My name is Nathan and this is my website. I’m a writer. I do some other stuff too. Here’s my business card:

I was born and grew up in a small town in western Oklahoma, where my dad was a professor of chemistry at the local state university. I spent as much time at his office as I did my own home, exploring the library, dropping things into hydrochloric acid to see what would happen, and writing stories on his Mac 512K. I was 8 when I wrote my first “novel”, a 25-page story about a kid who runs away from home – not because he’s unhappy, but because he knows there’s a big world out there and that adventure is waiting for him.

It was terrible. No copies survive.

At 12 I moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where I went to a typical suburban high school and dreamed of leaving Oklahoma behind forever. A few weeks after my 18th birthday I enrolled at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where I majored in religion, minored in philosophy, took a class with Maya Angelou, and fell in love with Jesus. I had three jobs almost my entire time in college. I also got to spend a summer living in Ireland and the fall of 2000 studying in Venice, Italy, in a house that shared its roof with the Collezione di Peggy Guggenheim. I spent entire days standing in front of Jackson Pollack paintings and Picasso’s “The Poet.” I visited Slovenia for no reason.

After an abortive attempt at earning a Master of Divinity degree at Yale University in the fall of 2002, I returned to Oklahoma, where I was fired from being a substitute teacher, and then fired from selling expensive suits to rich old men. After awhile the awful jobs and endless benders took their toll and I beat a hasty retreat back to my old hometown college campus, to serve as my dad’s teaching assistant when he came out of retirement for a year. At my family’s urging I enrolled in the University of Oklahoma’s graduate professional writing program. I had three jobs my whole time in graduate school, and was there when I started this blog, then called “The Unlikeliest Place.” It moved to its current incarnation in February 2006.

I was also there when I met the man who would become my husband, the man who does all the technical heavy lifting on this website. In the fall of 2005 we bought a house in northwest Oklahoma City. In December 2006 we adopted a dog. In May 2007 I finished graduate school, finally whittled my life down to two jobs, both of which I still hold, and here we are. I honest to God thought I’d never live in Oklahoma again; now I don’t think I’ll ever leave. My family is here and a cast of characters that I love, and when I feel uninspired I drive into the prairies and feel like I’m at the window of Heaven.

My heroes and inspirations include Bill Watterson, the Sedarises, Ira Glass, Ernest Hemingway, Joss Whedon, Matt Groening, Anne Lamott, Patty Griffin, David Wilcox, Glen Phillips, Molly Ivins, the Watkins family, and the coterie of creative and brilliant people I get to spend my time around. There’s no genre of music I don’t love, but folk, country (alt- and otherwise) and Americana have a special place in my heart. I hate running while I’m doing it but love the way it makes me feel. I can’t learn enough about Oklahoma’s people, history, and geography. I really love bourbon and the coral snake salsa at Iguana Mexican Grill in Oklahoma City. I’ve written five novels in the last five years. None have been published – yet.

I’m wordy. I’m loved.

Here are some questions we occasionally get.

Here’s a picture of me at the age of two, being a little weirdo:

Here’s a picture of me on my 30th birthday: