Driving Around Central Ohio in my Dad’s ’07 Chevy Listening to the CDs of my Youth; or, Put the Past Away; or, August and Everything After

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the essay collection TOMBOYLAND (Little A/TOPPLE Books, 2020), named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, The New York Public Library, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Electric Literature, and the recipient of a 2021 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her work has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Literary Hub, Bitch, Brevity, Prairie Schooner, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others, and in the anthology Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown’s Cult Classic (Harper Perennial, 2022); it has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and named a Notable Selection in Best American Essays 2016. Faliveno is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her debut novel, Hemlock, is forthcoming in 2026 from Little, Brown. Find more at www.melissafaliveno.com.