Projects
Humorous social media marketing. 2020-2022.
Datamatch is a free matchmaking service created by college students for college students, with more than 35,000 participants every year. At WashU, I wrote survey questions that went viral, as well as PR emails and flyers for our spectacular flyer campaign known as 'painting the campus pink.' During my tenure, we reached 50% student body engagement, attaining the fastest growth metrics of all 46 participating universities. Hopefully this speaks more to the strength of my team's writing rather than to the loneliness of WashU students!
While Datamatch was a seasonal project for Valentine's Day, I continued in this capacity year-round by anonymously running the @washumissedconnections Instagram page. I curated classifieds, answered a surprising number of requests for dating advice, and doubled the number of followers—this too now reaches half of WashU's 8,000 undergrads. I'm most proud, however, to have genuinely connected more than a dozen couples.
Longform Journalism. 2022.
I spent my final months in St. Louis interviewing and volunteering for trailblazers in the local food movement. I worked with organizers of community gardens, entrepreneurs of composting and community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs, and leaders of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. The ensuing article jointly profiles three influential people involved in different aspects of local food, providing a comprehensive, in-depth view of the city's innovative solutions. The project was a way for me to give back to the city I had called home for four years, and to provide proof of concept for cooperative and sustainable business models that I hope will become widespread. You can read my article here.
Additionally, my close friend Daniel Goldberg (no relation!) was completing an environmental ethics project at the same time. We turned our conversations about our explorations into Goldbergs' Local Foodcast, which features clips from my interviews and provides a very informal guide to eating well.
Pilot screenplay. 2020.
Before he became the biblical Abraham, the father of monotheism, the teenage Avram struggled for survival in a world where 70 gods warred with each other with no concern for human casualties. Avram makes an unprecedented alliance with Yahweh, the god of war, who claims that the two of them working together can destroy the other deities and create a safe world under one God — provided Yahweh gets to become that omnipotent being.
The God of Canaan draws from the familiar yet underexplored worlds of biblical, Egyptian, and Ugarit mythology. Avram and his wife Sarai’s journey through the ancient Middle East reimagines Noah's flood, the binding of Isaac, the 10 plagues, and more in a new epic that still wrestles with our timeless questions of faith and divine justice. Altogether, The God of Canaan may just become the world’s new creation myth.
Book Reviews. 2017-Present.
At The Unmasked Raccoon I review every book I read, produce a variety of other bookworm content, and provide feedback to other writers who submit their work. You can subscribe here.
Interactive Spoken-Word Poetry. 2016-Present.
"Dancing Fire, Lion's Might" started as one of a series of legends I wrote within another story. I imagined having characters tell these stories around a campfire, enthralling and inspiring the protagonist, who would later learn that these were in fact the stories of his own life, displaced in time. The best way for me to test whether this poem could grip an audience was to perform it myself, an exhilarating mission that led to the current iteration.
The poem begins with the speaker teaching the audience cues for a refrain and a percussive, collective heartbeat. I've recited the poem by memory at a handful of events, and audience feedback has proven that this unforgettably unique style can captivate and unite a whole room.
You can read my poem here. As it is meant to be a folk legend, I welcome readers bringing it to their own campfires.
