Step 1: Pour flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder in a small mixing bowl. Mix well. Set the dry ingredients aside.

Step 2: Soften the butter. Do not melt completely.

Step 3: Mix the eggs, milk, and butter until combined.

Step 4: Allow yourself to entertain a moment of self-pity.

Step 5: Indulge yourself. Allow two.

Step 6: Recall the many surfaces on which you’ve written this recipe. A few weeks ago: on your arm in
the back of a Lyft. Then: on a post-it for the shady lawyer. Before that: in the email you sent to Janine at Self + Care. After that: on a whiteboard in their midtown headquarters.

The first time was a receipt you found on the floor of the gift shop. The receipt said teddy bear but it was spelled with one D. On slow days, you soften the minutes by collecting things that people leave behind when they’re in a hurry. In a hospital, they’re either in a hurry or they’re not buying flowers. The summer crowd is mostly heart attacks and psychiatric emergencies. Heart attacks are fatal or not. If the former, no flowers. If the latter, no hospital stay. And nobody buys flowers for the psych ward. So: a slow day, a receipt on the floor, an idea.

You’d just gotten into baking. Your roommate didn’t disclose his tinnitus before the paperwork and the moving truck and the good, bad, hungry, idle sex. “I don’t see why it’s a problem,” said Kevin.

Because it’s triggered by loud noises.

“So?”

So the cello.

“Can’t you play quietly?”

When your fingers itched for the cello, you made cookies. Self +Care was having an extravagant Labor Day sale to atone for the scandal with the editor. The first catalogue showed up free, along with a boxy red apron that made you look like you were wearing a tote bag. The writers had asymmetrical haircuts and contemporary versions of their grandparents’ recipes. Cardamom, but also Spirulina. Berbere, but also vegan eggs. By mixing and tasting, these writers found new connections to old places.

Recall that this appealed to you. You’re from a new place, but your parents are from an old one. Their parents are from an even older one. The revolution and the war made your family cautious with tradition. They didn’t tell you to assimilate but they didn’t tell you not to. You grew up eating foods that you could not pronounce. The other thing—and you won’t admit this to anyone—was that the writers at Self +Care were making bank. On the one hand, you felt cynical about that: suddenly there’s profit in diverse voices. Where was Self + Care before the Black Lives Matter protests? On the other hand: reparations. Also: rent. At the time, you weren’t making bank, but you were making cookies, and you were pretty good at it.

Recall how you called your parents to ask if they had any recipes from the old days.

“What old days?”

Like did your mother ever make those almond cookies?

“Those are from the store.”

But do you have a recipe for them?

“Sure, I’ll email you.”

They sent you a link to AllRecipes.

Step 7: Bloom the saffron in water. The ratio of saffron to water is tricky. You’ll basically have to fudge it. Most people won’t know that you fudged it, except for the people who matter.

Let the people who matter, your parents, into your apartment. They like everything you dislike about Kevin: his fussiness, his Catholic approach to wrongdoing. After your father stumbles over Kevin’s flip-flops in the doorway, Kevin self-flagellates. “Oh, God, so stupid, I can’t believe, would you imagine—” Your father’s irritation masks a deep admiration. He likes people who respect him.

Kevin slips an arm around your waist, cracking a joke about the batter in the bowl. You laugh; he’s funny. And his salary paid for the stand mixer.

You ask your parents to taste the batter.

“Is this supposed to be a cookie?”

It’s not a cookie yet.

“But will it be a cookie?”

Why, doesn’t it taste like a cookie?

Kevin thinks it’s great. Your parents tell him to stop eating raw egg. Recall that this was six months ago—a simpler time, when the worst thing that could happen was that Kevin might get salmonella.

Step 8: Ignore the push notification from JetBlue telling you to check in for your flight. Ignore the text from Janine: All checked in! Can’t wait to see you tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, you and Janine are flying to SFO to meet your grandma, your dad’s mom, who you’ve always called Maman because that’s what he calls her. Janine’s excitement is nearly inappropriate. The last time you were on a call with her, she looked like she wanted to make out with you.

