Publications

Fiction

Happiness University of Iowa Press 1994, Arche Verlag 2000, dtv 2003
Bitter Lake Southern Methodist University Press 1996
Thoreau’s Laundry Southern Methodist University Press 2007
The Year She Disappeared University of Texas Press 2008
Tell Me, Signora Elixir Press 2020

“The Most Intimate Thing” Solstice Magazine Winter 2023
“Report from the Midlife Dating Wars” 
Flash Fiction Anthology August 2022
 “Marthe, Once Maria: A Story of Murder” The Florida Review Spring 2022

“Benessere” The Georgia Review Summer 2019
“Sofonisba” Southwest Review Spring 2016
“Meet the Offspring” 
Southwest Review Fall 2011
“Reunion” Hint Fiction, ed. Robert Swartwood, W. W. Norton 2010
“Princess in Disguise” Good Housekeeping January 2008
“Thoreau’s Laundry” Alaska Quarterly Review Spring 2006; anthologized in Living in the Land of Limbo: Fiction and Poetry about Family Caregiving,ed. Carol Levine, Vanderbilt University Press 2014
“The Stand-In” Good Housekeeping April 2006
“Stalin Dreaming” Glimmer Train Winter 2005
“My Romance” Southwest Review Fall 2004
“Biscuit Baby” Ms. Magazine Spring 2004
“Will Build to Suit” Shenandoah Winter 2003
“The Ones without Visas” Witness Winter 2003
“The Year She Disappeared” Hotel Amerika Spring 2003
“Meanwhile” Southwest Review Summer 2002; O. Henry Prize Stories 2003
“Conspiracies” Story Winter 1999
“Iggy Ugly” Virginia Quarterly Review Summer 1998
“Street of Swans” Southwest Review Spring 1997
“The Angel of Entropy” Shenandoah Spring 1997
“The River Upside Down” The Ohio Review Fall 1995
“Surrounded” Ploughshares Spring 1994
“Happiness” Virginia Quarterly Review Spring 1993
“Dancing Fish” American Fiction 1993
“How It Is” New England Review Fall 1992
“Lo” Green Mountains Review Spring/Summer 1992
“Nothing” broadcast on NPR’s “The Sound of Writing” 1991 Providence Journal-Bulletin January 1994; anthologized in The Iowa Award: The Best Stories 1991-2000
“Life Class” Madison Review Spring 1990; translated as “Imaginierte Farben” Freundin June 2000
“In Damascus” Shenandoah Fall 1990
“The Cost of Anything” Greensboro Review Winter 1989-90; translated as “Der Preis aller Dinge” Manuskripte Fall 1999
“Eve and Adam” Nebraska Review Fall/Winter 1989
“Salvage” Greensboro Review Winter 1988-89
“The Female Lives in the Body” Madison Review Spring 1989
“Sharks” Boston Review February 1989
“Limbo” Primavera Spring 1988
“The White Hope of Cleveland” Crosscurrents: New Work by Award Winners II Fall 1987
“Someone Else” Chicago Tribune October 1987; anthologized in Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Crossing Press 1994
“Urban Fishing” Oxford Magazine Spring 1986
“It Was Humdrum” Toyon Spring 1986; anthologized in Love’s Shadow, Crossing Press 1993

Poetry

16 poems 1986-present: Southern Review, Kansas Quarterly, Greensboro Review, High Plains Literary Review, Ascent, Apalachee Quarterly, Yankee, and elsewhere
Song lyrics to 8 tunes composed by John Harbison, published in After Hours, Schirmer Music Publishers 2003

Nonfiction

Ian Fleming: A Critical Biography (with Bruce A. Rosenberg) Twayne Publishers 1989
Graphic Representation of Models in Linguistic Theory Indiana University Press 1976

“Letter to a Young Writer,” WomenArts Quarterly Journal  January 2015
“Wheels,”
New Ohio Review Spring 2013
“On a Passage from Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women,” New Ohio Review Fall 2012
“My Other Husband” An Uncertain Inheritence: Writers on Caring for Family, ed. Eleanor Casey, HarperCollins 2007; also in AARP Magazine January 2008
“More Is More: Revising Your Story” Now Write!: Fiction Writing Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, ed. Sherry Ellis, Tarcher/Penguin 2006
“Dialogue that Works” The Writer February 1992; anthologized in The Writer’s Handbook 1993
“The Role of Narrative Structure in the Transfer of Ideas” Textual Dynamics of the Professions, ed. James Paradis and Charles Bazerman University of Wisconsin Press 1991
“Choosing and Using Tense in Fiction” The Writer October 1988; anthologized in The Writer’s Handbook 1989
“A Voice of One’s Own: Recent Short Fiction by North American Women” Journal of the Short Story in English/Les cahiers de la nouvelle 10 1988
“Models of Narrative Structure” Semiotica 64 1987
“Linguistics and the Study of Literature” NEH Project on Linguistics in the Undergraduate Curriculum 1988
“Double Entendre in the Old English Riddles” Lore and Language 3/8 1983
“Kenning and Riddle in Old English” Papers on Language and Literature 15 1979
“Old English Riddle 47 as Stylistic Parody” Papers on Language and Literature 11 1975, 227-41; reprinted in The Critical Temper IV, ed. Martin Tucker, Ungar 1979
“The One Less Traveled by: Grammaticality and the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Language and Style 8 1975
8 other scholarly articles on language and literature, 1973-present, in Papers on Language and Literature, Journal of English Linguistics, Papers in Linguistics, Studies in Philology, and elsewhere

Reviews

1987-present, in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Providence Journal, Ploughshares, Boston Review, and elsewhere

Translations

Cantata 163: “To each one his own” by J. S. Bach (translated from German), world premiere by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, 2003; performed at Tanglewood, 2008, and Lincoln Center, 2011
Mute Phone Calls by Ruth Zernova (translated from Russian), Rutgers University Press 1991
“Why Now?” by Ruth Zernova (translated from Russian), in Russia according to Women, ed. Marina Ledkovsky, Hermitage Press 1991
“Old English Riddle 28” (translated from Anglo-Saxon) College Composition and Communication December 1989