I swear I’ll soon get back to posting about hiking and backpacking on this blog, but in the meantime and at the risk of sounding immodest, I have another creative writing publication to announce. Earlier this week, I was honored to have my latest creative nonfiction essay, “Sunrise at Las Vegas,” published in the Fall 2026 issue of LIT Magazine, an online literary journal published in New York City. For this latest return to writing about mental health, I probably owe a partial writing credit to my therapist.
“Sunrise at Las Vegas” describes a dream I had on the morning of my fiftieth birthday this past July, in which I visited myself exactly ten years earlier, as my younger self returned in the early morning hours to the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas after his first night out on a three-day weekend to celebrate his fortieth. Somehow recognizing me, my younger self began asking difficult questions about what lay ahead in the next decade, many of which reminded me of just how resigned I had been at the time to a hopeless future. As I watched his demeanor swing from humor to despair, I struggled to decide just how much I could tell him about what soon awaited him.
My essay (and perhaps also the dream itself) were inspired by a conversation with my therapist shortly before my birthday, when she asked me what I would tell myself if I could travel back in time ten years.
LIT Magazine is published by the Masters in Fine Arts of Creative Writing program at The New School in New York City, located in Greenwich Village. LIT’s online issues are published three times a year (in Spring, Summer, and Fall), and the latest Fall 2026 issue includes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid works, as well as translations and interviews.
Thank you, LIT and Dr. Carolina!
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