SHORT STORIES

“The Veiled One” — The Adroit Journal (Issue Forty-Eight, January 2024)

“Brown Mirror” (reprint) — Narrating Pakistan: An Anthology of Contemporary Creative Writing (Fall 2023)

“Threshold” — Pithead Chapel (April 1, 2023)

“Uncle Samir” — The Ex-Puritan (August 29, 2022)

“Los Angeles Bar Crawl” — Maudlin House (May 5, 2022)

“Requiem” — Made in L.A. Vol. 4: Beyond the Precipice (May 1, 2022)

“My Racist Girlfriend” — New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (November 16, 2021)

“novels_im_going_to_write.docx” — X-R-A-Y (August 6, 2021)

“Brown Mirror” — Triangle House Review (August 2019)

“Grand Tour” — Barrelhouse (June 10, 2019)

“American Madrassa” — Arcturus (October 22, 2018)

“The World’s Secret Heartbeat” — Metaphorosis (December 2016)

“The Janissary” — The Massachusetts Review (Volume 57, Issue 2, Summer 2016)

NONFICTION

“From the Political to the Personal: The Evolution of the Spy Film After the Cold War” — Wealth of Geeks (April 8, 2024)

“Portrait of a Society in ‘The Barbarian Nurseries’” — Alta (December 2, 2021)

“In Defense of Plot: An Analysis of the Tension in The Great Gatsby“ — The Kenyon Review blog (August 27, 20201)

“Writing about Writers: On Roberto Bolaño’s Last Evenings on Earth” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 13, 2021)

“All Literature is Description“ — The Kenyon Review blog (June 10, 2021)

“Expletives and Compound Sentences, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Write Like Hemingway” — The Kenyon Review blog (June 3, 2021)

“What We Think of as Universal Was Once Political” — The Kenyon Review blog (June 2, 2021)

“Writing with Sentence Rhythm in Mind” — The Kenyon Review blog (March 14, 2021)

“Writing Scenes in Fiction with Establishing ‘Shots'” — The Kenyon Review blog (March 8, 2021)

“The Circuit Board Metaphor in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49“ — The Kenyon Review blog (January 14, 2021)

“What Writers of Color Can Get from the Canon” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 11, 2021)

“A Year in Reading: Aatif Rashid” — The Millions (December 14, 2020)

“Structuring a Novel from Life: On Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time” — The Kenyon Review blog (December 9, 2020)

“On Artists Representing Themselves”— The Kenyon Review blog (November 17, 2020)

“On Describing Cities”— The Kenyon Review blog (September 30, 2020)

“On the Power of Ambiguity in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”— The Kenyon Review blog (September 24, 2020)

“On Fiction and Morality”— The Kenyon Review blog (September 5, 2020)

“On Nabokov’s Tingle in the Spine”— The Kenyon Review blog (August 20, 2020)

“When Authors Revise their Novels after Publication”— The Kenyon Review blog (July 23, 2020)

“A Character is Not a Person”— The Kenyon Review blog (July 2, 2020)

“On Brideshead Revisited and the Allure of the ‘Catholic’ Novel”— The Kenyon Review blog (June 13, 2020)

“The Line Between Critique and Endorsement” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 31, 2020)

“How Long Does it Take to Write a Novel” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 18, 2020)

“Writing Fiction in the Age of Cinema” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 12, 2020)

“Can Novels Become Irrelevant?” — The Kenyon Review blog (April 14, 2020)

“What Kind of Literature Should You Read in a Pandemic?” — The Kenyon Review blog (April 1, 2020)

“On Comedic Similes in P.G. Wodehouse” — The Kenyon Review blog (March 25, 2020)

“On Lighting Scenes in Fiction” — The Kenyon Review blog (March 17, 2020)

“How to Write Funny Prose: Close-Reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise“ — The Kenyon Review blog (March 5, 2020)

“How Learning Grammar Transformed My Writing” — The Kenyon Review blog (February 21, 2020)

“On Empathy and Politics” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 28, 2020)

“On Destiny and Fate in Storytelling” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 9, 2020)

“Why Revenge of the Sith is a Good Movie Ruined by Excessive Fan Service” — Medium (December 27, 2019)

“Why Attack of the Clones is Way Better than You Remember” — Medium (December 25, 2019)

“Why The Phantom Menace is Actually an Ironic Masterpiece” — Medium (December 24, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: Why California is the Most Important State in the Democratic Primary” — Medium (December 19, 2019)

“On Shakespeare and Universality”— The Kenyon Review blog (December 17, 2019)

“What is an Author” — The Kenyon Review blog (December 2, 2019)

“Model United Nations is Just Neoliberal Cosplay” — Medium (November 20, 2019)

“On Third Person” — The Kenyon Review blog (November 20, 2019)

“Eclipsed by the Racial Shadow of Shakespeare’s Othello” — Lit Hub (October 30, 2019)

“On Writing Outside Your Own Experience” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 29, 2019)

“Revisiting ‘Show, Don’t Tell'” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 24, 2019)

“Why We Should Call it Art” — The Kenyon Review blog (September 30, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: The Effect of Open Primaries” — Medium (September 24, 2019)

“What Makes a Character Human?” — The Kenyon Review blog (September 16, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: Close-Reading Biden’s First Campaign Ad” — Medium (August 23, 2019)

“On Capturing the Banality of History” — The Kenyon Review blog (August 14, 2016)

“The 2020 Election: On the Aesthetics of a Debate” — Medium (August 5, 2019)

“On the Importance of the Authorial Voice” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 26, 2019)

“On Writing as Wish Fulfillment” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 16, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: Lessons from 2004” — Medium (July 15, 2019)

“On Reading Your Work Out Loud” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 9, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: On the Necessity of Ideological Consistency” — Medium (July 5, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: Bernie’s Vision Takes Center Stage” — Medium (June, 28, 2019)

“Ken Kesey’s Keyhole of Literature” — The Kenyon Review blog (June 19, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: On the Possibility of Political Realignment” — Medium (June 7, 2019)

“On the World War II Novel” — The Kenyon Review blog (June 7, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: The Ghost of George McGovern” — Medium (May 24, 2019)

“Close-Reading the Rhythm of a Thomas Pynchon Sentence” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 22, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: Close-Reading Candidate Announcement Videos” — Medium (May 17, 2019)

“On Richard Powers’s The Overstory” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 14, 2019)

“The 2020 Election: Narrative vs Data” — Medium (May 10, 2019)

“In Defense of a Literary Canon” — The Kenyon Review blog (April 26, 2019)

“Do We Write for Others or For Ourselves” — The Kenyon Review blog (April 22, 2019)

“Why I Love and Hate Game of Thrones” — Medium (April 10, 2019)

“On Mixed Metaphors in Gorgani’s Vis and Ramin” — The Kenyon Review blog (April 5, 2019)

“In Defense of Walter Scott, Part 2” — The Kenyon Review blog (March 15, 2019)

“On Novels that Span a Lifetime” — The Kenyon Review blog (March 5, 2019)

“In Defense of On the Road” — The Kenyon Review blog (February 27, 2019)

“On George Orwell and Sensory Detail in Writing” — The Kenyon Review blog (February 13, 2019)

“On Subtlety and Meaning in Fiction” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 29, 2019)

“On Borges’s ‘The Secret Miracle'” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 23, 2019)

“On the Creative Value of Unproductive Time” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 16, 2019)

“On the Three-Act Structure” — The Kenyon Review blog (January 11, 2019)

“On Rereading Books” — The Kenyon Review blog (December 28, 2019)

“On Character Motivation: The Personal vs The Political” — The Kenyon Review blog (December 19, 2019)

“In Defense of Long Sentences” — The Kenyon Review blog (December 12, 2018)

“Should Writers Be Conscious of the Artistic Movements of Their Time?” — The Kenyon Review blog (December 3, 2018)

“In Defense of Walter Scott” — The Kenyon Review blog (November 29, 2018)

“On Why I Like Travel Writing” — The Kenyon Review blog (November 15, 2018)

