PUBLICATIONS

There is a reaching I’ve felt twice in my life, when I’ve said, I want to do that. The first was hearing Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest read aloud in the fourth grade. I want to write. And the second was seeing the image of my friend Elika’s hands when she lay in a hospital, how they were crossed on her pelvis making a delicate arch, something like shelter, young and elegant, though she was only weeks away from dying. I want to draw.

"On Writing and Making Art”
A personal essay in Memoir Land

Love for her hometown is on display in Martha Anne Toll’s new novel, as she weaves a story of love, grief, and music across the streets of Philadelphia.

“Martha Ann Toll Revisits Her Early Violist Days in Duet for One”
A profile in Broad Street Review

This is such a powerful manifestation of fiction: as writers, much as we make stuff up, we are always writing someone’s story. Is it true? Did this really happen? the reader often asks. It is always true—for someone, somewhere, sometime.

“No One Gets off Scot-Free: Jill McCorkle’s Old Crimes”
A review in The Rumpus

What mother doesn’t ache when the distance between her and her daughter stretches like taffy and then breaks off?

“Bride”
A short story in The Antioch Review

Even when he was a small boy, his mother said, “You worry too much. You let go of one worry and pick up another. You reach for a worry the way other kids reach for candy.”

“The Heiress and the Radioman”
A short story in Abundant Grace

There was nothing more likely to cause despair than a room darkening at midday.

“Cold Voice”
A short story in Artful Dodge

He found that the uncomplicated horizon line he’d relied on was now the problem with the beach: while the eyes rest, the imagination stays active. The past, or the problem at hand, is on you and can’t be dismissed so easily.

“Think of the Children”
A short story in The Chattahoochee Review

My mother and father came together like hands meeting in prayer, but with Aunt Sissy’s strand of pearls, a garter on my thigh—something borrowed and something blue—what could the Lord grant that this bride didn’t have?

“Girl in a White Dress”
Finalist in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Award Contest

I never saw him up close. I never heard his telephone ring. I never heard his voice (although I imagined he mumbled to himself when he couldn’t find his umbrella, when he had no money for Chinese food, when he couldn’t sleep at night). While I tapped on my keyboard, untangling definitions of chiaroscuro and pentimento for untrained liberal-arts students, I listened for him. If I couldn’t hear him, I sat quietly until a noise told me where he was. Then I went back to work, satisfied that I was the person closest to him in the world.

“For the Man Upstairs”
A short story in The Sun

Mama cried, but you couldn’t hear her, not with me screaming like a train was coming and we were all tied to the tracks.

“Vander"
A short story in The South Carolina Review