My debut novel, WILD AND DISTANT SEAS, was published by W.W. Norton on Jan. 2, 2024! Learn more and order here.
Fiction and Comedy
Summer Stories: Escape Velocity (The Spokesman Review, 2024)
“I, Your Elder Millennial Professor, Used to Be Pretty Good at this Technology Shit” (The Belladonna Comedy, 2022)
Plus: My interview with The Belladonna!
“Spell”: A short story featured in the anthology Evergreen: Grim Tales & Verses from the Gloomy Northwest. (Order here or from your favorite indie bookstore!)
“You’re Probably Wondering How to Help at Your Child’s School, Now that the Aliens Have Landed”: A satirical piece featuring a PTA president soliciting parent help in buying school supplies and defeating an invading swarm (The Belladonna Comedy, 2020)
“Whir”: A story about a woman who discovers a robot hiding in her bathroom light fixture (Moss, 2017)
“The Hoodoo Mountain Howler”: A serialized, family-friendly story written for the Inland 360 newspaper about two friends who go looking for legend and find a creature in need (2017)
“The Earthling”: A flash-fiction piece about an alien selected to learn about American college life (5×5, 2016)
Columns From The Inlander
I’ve been a regular columnist at The Inlander, an independent alt-weekly based in Spokane, Washington, since 2020. Here are a few of my favorite pieces:
“Trips to two sides of the planet show how grief and joy intermingle and coexist” (July 2025)
“Five years later, looking back on that first COVID spring and marking how far we have grown” (April 2025)
“There are a few things the alien invaders should know before they land and make first contact” (February 2025)
“As the way we talk to each other keeps spiraling, we need to find ways to put our shared humanity front and center” (November 2024)
“Meet Bill: the crazy, COVID-era impulse purchase who became the glue that still keeps the family sane” (October 2024)
“Even as the world seems harder and harder, summer still takes the gold” (August 2024)
“Nature offers lessons on how to learn to love slowness – sometimes very slowly” (June 2024)
“You really should be watching women’s sports” (April 2024)
“Adults and children both meet the wider world through reading: too many want to take that away” (February 2024)
“Pets- and their humans- need a little grace this time of year” (December 2023)
“All of life’s happy little accidents make perfect sense when something magical crosses your path” (October 2023)
“No judgment, no score-keeping: How a 17-pound ball of fur offers an example of pure love that most humans cannot” (August 2023)
“Express Thyself” (February 2023)
“To explore the truth, you’ll need to look very, very closely” (July 2022)
“How to be a freelance writer after you’ve quit your full-time job in the Great Resignation” (February 2022)
“Send the Rich Away Empty” (December 2021)
“Does your mother know?” (August 2021)
“Let’s make 2021 the year of giving up”: (January 2021)
“Our Spring” (April 2020)
Other Columns and Essays
“In the tomb of a saint, I thought about Twitter” (Spokane Faith & Values, August 2021)
“Seeking Narnia in the time of the coronavirus“: A column reflecting on the C.S. Lewis’ “How Are We To Live in an Atomic Age?” “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and preparing my children for the beginning of the pandemic. (Spokane Faith and Values, March 2020)
“Montana”: An essay about what you can see from a vista near my home (Hippocampus, 2018)
Blogs
Idaho to Italy: A blog about my family’s summer in Italy through my university’s Faculty-Staff International Development Award program.
Tara Karr Roberts 