Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Ascent,Witness (forthcoming), and PMS: Poemmemoirstory (forthcoming). She recently completed her first collection of short stories, The Pressure of Blood, which was selected as a finalist for this year’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and for the George Garrett Fiction Prize.