“On Titles” — The Kenyon Review blog (November 6, 2018)

“On Character Names” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 26, 2018)

“E.M. Forster on Fantasy and Prophecy” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 25, 2018)

“Was Philip Roth a White Male Author?” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 15, 2018)

“On The English Patient” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 8, 2018)

“On Writing What You Know” — The Kenyon Review blog (October 1, 2018)

“How to Write an Ideological Novel” — The Kenyon Review blog (September 20, 2018)

“On Accessibility in Historical Fiction” — The Kenyon Review blog (September 17, 2018)

“Are Characters Real People?” — The Kenyon Review blog (September 7, 2018)

“In Defense of Flat Characters” — The Kenyon Review blog (August 27, 2018)

“How Many Books Should a Fiction Writer Read in a Year?” — The Kenyon Review blog (August 21, 2018)

“On ‘Ethnic Fiction'” — The Kenyon Review blog (August 13, 2018)

“On Beginnings” — The Kenyon Review blog (August 6, 2018)

“On Endings” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 30, 2018)

“On The Comic Novel” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 24, 2018)

“In Defense of Long Descriptions” — The Kenyon Review blog (July 18, 2018)

“Thanos, Disney, and the Invisible Hand” — Medium (July 12, 2018)

“On A Novel’s First Line”— The Kenyon Review blog (July 10, 2018)

“Against the Single Effect” — The Kenyon Review blog (June 30, 2018)

“How Fiction ‘Works'”— The Kenyon Review blog (June 28, 2018)

“On Aesthetics and Politics: Alisa Ganieva’s The Mountain and the Wall“— The Kenyon Review blog (June 19, 2018)

“The Force Slumbers” — Medium (June, 14, 2018)

“Against the Nineteenth-Century Novel” — The Kenyon Review blog (June 11, 2018)

“Should Fiction Writers Study Literary Theory?” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 31, 2018)

“On ‘The Death of the Novel'” — The Kenyon Review blog (May 24, 2018)

“On Character Motivation” — The Kenyon Review Blog (May 18, 2018)

“On Historical Accuracy in Historical Fiction” — The Kenyon Review Blog (May 14, 2018)

“Omniscience, Paranoia, and Postmodern Fiction” — The Kenyon Review Blog (May 2, 2018)

“Fiction as Atonement” — The Kenyon Review Blog (April 23, 2018)

“Against Relateability” — The Kenyon Review Blog (April 13, 2018)

“In Defense of ‘Show Don’t Tell'” — The Kenyon Review Blog (April 6, 2018)

“Travel Journal: Washington, D.C., February 2017 — Selected Entries”— Medium (December 11, 2017)

“Proportionally Responding Till the End of History” — Medium (April 13, 2017)

“Ressentiment Past and Present: On Pankaj Mishra’s The Age of Anger“ — Medium (April 5, 2017)

“Our America: Reading Horatio Alger in Karachi” — The Massachusetts Review (March 2, 2017)

“Travel Journal: Stockholm, December 2016 — Selected Entries” — Medium (February 28, 2017)

“Travel Journal: Copenhagen, December 2016 — Selected Entries” — Medium (January 12, 2017)

“Travel Journal: Japan, August/September 2015 — Selected Entries” — Medium (September 7, 2016)

“Islam is Part of ‘The West'” — Medium (September 4, 2016)

“The DNC and the Importance of Seeming Earnest” — Medium (July 29, 2016)

“Artistic License in Vikings, Black Sails, and Da Vinci’s Demons: When Historical Inaccuracy Improves Art” — The Los Angeles Review of Books (May 30, 2014)

“The Utopian News Program: The Hour and The Newsroom“ — The Los Angeles Review of Books (October 15, 2013)

“Coup and Revolution: Egypt and the Al Jazeera Journalists” — Future Foreign Policy (August 20, 2013)

“Hassan Rowhani: A Reformist Candidate in the Iranian Elections” — Future Foreign Policy (May 9, 2013)

“The Rebellion in Mali: The “Arab” Spring Continued” — Future Foreign Policy (February 13, 2013)