Janine fascinates you. She’s the new editor. She replaced the guy who exposed himself to everybody. When it became clear that Self + Care would actually run your article, you did some hardcore googling. Janine had everything handed to her, and she’s working very hard to appear self-made. Condé Nast royalty, her parents were gatekeepers of style and taste for all the New York heavyweights. She graduated from a school that people know and interned at a magazine that people don’t, before landing a job as an assistant editor at Slate. Though Self + Care was the logical next step, Janine is careful to maintain a veneer of serendipity. “I was throwing together a grain bowl one evening,” was the anecdote, “when I remembered the job listing and thought, why not? I’m a Millennial. I got into sourdough when everyone else did. I wanted to bring my dinner table, in all its diversity and wonder, to the magazine.” The week she came to power, Janine tweeted a call for articles that would appear in her first issue, “Diversity and Wonder.”

Recall that you had perfected your cookies when you saw the tweet. Almond cookies, just like the ones from your childhood, nothing like the ones from your childhood. Saffron, cardamon, almond flour, rosewater, pistachio, turmeric, goji berries. Turmeric! Goji berries! “These got me through the pandemic,” you wrote to Janine. “I’m shacking up with a lovely guy named Kevin, who suffers from chronic tinnitus. We’re great together but I can’t play my cello. And then I remembered that my grandmother, my maman, has these amazing almond cookies.” You called the piece When I Couldn’t Play, I Baked. To your surprise, Janine asked to jump on a call.

“I wanted to see the baker for myself,” she said, beaming. Recall that you wanted to hate Janine, whose choppy haircut would’ve looked like shit on you and whose pillows lived laughed loved. She asked for a tour of your kitchen, yelping with joy at every kitschy mug and one-purpose tool in your drawers. As you narrated, she ate the biggest sandwich you had ever seen in your life, dripping mayo that she dabbed with a bright orange birthday-party napkin. You couldn’t hate Janine. “Love it,” she said, “love it, love it, love it.”

She saw no reason this couldn’t be the breakout article of the year. Clearly she thought it would be her breakout article too, though she never said that. Her attention was always on you—your experience, your cookies, and most of all, your maman. “Gosh,” said Janine, “I find myself wanting to know so much more about her. You said she lives where?”

She moved in with us a long time ago.

“You lived with her!”

It was the greatest experience of my life.

“I can imagine.”

Recall—you don’t need to recall—that you were telling the truth. Living with Maman was a gift. Though she barely spoke a word of English, and you spoke zero Farsi, you shared a common vocabulary. A few days after you started music lessons, Maman came into your bedroom as you were hacking away at the cello. She sat on your bed and began to sing, a bit self-righteously, as if to say, This is how it’s meant to be done. When she was finished, the two of you became shy with each other. You’d never seen her cry, and she wasn’t crying now, but her singing was shattering in the same way: like seeing a grown-up cry.

A routine emerged. Every time you played, Maman sang jealously, competitively. Sometimes your music sessions were like warfare. Each of you sent out reconnaissance parties of sound to test the terrain. Once safe, you opened up howitzer volleys that shook the house. This was how you worked out the issues of the day. Your shirt was too short; her hip was killing her; your father was too busy; your mother wasn’t busy enough. The loudest person won the fight—or lost, depending on what you were fighting about.

As Janine wraps up the call, think of Maman.

“Well, listen,” said Janine, “this is really great okay? We’re all excited. I’m going to take this up with the team tomorrow afternoon, but how about a feature with your maman?”

Step 9: Resurrect your maman, who has been dead for seven years.

Step 10: Be a good cellist. Understand that it’s not enough to be a good cellist. Even an exceptional cellist is an ordinary person with abilities that other people have. In this economy, content is king. The unboxing experience is queen. To truly get ahead, you need a story. 

Tiffany and Derrick, the breakout stars from your grad-school cohort, had good stories. You might’ve had one too, if you were willing to look. Eating your almond cookies, tasting the turmeric and the saffron, you wondered if this was your story, even though you grew up eating these cookies out of a box.

But a box is a good place for a story. Your father had Maman cremated, moving her from the hospice center to a box in the closet with your cello. He told you about that, but he didn’t tell his brothers. 

“They would disown me,” he said.

But you’re not really Muslim anymore.

“Not Muslim?”
 

Well, not practicing.

“But she was.”

It’s true. Unlike your uncles, her religion was not ostentatious. It was more like a worry stone she kept in a pocket. You only ever saw it when things got really bad.

