A portfolio of my writing and editing highlights
WEB EDITING AND CONTENT STRATEGY
Allina Health
Serving as the Web Content Editor for Allina Health, I respond to internal requests to update the allinahealth.org website. I prize accuracy, clarity, and welcoming language. Although my work is all over the website, I’m linking to the Orthopedics service line page because it’s one that I’ve worked on recently.
University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business
I was the OCB’s (as we called it internally) Web and Digital Content Manager from 2011-16. I determined content strategy at both the site and page levels, and wrote and edited copy for the website. Here I’m linking directly to the MS Degree in Business Analytics program page because it’s a subsection that I was very involved with building, at both the structural and content levels, and it retains most of its character from when I was involved.
WRITING – HIGHLIGHTS
Capella University
This is a PDF extract of an interactive educational simulation that I wrote for Capella University; these educational video games required juggling several skills: working with subject matter experts to determine the information necessary for a given simulation, and then writing a scenario and dialogue that conveyed this information in a way that was both engaging and accurate. This simulation was for a master’s-level social work class.
Slate.com
I’ve written several articles for Slate covering books and culture. The one linked above compares the contrasting ways the Beastie Boys and the comedian Louis C.K. have dealt with problematic actions in their pasts. Other articles I’ve written for Slate have looked at a reissue of the seminal graphic novel From Hell and reconsidered the work of the novelist Tom Robbins.
Art Is My Middle Name
This is a Substack newsletter that I started in 2019 to explore ideas that fascinated me while I was getting a master’s in art history. The newsletter saw robust growth in both subscriber count and email open rates; it was also a lot of fun.
The particular issue linked to here is one that I’m particularly fond of, an exploration of whether internet memes count as comics.
The Kraken Busters
Is an independent podcast that I created, based on a manuscript I’d written. A fictional alternate history story about sea monsters, it’s noteworthy for having garnered over 5,000 downloads with no promotion beyond my own personal social media presence.
WRITING: MORE EXAMPLES!
Here are some further examples of my writing that I’m proud of; in some cases, these were freelance pieces for outlets that no longer exist, so they were reposted to my personal website.
Tom Clancy and the Dubious Comfort of Boomer Dads – I read a mountain of Tom Clancy books and then had thoughts about what some people are looking for in American politics.
Thomas Eakins, Brushing Against the Limits of Science – An art historical examination about a great American painter of the 19th century who palled around with scientists who thought they’d discovered everything, and how that belief blew up in their and Eakins’ faces.
Your Favorite Band is Probably Just Fine – A jeremiad against music snobbery and gatekeeping, embedded in a discussion of a couple of music podcasts.
Journal of a New COBRA Recruit (2002)
Journal Of A Seasoned COBRA Veteran (2006)
Journal of a COBRA Special Forces Veteran (2011)
These three ridiculous, linked humor pieces for the online literary magazine McSweeney’s mock the cartoons of my youth. I’m proud to say that I got some nice emails from Larry Hama, the guy who wrote the Marvel G.I. Joe comics in the 80s (which were actually really good, and not much like the very silly TV cartoons) about these pieces. The first one was later anthologized in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002 and Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney’s Humor Category.
Portrait of the Artist as a Non-Artist – An article for the defunct Twin Cities outlet The Rake about National Novel Writing Month, approaching it by reviewing my own terrible NaNoWriMo output.
Go Loudly into the Night – Another Rake piece covering an adult “rock band” class at MacPhail Music Center.
ARTPAL! is an art podcast I did for two seasons, before it transformed into the newsletter linked above. Season one is a rogue audioguide to a collection of works on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; season two is an alternate guide to notable works of architecture in Minnesapolis. The show in general is my attempt to make the stuff I learned in grad school fun and accessible.
Eschaton Lite – This is a set of playable rules I wrote for the Eschaton game which figures prominently in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. This piece was in turn the basis for a story in Outside Magazine.
Nowhere Band is my now-completed webcomic about the experiences of a band that’s never going to get off the bottom rung of the music-scene ladder. It may be a touch autobiographical. During its 10-year run, Nowhere Band received favorable writeups from Minnesota Public Radio, City Pages, and MetaFilter.com, among others.
The Iowa City Police Log is a comic strip I drew from 2020-22. Every morning, I got up, consulted the twitter feed of the Iowa City Police Log, and drew a one-panel cartoon based on it. The resulting comics were posted to a Twitter thread and to my Instagram feed, in both cases paired with their inciting Police Log entry. The resulting comics get posted to a Twitter thread and to my Instagram feed, in both cases paired with their inciting Police Log entry. TPT, Minnesota’s Public Television station, did a short piece on them, where I talked about my process and motivations.