Writing
The Ballad of My Personal Greatness — A Novel
Leonard, a scientist from the Layer Up, zaps into human society, embedding himself among a group of eight friends and gifting The Scoreboard — a hologrammatic list that ranks who would trade places with whom — to Ralph, the most neurotic of the bunch, ranking him last in order to catalyze ego clashes. This implants a lifegoal in Ralph to reach Number One in the rankings, which will require him not only to grow his own fortune but also to curtail the fortunes of his best friends.
Paris In Between — A Novel
Benjamin Jacobs moves to Paris with the goal of reaching Layer 3 of Parisian life, where Layer 1 is the ooh-Eiffel-Tower tourist, Layer 2 is the one-year expat who speaks the language a bit and has some sense for the neighborhoods, and Layer 3 is a person who can really strum it. His prospects for a Victorious Return back to the US, however, fade as the book he’s working on requires more revisions, the business he’s been ideating proves unfeasible, and the ballet dancer he’s courting rebuffs him.
Good Things Also Happen — A Novel
Twenty-eight-year-old Fréderic L’Enfant doesn’t just want to feel younger, he wants to physically re-inhabit his childhood body. To do so, his first solution is to create a company that hypnotizes adults into feeling like kids before setting them loose on an adult-sized playground. His second solution is to get drunk with a giant red exercise ball that he calls Glarg and hang out with 16-year-olds. His final solution is to disappear. The main question posed by Fréderic’s story is: How does an adult reconcile the fact that he’s moving further-and-further away from his youth?
Journalism — Articles I wrote for The Atlantic
For one year I had the privilege of working as an Editorial Fellow at The Atlantic. While I was very low-level and most of the day-to-day involved copy-editing and transcribing interviews, I was able to publish 12 articles, carving out a beat that I describe as "international cultural quirks". Article subjects include sauna culture in Finland, rules for touching members of the British royal family, and medical coverage for those who winter in Antarctica.