You wanted to be outraged at your father. How dare you deny Maman an afterlife. In reality, you’d just spend a year watching tumors invade her liver and spleen. A box was probably a welcome break. Plus she was living with the cello from your childhood, keeping it company. That mattered to you on a surface level—on a meta level too. The fact that it could matter suggested you were still receptive to sentiment. You weren’t irredeemable. As long as Maman and the cello were together, there was a chance you weren’t a shitty person.

Step 11: As you sit on a plane with Janine, think about how seven is a holy number for your people. Or maybe it’s cursed. You don’t remember. Either way, this is very bad. Janine can’t stop talking about how thrilled she is to meet your maman. “The way you write about her, I feel like I know her.”

There have been many opportunities for you to come clean. Many, many opportunities. Last month, you consulted a shady lawyer who said this isn’t technically fraud. You haven’t taken their cash. As long as you back out before money changes hands, you’re fine. The lawyer from the billboard said it was already fraud. Your signature on the contract made it fraud, not the cash. Still, he said, if you back out sooner rather than later, you won’t serve any jail time and you’ll keep the fines and fees to a minimum. In the Lyft, google what is it like in jail.

Since the first call, you’ve spoken to Janine about a dozen times. You’ve emailed every week. You could’ve told her. The pressure. So swept up in the excitement. Carried away. Couldn’t help it. She would have understood. Janine, you’ve realized, is a good person. Once she was ten minutes late to a call because she fed a homeless man outside the Self + Care headquarters. It was like a PR stunt made real. “I don’t understand how I can work in this building with the richest people on the planet, and there’s a homeless guy right outside the lobby.” Her consternation embarrassed you. Your embarrassment did too. And because Janine is a good person, she believed you when you told her your maman despised technology. That was why she wouldn’t get on a video call; if Janine wanted to meet her, she’d have to do it the old-fashioned way. Upon receiving this information, Janine’s head tilted at an angle that suggested racism, that perhaps she’d ask if this was an old-country thing. But she simply nodded. “Whatever makes Maman happy.”

Confide in Kevin, who is incredulous. “How? How did you let this happen?”

It was all so fast—

“But how?”

One minute we were talking about the article, and the next minute she was talking about flights—

“But I don’t understand how it happened.”

It happened because Janine told you she was excited. It has been a long time since you created something that excited someone. You’d almost forgotten how quickly you can get drunk on other people’s expectations. Janine is convinced this article will make you a star. She watched your videos on YouTube, the ones you posted when you were trying to get discovered, back when you were dating the theater guy who knew how to light your cheekbones. “You’re brilliant,” she said. “Your career is finally going to take off after the article comes out. I can’t wait to see it happen.” Kevin is nice, but he can wait. When you give him earplugs to dampen the noise and ask to play for him, he says, Maybe later. Janine said, Definitely now.

It happened because you are not a good person; you are a talented one. For many years, you thought that was the same thing. During grad school, you used to fuck people over. There was that time when you told Monica Francisco Montgomery, the actual pope of the cello, that Derrick and Tiffany didn’t want to study with her because they thought she was a bitch. Neither Derrick nor Tiffany ever did anything wrong. In a way, you didn’t think you were hurting them. This was the natural order. Some people got fucked over, and other people didn’t. When you got ahead and they fell behind, Tiffany turned on you in the hallway: “But I was your friend!” You were shocked to learn that you had friends.
 You were equally shocked to learn when you no longer had any. Recall that it was Monica Francisco Montgomery who had a talk with you about your behavior. In the art world, she said, backstabbing is a tempting but short-term way to get ahead. You made the mistake of believing you were talented enough, and ruthless enough, to turn it into a long-term strategy.

Recall that you showed up for an audition that would make you a name. It was held at some community college in the Bronx. The steps up into the auditorium were Jackson Pollacked with gum. As you ascended, you began to assemble an origin story. Humble beginnings. A first audition. An inauspicious location. You didn’t even get to perform. By the time you arrived, Tiffany had gotten the part. Somebody had tipped her off about a party with all the right people.

That was okay, you thought. You would bide your time. You took small gigs. You busked. At the 72nd Street station, people put five-dollar bills in your cello case. Some toddler called it a coffin and burst into tears.

Recall that the gigs dried up. The agents weren’t interested. High on an episode with a fruit vendor and a bomb scare, the cops cracked down on buskers. Monica Francisco Montgomery stopped returning your emails.

