Writing

Writing + Editing

Writing

I write essays, criticism, and the occasional poem. Currently, I’m working on an essay collection about my many past lives through the lens of surfing.

I hold an MFA in literature and creative nonfiction writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a BA in English literature from Vassar College. My work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times magazine, The Missouri Review, Off Assignment, The Surfer’s Journal, Assay, and other publications, including two print anthologies. Select essays have been featured in the Off Assignment newsletter, Bright Spots, and Memoir Monday. My writing has been generously supported by the Prospect Street Writers House.

And of course, I have a Substack: Still Stoked. I’m in the process of resurrecting it as conversations with people who surf, so subscribe now to be surprised later.

Cover Stories —
Beautiful Lives, Beautiful Deaths
“Surfing is scary because death is scary, but every time a surfer catches a wave, they get to live a different version of life.” Los Angeles Times, Image magazine

The Tarot Card Tells Its Story
“I want so badly to tell you about your future.”
Los Angeles Times, Image magazine

Essays —
Beautiful Lives and Beautiful Deaths
“What if the end of the world is a constant, rather than a finale?”
The Surfer’s Journal

To the Portrait of Anonymous Kisses
“This is why I’ve come to believe, seven years after first encountering you in the magazine, that you might actually be a doodle.” Letter to a Stranger, Off Assignment magazine

The Marble
“I thought I could hold a marble in my mouth in place of the words I lacked.” The Missouri Review

Baja California, 1995
“Something has shifted in this gesture, this drunk woman no longer resembles my mother.”
G*Mob magazine

I Find Myself Riding the Subway
“I find myself seated next to a very fat baby, so fat that his eyes look crossed and I want to bite into his cheeks.”
G*Mob magazine

Literary Criticism —
Bodily Dissociation as a Female Coping Mechanism in The Shapeless Unease, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, and Girlhood
Bodies tell us something that we cannot or do not want to hear; to listen would be to jeopardize some version of safety.”
Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies

Print Anthologies —
First Day, Last Day
Pen and Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them

Connect —
Email / claire.salinda [at] gmail [dot] com
Instagram / @clairesalinda