This is a new personal site where I’ll be posting installments of Lit Out West, my (very) occasional newsletter about the literature and history of the American West, along with some other past writing. You can subscribe for free to receive future updates as they’re published.

For one of the last stories I wrote for Westword, which laid me off last week, I spoke to a coworker of a Walmart cashier who died of COVID-19 last month. Sandy Kunz was 72 years old and on supplemental oxygen because of a lung condition, but she had no