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About

I work with words for a living, and in my spare hours, I throw a few together and put them here—my failures and fears, my flattering selfies, my lunacies—so that other lunatics know that they’re not alone.

That’s my hope, at least.

You can read an essay I wrote for The New York Times’ Modern Love column, How I Got Caught Up in a Global Romance Scam, later adapted for the Modern Love Podcast.

My writing has appeared in The New York Times’ Modern Love column, Brevity, The Normal School, River Teeth, Michigan Quarterly Review, and others. My work has also been featured in the Boston Book Festival, various anthologies, and shortlisted for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award. I have an MFA from Columbia University, where I was nonfiction editor of Columbia Journal.

I live in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts, where I think about where I want to live next. I have a long-haired chihuahua named Agnes of Bakersfield, rescued from the mean streets of central California.

My name, Michael McAllister, was scrawled on a birth certificate at a hospital in Stillwater, Oklahoma in 1971. On a distant branch of my family tree are the names Jimmy and Beulah Lee Turnipseed.

I come from Turnipseeds.


Featured Publications:

– The New York Times’ Modern Love Column: How I Got Caught Up in a Global Romance Scam, also handpicked by NY Times editors for their Weekender edition of ten featured stories from that week. Later adapted for the Modern Love Podcast.

Michigan Quarterly Review, Emerging Voices Spring 2021 issue: “Off-Grid”

– River Teeth: Talk to Her

– Brevity: How I Learned to Hide

– The Normal School: Just Waiting on a Dude

– Boston Book Festival: 200-word pandemic story

– War, Literature & the Arts: A Death in Nicaragua

From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up: “Sleeping Eros”

California Prose Directory: New Writing From the Golden State: contributor

Appearances

First-hand story about a batshit crazy time in my life featured on the podcast, This Is Actually Happening. Check it out: Season 10, Episode #193.


You can hit me up at dogpoetATmacDOTcom or use the contact form below.