Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to tell women’s stories on TV I go

I have some exciting news, folks: I'm getting an MFA in TV writing. My mission: To change the way women's stories are depicted in popular culture. I did a lot of soul searching after the election last year and realized that: I must urgently devote my life to making sure this never happens again, and …

The pain of conditioning my daughter for public school

Earlier this summer, I saw that an editor at Catapult, Morgan Jerkins, was looking for stories about education. I dashed off a quick note, saying that I'd been chewing on an idea for an essay about the tension between conditioning my 5yo daughter for public school at the same time I'm trying to let go …

Dear Pepsi: Hard pass, thanks.

What kills me is how much money you must have spent on this, all in an effort to appear "woke," all in an effort to sell us sugary crap that's bad for us.

If you actually gave a shit, how about spending even a nickel of that budget on creating actual social change?

A story about buttering bread and learning to ask “why?”

We were in high school, young and in love, and my parents had invited us to join them for dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in Washington, DC.

As we waited for our meals to arrive, we all started to help ourselves to the bread basket sitting in the middle of the table. Jordan began smoothing butter across the slice of bread he'd selected.

"Jordan," one of my parents said (I can't remember which one). "That's not the way to butter bread."

"Sorry — what?"

"The way you're doing it, putting all the butter on at once. It's more polite to tear off a piece at a time and butter each piece — like this," my parent showed him.

Jordan looked around like he might be on an episode of Candid Camera — like, "Was this shit for real?" — and then proceeded to ask a very reasonable question: "Why?"

Now, I say this was a reasonable question, and it was. You might also argue that it was an obvious one. And you might wonder, now that you find yourself thinking about it, why anyone would ever go along with a prescribed way of applying butter to bread without asking why.

It had never occurred to me to ask why.

There are certain things that happen in your life, and from that point forward, you think, always, in terms of "before" and "after." For me, this moment — the moment with the buttering of the bread — was one of those moments.

Superheroes in yoga pants who feed the hungry

We need to show our kids what real superheroes look like. 

It’s time to learn how to communicate (our democracy depends on it)

New touch pads on Macbooks — whee! I can use an emoji more easily on my laptop! My phone gets slimmer; it can store more photos, music, stuff. For too long, innovation in communication has meant faster, shinier toys. What about better connection between humans? The future of our democracy hinges on our ability to get this right.

Dismantling the GOP that made Trump possible

What no one has put forth (that I've seen, and PLEASE, tell me I'm wrong), and what to me is central to all of this, is how to dismantle the GOP machinery that cynically, methodically, and with billions of dollars of support, brought us to the place. Brilliant, creative fellow citizens: What can we do to defeat this cancer?

When the culture gets toxic, art is the ultimate disruptor

We live in times that can feel toxic and bleak. But (and) we have power, every single one of us, to help make the world we want to live in. Maybe you don't self-conceive as an artist, but you are a maker; we all are. Every act, every word, it's part of the story of this world.

Where are all the grown-up Punky Brewsters?

Where are the adult female characters who march to their own beat, who exist beyond the frame of a man's adoration?

Trump and the danger of underestimating media’s power

I got mad. So I published this piece on Medium. That's all.