Mercifully, a conductor from Barcelona heard about you from a friend of a friend. His cellist had dropped out. It was all so last-minute, but would you meet? This was a better origin story anyway. In his hotel room, he told you to suck his dick, and you thought, I’m willing to do this. Your own willingness nauseated you. You hadn’t picked up a cello in months. Your native tongue had staled. You turned him down and ducked into a coffeeshop. There, you bought an Americano, did a Monday crossword, and cried until you got a migraine.

Now you’re still talented, but that’s all you are. About a dozen rows behind you and Janine, the plane is stuffed with a video crew: two photographers, a cinematographer, a makeup person, a lighting person, and a guy in a baseball cap and cargo shorts who seems capable but very stressed. It’s no longer just a magazine article; now there’s a mini documentary that will accompany the digital version. In ten minutes, the plane will take off. In five, the plane will land. In eight, you’ll be at your parents’ place in Hayward. Maybe it’s eight that’s cursed.

Step 12: At cruising altitude, duck into the bathroom. Janine is making it impossible to think. It’s not that she’s still talking; it’s that she stopped. The second the plane took off, she stuffed in her earplugs, put on her eye mask, and dropped off with her head against the window. Janine can sleep this easily because everything is going so well for her. She’s an ugly sleeper too. Just hideous. She’s permitted you to see that. Guilt throbs behind your eyeballs.

Review your options. Option one: a medical emergency on the plane. Fainting is easy enough to fake. In your current state, you might not even have to fake it. Option two: when you land, pretend to receive a text that your maman has died. The issue is your parents. To avoid a wasted trip, Janine would definitely want to meet them. There’s no way they could keep up such a sophisticated facade. Option three: You could make up a story about the hospital needing you to return immediately. But you’re not a surgeon. You work at a gift shop. Janine knows that. Option four: you could tell the truth.

Stare at your bloodshot eyes in the mirror, torturing yourself by playing it out. I’m so sorry, Janine, there’s something I have to tell you. Maybe that could be the article instead. The cellist who tricked her editor. You could tell her this was your design from the very beginning. You wanted to interrogate the role of truth in the stories we tell about food.

Someone is knocking on the door. Tell yourself you must collapse on a plan before you leave this bathroom. If you’re a monster, shouldn’t you go all the way? Shouldn’t you fuck her over the way you fucked over Tiffany and Derrick? Except that Tiffany is a cellist for the Boston Pops and Derrick plays the flute with a traveling symphony that reimagines Metallica songs. You whisper for your maman.

When you were eight years old, you got out of bed for a glass of water and heard your name in your parents’ bedroom. You put your ear to the gap between door and carpet. The teacher had called, apparently, to let them know there had been an incident. Two girls. Friends of yours. Manipulated against each other. You mouthed the word manipulate, a grown-up verb for what you had done: spread a rumor that A had told B’s secret to B’s sworn enemy, and that B had betrayed A’s cheating to their teacher. “Is there something wrong with her?” your mother was saying. When you think of that incident now, you remember the smell of carpet cleaner and wood polish, and the amount of room your name took up in your parents’ conversation, you remember the word manipulate, but you can’t remember the reason you did it. “Is she…what? Like your brother.”

“She’s growing. Give her time.”

“It’s in the genes.”

“She’s not a sociopath. She’s learning. These qualities will probably help her in the real world. A woman in business.”

The next morning, your maman came in to sing. But you weren’t practicing. She poked your side to ask you what was wrong.

Nothing. It’s okay.

She glared at you. Your maman was short and fat, with massive thighs and hands that could kill. They’d stopped just short of killing. As much as you loved her, Maman’s tendency to reach for corporeal solutions to behavioral problems has not aged well. You were afraid of her. It wasn’t the fear your father had growing up, that he would stray too far and she’d reach for a broom or a shoe. Married at fourteen, a mother at sixteen, widowed at twenty-three, an immigrant at forty, your maman had become a builder. She built walls between her body and the world. Anything could make the wall go up. Nothing could make her tear it down. You had to wait.

