He teaches courses devoted to the study of American literature of the 19th and 20th centuries as well as introductory and advanced writing workshops. He currently edits Full Bleed, an annual art journal produced through Publishing Culture, a practicum open to MICA juniors, seniors, and graduate students.

Paul’s teaching at MICA is motivated by the conviction that reading and writing are creative acts with the potential to enrich his students’ work in the fields of art and design for years to come. Since joining the faculty in 2008, he has taken great pleasure in seeing past students go on to author new books and pursue careers in publishing.

In the past, he has worked as a journalist and a publicist in the legal industry. A graduate of Oberlin College, he received an MFA in fiction from Cornell University and in 2001 travelled to Lithuania on a Fulbright scholarship. He now lives in Maryland outside Washington, D.C.

Courses

• Genre Experiments
• Intermediate Fiction workshop
• Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction
• Publishing Culture
• Ways of Writing
• Modernity in American Literature
• Postwar American Fiction
• Contemporary Fiction

Select Publications

Poetry

• “Vilnius to Warsaw, 2001”, Fare Forward, September 2022
• “Caught in the Lethe”, Tab: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Vol. 10.5, September 2022
• “Moose”, Comstock Review, 2022
• “August 9, 2021” and “Queequeg”, Blood & Bourbon, 2022
• “Cathedral Cats”, Amethyst Review, March 2022
• “The Remnant”, The Windhover, issue 26.1, February 2022
• “No Other Place”, Little Patuxent Review, issue 31, February 2022
• “No one on earth knows how to ski”, Gargoyle, issue 74, December 2021
• “The Very Edge of All Things”, Atticus Review, June 2021
• “On No Map”, Panel Magazine (Budapest), issue six, December 2020

Fiction

• “Delancey Street, 1903” (novella excerpt), The Museum of Americana, issue 23, February 2021
• “The Planner”, JMWW, Summer 2020
• “Shark Attack Victim”, The Cortland Review, issue 64, August 2014
• The Market for Virgins, Amazon Story Front, 2013
• Hidden, Free Press, 2004

Nonfiction

• “A Shrine That Endures”, America Magazine, November 21, 2016
• “The Visions of St. Faustina”, First Things (online), April 1, 2016
• “Playing the Confidence Game”, New York Times, September 13, 2015
• “The Tyranny of the Forced Smile”, New York Times, February 14, 2015