Stranger Species is a collection of interconnected personal and lyrical essays that illustrate and dissect the biological and psychological forces that drive humans to act. While essays in the collection prove the narrator's need to believe that we are animals first and human beings second and that sex and persistence to survive are proof of our animalism, essays simultaneously counter-argue that humans-our emotions, weaknesses, and consciousness-are unique to our species, separating us from the animal world. Throughout the collection, fear resonates that we do not control our desires and ultimately our lives, that biology and our deep seeded psychological inadequacies drive us blindly and often recklessly towards our species' survival never asking for our permission, leaving us to wonder why we do the strange things that we do. The narrator uses research and her experience to explore genetics, reproduction, desire, loneliness, binding societal constructions, control, and loss.

Ascending Mango Hill is a collection of work that represents me. The intention is to connect with readers by depicting protagonists who are unable to fit in, a theme most readers can relate to. Many times the protagonist must find the courage to confront a situation rather than remain quiet. The collection is separated into two sections: The Essays and The Short Stories. The essays detail my own experiences at being an outsider while exploring the topics of family and personal growth. In the stories, characters must overcome unresolved childhood issues, recognize unhealthy relationships, and decide when to set off on new journeys. I bring the sections together by using my travel experiences as the setting for several stories. Aspects of who I am show up in the stories through character motivation and characterization. Ultimately, Ascending Mango Hill is a reflection of the girl I was, the woman I hoped to be, and the woman I have become.

The literary essays in this collection explore the relationships between mind, body, and environment as the narrator explores Orlando, her beachfront hometown of Sarasota, and other "tourist traps." The traditional and experimental essays here question how residents make popular vacation destinations their own and how much trust one can put in strangers, neighbors, city planners, theme-park designers, and lovers. Dance floors, hybrid bikes, flying elephants, swing sets, and swimming pools fill these pages. Worries spiral like disco lights on dance floors, and cultural forces press down with the constant pressure of pedal strokes. With the embodiment of place comes connection between environment and activity; music, buildings, landscape, and physical activity heighten the relationship between personal identity and place. Everything moves, but the appeal of tourist traps remains constant.

Engine Running: Essays is a collection of creative nonfiction that explores, in parts, a persona's distancing from home and self against the backdrop of an increasingly fractured family doing the same. Through a variety of forms, the essays seek to balance themes like loss, self-discovery, and manhood in reflections on the role of childhood memory, the early revelations and experimentation of sexuality, and the carving-out of personal identity in West Texas.

The Divine Coming of the Light is a memoir-in-essays that covers an experience, from 2007 to 2010, when I lived in Kosuge Village (population 900), nestled in the mountains of central Japan. I was the only foreigner there. My memoir uses these three years as a frame to investigate how landscape affects identity. The book profiles who I was before Japan (an evangelical and then wilderness guide), why I became obsessed with mountains, and the fall-out from mountain obsession to a humanistic outlook. The path my narrator takes is one of a mountain hike. I was born in tabletop-flat West Texas to conservative, Christian parents in the second most Republican county by votes in America. At 19, I made my first backpacking trip to the San Juan Mountains of western Colorado and was awed by their outer-planetary-like massiveness. However, two friends and I became lost in the wilderness for three days without cell phones. During this time, an obsession possessed me as we found our way back through the peaks to safety, a realization that I could die out there, yes, but amid previously unknown splendor. I developed an addiction to mountains that weakened my religious faith. Like the Romantic poets before me, God transferred from the sky to the immense landscape. I jettisoned my beliefs and became an outdoor wilderness instructor. On every peak I traveled up, I hoped to recreate that first conversion experience when I was lost in the woods. After college, while teaching English in Kosuge Village, I learned about the mountain-worshipping religion Shugendo: a mixture of Buddhism, Shintoism, and Shamanism. I climbed dozens of peaks, spending several days backpacking. However, while in Japan, I was nearly fatally injured on a solo, month-long hike. I saw the accident as a warning and turned my attention to studying writing and literature. When I came to Japan, I went up mountains, but as I left, I came down. The book profiles my experiences with mountains and my double disillusionment, leveling off with a humanistic outlook, leaving the narrator less a wanderer but more willing to empathize with other people.

"Latchkey: A Memoir in Essays" is an essay collection that follows the narrator through her childhood as it relates to being raised a latchkey kid in the 1980s. The lack of published academic studies that follow children through their experience as latchkey kids and into adulthood leaves personal exploration as the primary means through which a child, specifically a young girl, can seek understanding as to how her view of the world develops. Each of the five essays explores issues of autonomy, self-efficacy, sexuality, addiction, and familial bonds. It is through her reflection of specific events – the loss of a father to his addictions, caring for a mother in the early stages of dementia, recognizing the trauma of sexual abuse – that she gains a precarious understanding of how she perceives herself, the concept of unconditional love, and the world around her.

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