You feared the wall. When the wall was up, you’d look in her face and see nothing, a vampire in front of a mirror. Her voice self-destructed on impact. The wall hadn’t gone up yet, but you could sense her reaching for her tools. Even if she couldn’t understand what you were saying, she could tell when you were lying. She hated lies. But you weren’t about to ask Maman if you were a sociopath. You weren’t about to tell her about the knot of barbs that lived in your chest and made you do things that you regretted because you wanted, so badly, to be liked. So you picked up your cello, praying for her to understand that you needed the wall to stay unbuilt. You began to play. You played and she didn’t sing. But she didn’t leave, and the wall didn’t go up either.

Make your way back to your seat. The video crew is mostly asleep. Everyone on the plane is watching Friends or Scarface.

Find Janine awake when you return. “All good?”

Pretend not to hear.

Listen as she raises her voice, asks again.

Tell her there’s something that you need to say.

Step 13: Pour the dry ingredients into the stand mixer, then add the wet ingredients. Using the paddle attachment, start beating at the lowest speed. Recall the emails you sent Janine at the beginning. They were full of feeling because you were too. You’d spent three years working in a hospital, three summers. You’d never had any particular attachment to summer, but summer in a hospital is like winter in a desert. Cold, dry, vast, empty. The almond cookies gave you a shot of warmth that reminded you of Maman. This was the part of the pandemic when people were saying goodbye over iPads and through PPE, when you were learning new acronyms every day. It was also the part when you thought you loved Kevin. You were sitting at that cafe with the overdressed waiters, in a plastic chair by the street, when you told him, I love you, and he said, What? And you said, I’m ordering another coffee. In your email to Janine, you were full of goodwill: you’d been baking these cookies, and they were amazing, so you just wanted to share them with the world. You wrote to her with a sense of possibility, as if you were stuffed in the closet with the cello and Maman. Who knows what the next few minutes might hold? An iPad, a face mask, a new love, another coffee—

Step 14: Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. If you don’t have foil, use parchment paper. If you don’t have parchment paper, you’re out of luck. Tell Janine you’re not sure how to say this. Maman has gone missing.

Janine is ashen. “She’s gone missing?”
This morning.

“Has somebody, the police—”

This happens sometimes. She gets confused.

What an insult to your maman, whose faculties were sharp even at the end. She’d understood every beep and sigh. You’d prayed for the wall, which never went up.

“We’ll play it by ear.”

Janine can’t stop glancing behind her, where the crew is sitting. The cost of this trip is incalculable. That’s not true. The problem is that it is very calculable, and in fact, somebody has calculated it. The cost to them means additional cost to you if you are caught.

Regret your lie, even though you had no choice.

Recall that you did have a choice—several, actually.

For want of a different plan, head toward your parents when the plane lands. You have to take three Lyfts because there are so many of you. If you don’t have parchment paper, wipe the tray down with nonstick spray. Shape the batter into balls. It’s not batter, it’s dough. Is there a difference? Stop! you want to say. Stop the car!

“What? What’s wrong?”

Realize you’ve said it.

Tell Janine your blood sugar is low. You need to get something to eat. You don’t want to pass out in the back of the Lyft.

“Oh, of course. It’s been a long day. We should all get something to eat.”

In the restaurant with the patio and the vegan pizza, you duck into a bathroom again. Splash water on your face. Your skin is dry from the plane. Around your mouth, it’s peeling.

Take stock of everything you parents know. They know about the article, more or less. They know you’re bringing a crew from Self + Care to their house, but they’re unclear on why. You need to flesh out the story before they blow it. If that happens, you’ll resent them, which is easy; you hardly ever see them. When you do see them, they taste your batter and trip over Kevin’s shoes and then they’re out of the house for good.

Call the shady lawyer, whose secretary picks up. “Can I take a message?”

An emergency consultation, could we—

“Sorry, he’s out of town.”

Call the reputable lawyer, whose face is on a billboard. “This is Joseph.”

It’s an emergency. Maman has gone missing.

“I’m sorry, who did you say this was?”

There’s a vent above your head in the bathroom. If you remove the grate, you could crawl through. Disappear. Reinvent yourself in a new country. Nobody has to know. Or could you turn around and tell Janine the truth. This is a path to fame and fortune too. The article would go viral. The documentary would hit Netflix. Pitch her: this is our chance to make a mark.
Step 15: Eat vegan pizza with Janine. Shot glasses of water are lined up on the table with yellow pocket squares beneath them. Janine keeps stacking and unstacking the glasses. Her anxiety is leaking. Tell her you’re sorry.

“For what?”

It’s such a hassle.

