Artist Statement
I am a fiction writer and essayist who explores notions of home, place, and regionalism in Michigan and the Midwest. I self-publish and make books under the name of the Topophiliac Project. “Topophilia” is a neologism from geographer Yi-Fu Tuan literally translating to “love of place,” which I have borrowed and expanded into the identity of the topophiliac, someone with an affinity for—to obsessive or at least mysterious degrees—the concept of place, from cities to rural environs, neighborhoods to census regions, street corners to yardsales. I consider myself a topophiliac, and so almost everything I write, create, and think about comes back to this central idea: an urgent curiosity and almost bodily desire to figure out the puzzle that is place and our identification with it.
In his poem “A Primer,” Bob Hicok writes, “You never forget / how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.” My Midwest runs to the mythic, the disproportionate, the surreal, the absurd. Here, thunderstorms turn the air nuclear green, the doomsdays preppers are indistinguishable from the Bible thumpers, and blueberry festivals erect tents next to superfund sites. I am inspired by dystopian climate futures and the mundane apocalypse, Gothic and Southern Gothic traditions, post-industrial landscapes, and the very specific brand of Midwestern humor that spans the macabre to the undetectably wry. My writing experiments with fragmentation, found/form structures, compression, and braided narratives as well as photography, typography, and collage. As Hicok notes, being from a place is less a fact than a process, and I am constantly on the hunt for artifacts, jokes, legends, maps, histories, and other ephemera to create what I hope forms a living taxonomy of what it means to be from this, or any, place.
Recently I have shifted to self-publishing after over seven years of pursuing and working in traditional literary publishing and journal editing. I began the Topophiliac Project in 2020 to publish my own short stories, zines, and other writing and art projects. I am interested in bringing together the often-siloed worlds of writing and bookmaking to create tangible artifacts of my own work that can be held, read, and shared. It is important to me that my writing is read and known by those closest in proximity to me, my own community and region where I live. As a self-appointed topophiliac, I want to make artifacts that will both speak to and live in the spaces that inspire and enable my work.
