Writing
“Displacement and emotional uncertainty haunt the essay, but the writing itself is assured and beautiful, both lyrical and precise. The author moves confidently in time and among subjects, illuminating a personal story with touches of nature writing, astrology, and even a manual on occupational safety, showing how loss is found in every corner of our experience, a weight both burden and ballast.”
—Judge Sarah Perry on Courtney’s essay “The Ergonomics of Loss” Winner of the 2019 Mary C. Mohr Nonfiction Award, Southern Indiana Review, Volume 27, Number 1
The essayist “thoughtfully experiments with and sometimes even daringly conflates point-of-view, personification, and embodiment, elements . . . seldom challenged in nonfiction writing . . . The essayist serves as a stellar and bright monument at which vectors of the historical . . . and personal meet and burst into new light. . . Always understated yet boldly intense, this essay inhabits various spaces and personas, carving out the textures of both the outer and inner worlds.”
—Judge Jenny Boully on Courtney’s essay “Women of the Sky” Winner of the Winner of the 2018 Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction, Bellingham Review, Volume XLII, Issue 78
Select Essays:
“Address Unknown” Autofocus, Winter 2024
“Field Notes on Circles” Willow Springs, No. 93
“How To Sleep in Your Car” The Common, May 2023
“Mysteries Already Deciphered” Crazyhorse, No. 102, Winner of the 2022 Nonfiction Prize, selected by Matt Ortile
“Walking the Wharf” Catamaran, Volume 10, Issue 3
“Moving to Paradise” The Los Angeles Review, September 1st, 2021
“These Are Them” Essay Daily, September 21st, 2020
“The Ergonomics of Loss” Southern Indiana Review, Volume 27, Number 1, Winner of the 2019 Mary C. Mohr Nonfiction Award, selected by Sarah Perry
“What Happened on December 21st” Essay Daily, January 2nd, 2020
“Women of the Sky” Bellingham Review, Volume XLII, Issue 78, Winner of the 2018 Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction, selected by Jenny Boully
“Past the Boardwalk” Prairie Schooner, Volume 92, Number 3
“In the Kelp” The Normal School , Volume 11, Issue 1
“The Boundaries of Longing” Hotel Amerika, Volume 16
“At My School” Brevity, Issue 57
“Birth Redux” Hayden’s Ferry Review, #59
“The Season For Shapeshifting” Black Warrior Review, Issue 43.1
“Method Acting” River Teeth, Volume 16.2
“Various Angles of a Photo: Sleeping Prairie Chickens” Sonora Review, Issue 67
“A Language Translatable by No One” The Masters Review Anthology, V. III
“The Path We Used to Walk” DIAGRAM, 14.4
“The Disappearing Midwestern Girlhood: An Ethnography” Storm Cellar Quarterly, 4.3