Recent Accolades and Publications

Books

The Nuckelavee. Forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press (2023).

  • Also included in The Alien Buddha’s Full Moon Mashup (2023)

Gay Zoo Day: Tales of Seeking and Discovery. Beautiful Dreamer Press (2017).

  • Winner of the Silver IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for LGBT Literature

  • Semifinalist for the Conium Prize (2017)

Short Fiction

“Pastora, in Blue” in Isele Magazine (2023)

“We, the Sisters Who Live Upstate” in HAD (2023)

“Is the Sky Falling or Are We Rising Towards the Lord?” in Fairy Tale Review (2023)

“The Seeds That We Bury, The Fields That They Reap” in hex’s “Haunted Love” folio (Spring 2023)

“Trillium” in Monkeybicycle (Autumn 2021)

“The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark” in Grist’s Imagine 2200 (Summer 2021)

“Devil’s Island” in PANK’s Environmental Futures Folio (Spring 2021)

The Pioneer” in Agnes Scott College Writers’ Festival Magazine (Spring 2021)

  • Won the Agnes Scott College Writers’ Festival Fiction Contest

  • Selected as a finalist by novelist Jen Beagin, selected as the winner by former US poet laureate/Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove and award-winning playwright-librettist Jacqueline Goldfinger.

“Wild Gods” in Booth (Issue 15, 2020)

  • Finalist for Booth’s Unexpected Literature Prize

  • Finalist for Passages North’s Waasnode Fiction Prize

The Euphonium Diaries” in ImageOutWrite (Volume 9, 2020)

“Witchbirth” in La Piccioletta Barca (Autumn 2020)

  • Finalist for La Piccioletta Barca’s #antimatter Contest

“The Cassowaries” in The Baffler (September 2020)

“Evergreen” in Echoverse (Spring 2020)

“The Flotilla at Bird Island” in RWJF’s Take Us to a Better Place (Melcher Media, 2020)

  • Listen to “The Flotilla at Bird Island” HERE

“Bend Over Boyfriend” in STORGY (Spring 2020)

“Queen of Salt” in Popshot Quarterly (Spring 2020)

“Glass Heart, Glass City” in Speculative City (Issue 5, September 2019)

“The Boo Hag” in Oklahoma Pagan Quarterly (Autumn 2019)

  • Third Place Winner in Oklahoma Pagan Quarterly’s Spooky Samhain Contest

  • Semifinalist for the 2018 Saints and Sinners Short Story Contest

"Mombasa Vengeance" in Gents: Steamy Stories from the Age of Steam (Lethe Press, 2018)

“Forest Mirror” in NonBinary Review (Winter 2018)

A Feast for Clowns” in DREGINALD (Issue 15, October 2018)

"What Used to Be Caracas" in Boston Review (Global Dystopias Issue, Fall 2017)

"Ball" in Here Comes Everyone (November 2017)

"Foul Fairlie" in Quail Bell Magazine (December 2016)

"Gay Zoo Day" in ImageOutWrite (Volume 5, Fall 2016)

"Sheffield Beach" in Queen Mob's Teahouse (September 2016)

"Olive Urchin" in Blinders (Issue 5, Winter 2016)

"Bug" in Slink Chunk Press (September 2016)

"The Self-Banished" in ink&coda (Issue 3.1, Winter 2016)

"The Seven Verses of Grief" in Intrinsick Mag (August 2016)

"Blufyr" in Permafrost (Issue 38.1, Spring 2016)

"Limerick" in Not Just Another Pretty Face (Beautiful Dreamer Press, 2016)

"The Unexpectedly Inclusive Rapture" in The Flash Fiction Press (November 2015)

"Flyboys and Cowboys" in Cowboy Roundup (JMS Press, 2015)

Essays

“Forget Boyfriends, I’m Reading for Cults” in Electric Literature (July 2023)

“Remembering Margot Kidder: Hollywood Superwoman and Box Office Queen” in Rolling Stone (May 2023)

“A Golden Warning” in And If That Mockingbird Don't Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative (Alternating Current Press, February 2022)

“You Can Go Home, and This Time Be the Hero” in WIRED (September 2021)

“Gay Rapunzel” in Dating & Sex: The Theory of Mutual Self-Destruction (Superchamp Books, April 2021)

  • Originally appeared in Windmill

“The search for the elusive queer parent in gaming” for TechRadar’s LGBTQ Gaming Week (January 2021)

“An Escape to Paul Cadmus and H.D.’s Beautiful Queer Beach” in Observer (January 2021)

“The Best $40 I Ever Spent: A not-quite-tarot deck” in Vox’s The Goods (Fall 2020)

“Another Castle” in Triangle House (October 2020)

“God Eats His Mistakes” in Entropy (November 2018)

"I Will Make Beautiful Memories" in Brain Mill Press (September 2016)

"Embarrassing Body" in Cactus Heart (Issue 14.5, Winter 2015)

 

