I was born in Germany and grew up in Colorado. Like many immigrant kids, I learned my English from primetime TV and the Saturday morning cartoons. My parents spoke to me in German, and -- to their dismay -- I started answering in English before the boxes were even unpacked. I have degrees from Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley and Irvine.

My fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Pushcart Prize XXXVI, One Story, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, Third Coast, Fairy Tale Review, Bellingham Review, Beloit Fiction Journal and others. I am a student in the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. I am currently at work on a novel based on my story "Dead Languages," which appeared in The Southern Review.

My debut collection of stories, Rise, received the 2011 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (selected by Laura Kasischke) and will be published by Sarabande Books in August 2012.