“I’m sure you’re crazy worried,” she says, unstacking. Across the patio, the competent guy in cargo shorts is handing out bottles of organic soda.
 You lean in, which is what women are supposed to do. You tell her you have another idea for the article.

“We don’t need to think about that right now.”

But seriously, though. We do.

“I’m telling you, it can wait.”

She means it too. You don’t want to fuck over Janine. You really don’t. But you should’ve thought about that a while ago. Recall the gift shop, the early days. You started working at the hospital when Maman was sick, a few weeks after the doctor with the motorcycle showed you the 3D images. At the sight of the tumors—shockingly round, like Cuties—you thought of the barbs in your chest. Was this what they looked like? You were in your twenties but acting like a five-year-old, trying to absolve yourself with magical thinking. There was no cancer that made you mean. At the gift shop, you scrutinized the people who walked in, hoping their grief would tell you something you didn’t know. Not always grief, of course. Sometimes a parent died and it was a relief. Sometimes a sibling went and they were pissed, how could he overdose after he promised? Playing the cello with Maman, you’d felt fluent in a second language. You handed over a teddy bear, the ribbon around its neck catching on the register, and you hoped that this would be your Rosetta Stone, this woman whose granddaughter was fighting her second round of leukemia. But why? Janine wasn’t your friend, or maybe she was. Maybe you’d find out after she landed a spot on the symphony.

Janine—

“Don’t.” She holds up a hand. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Step 16: Hug your parents. Introduce Janine. Squirm as your parents pass around a box of almond cookies. The atmosphere is like a Title IX hearing. Your baffled parents are playing host. The crew has spread out, photographing stuff at random. Convinced she’s intruding on your family emergency, Janine is strained and contrite. Taking a cookie, she cracks a joke about the lack of turmeric and then falls silent. But your parents laugh. Relieved, Janine joins in. What she does not know is that they used this same laugh to signal your ex-boyfriend was too stupid for you. Feel bad for Janine because she thinks she’s bonding with them.

Bake the cookies at three fifty for twelve minutes. Check them at ten. They’re usually done at fourteen. The cookies are baked. The idea isn’t. You’re going to tell her, sort of. You’re going to show her. Janine is explaining that she’s very interested in the origin of your cookies, in your maman. You ask your parents where she is. There’s a bracing sense of cold, like mortality or a waiting room. You ask your parents where she is.

“Who, Maman? Back in Iran.”

What?

Your dad is speaking. “We didn’t tell you?”

When?

“A few months ago.”

Janine is beginning to understand, but not fully. She understands Maman is gone. The word gone leaves too much room for interpretation.

Run to your parents’ bedroom, where your cello is stiff like those bodies that fall out of the closet in old murder mysteries. No Maman, only the cello and bow. They’ve shipped her remains to Iran, but why? Alone? Janine calls to you from the doorway, asking if she can come in. She is still fascinating, polished, hitting all the right notes with her condolences. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be,” she says. “But she must have missed her home. How long had she been away?”

Pull the cookies out of the oven, out of the closet, the cello. Place your tongue against the roof of your mouth. Move slowly. Don’t startle the strings. The last argument you had before Maman went into hospice was a bad one. After the conductor in the hotel room, you’d moved back in with your parents. She was disappointed in you. You didn’t tell Maman or your parents why you’d left New York, so they assumed you lacked the skill or tenacity to succeed. It was easier to let them believe that. Maman telegraphed her feelings with a tune that was meant for clapping along. You played a screed. By the end, you’d met somewhere in the middle.

Burn your fingers as you pick it up. Toss it from hand to hand until it cools.

Janine is directing the crew to watch. Their cameras are bright.

Ignore them. Ignore your parents.

Exhale. Bite in.

The vocabulary is unfamiliar, but it’s still yours. Almond flour and goji berries. Rosewater, saffron, turmeric. Let it cool for a while when you’re done. Return to it later. The taste might be different. It might be the same.

E.R. Ramzipoor is the author of The Ventriloquists from Park Row Books (HarperCollins). Their Pushcart-nominated work has appeared in the North American Review, the South Carolina Review, Slate, fractured lit, McSweeney’s, and Salon. They teach writing for Hugo House, and they have an MFA from Brooklyn College, where they received the Irwin Lainoff Scholarship and the Renee Margulies Foundation Scholarship.