Poetry

“Gobliny-Ass-Yaffingales” in Hobart After Dark (January 2021)

“When Lies Turn Into Prophecies” in The New York Times (May 2020)

"Ava Gardner" in Horny Poetry Review (Spring 2018)

"Two Local Boys" in MR. MA'AM (December 2018)

"Seasonal Depression" in Poetry Pacific (Issue 5.2, Autumn 2016)

"Spring Snow" in Poetry Pacific (Issue 5.2, Autumn 2016)

 

Selected Book Reviews

(Click Here for an index of all of my book reviews)

Recent Highlights:

Review of Peter Selgin’s Duplicity for DIAGRAM

Review of J. Robert Lennon’s Let Me Think for Colorado Review

Review of Paul Lisicky’s Later

Review of Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Review of C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold

Review of Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Review of The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Review of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

Review of Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein

Review of André Aciman’s Find Me

Review of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer

Review of Silas House’s Southernmost

Review of Philip Dean Walker’s Read by Strangers

Review of Matthew Binder’s The Absolved

Review of Otto Penzler’s The Big Book of Female Detectives

Review of Kelly Barnhill’s Dreadful Young Ladies

Review of Paul La Farge’s The Night Ocean

Review of Edmund White’s The Unpunished Vice

Rick Benger’s Once Upon a Pancake. Spectrum Culture (July 2018).

Review of Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time

Review of Karen Tidbeck’s Jagannath

Review of Madeline Miller’s Circe

Review of Matthew Griffin's Hide

Review of Dan Vyleta's Smoke

Review of Kristen Bakis's Lives of the Monster Dogs

Review of Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Review of Jac Jemc's The Grip of It

Review of Robert Moor's On Trails

Review of Kanishk Tharoor's Swimmer Among the Stars

Review of Alexia Kannas' Deep Red

Review of Cara Hoffman's Running

Review of J. Robert Lennon's Broken River

Review of Dominic Smith's The Last Painting of Sara De Vos

Review of Ben Tanzer's Be Cool

Review of Michael Cunningham's A Wild Swan

Review of Philip Dean Walker's At Danceteria and Other Stories

Review of Edmundo Paz Soldán's Norte

Review of Building Fires in the Snow

Review of Anita Agnihotri's Seventeen

Review of Zakes Mda's Rachel's Blue

Review of John McCarthy's Ghost County

Review of Matthew Binder's High in the Streets

  

Selected Film Reviews

(Click Here for an index of all of my film reviews)

Recent Highlights: 

Film Review of Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Film Review of Thousand Pieces of Gold

Film Review of Butt Boy

Film Review of Bacurau

Film Review of Little Women

Film Review of Memory: The Origins of Alien

Film Review of Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse

Film Review of A Dark Song

Film Review of Get Out

Film Review of A Monster Calls

Film Review of Moonlight

Film and Entertainment Features

(Click Here for an index of all of my features)

Recent Highlights:

Retrospective on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Criminally Underrated: 13 Going on 30

Revisit of The Year of Living Dangerously

The Best Fight Scene Ever: Kill Bill: Volume 2

Revisit of The Wicker Man

The Best Movie Monster Ever: The Xenomorph Queen from Aliens

Retrospective of Agnès Varda’s Uncle Yanco and Black Panthers

Revisit of The Sacrament

 

Interviews

Roundtable on Queer Climate Fiction for Lambda Literary (February 2024)

“Q&A with Author Mike McClelland” from The Future of Storytelling (November 2020)

Mike McClelland talks writing Gay Zoo Dayfrom EdinboroNow (Fall 2019)

"Out in the Wild, Starring Mike McClelland" for This Podcast Will Change Your Life (Episode 165, September 2017)

PA native pens first short-story collection.” Interview with Philadelphia Gay News. (July 2017)

Gay Georgia author to release first literary work this fall.” Interview with The Georgia Voice. (June 2017)

Graduate Student Turns Life Lessons Into Published Work.” Interview with Georgia College. (May 2017)

"Six Questions for Georgia Knapp, Michael McClelland and Simon Williamson, Editors, On The Veranda" on Six Questions For... (July 2016)

"The World's Leading Independent Agencies: The Jupiter Drawing Room & Partners" in Campaign Magazine

 

Editorial

Fiction Editor, Bluestem Magazine (2022 to Present)

Reader, Quarterly West (2020 to 2022)

Co-Founder/Co-Editor-in-Chief, On the Veranda Literary Journal (2015 to 2017)

Assistant Fiction Editor, Arts & Letters (2016 to 2017)

Editorial Assistant/Circulation Assistant, Flannery O'Connor Review (2014 to 2016)

Editorial Assistant, The Allegheny Review (2006 to 2007)

Editorial Assistant, Film Criticism (2003 to 2004)

 

Sports Writing

"Duel of the Grass-Court Damsels" in The Daily Maverick

"All Hail King Novak, Ruler of Wimbledon and All Serbs" in The Daily Maverick