Writing & Editing
Books
Notes from the Road (Awst Press, 2022)
A week before spring semester, a Philadelphia writing professor sets out for L.A. to deliver a friend’s car. His first night on the road, alone in a Super 8 motel, he makes three pro/con lists: one for staying in his job; one for staying in his relationship; and one for staying in Philadelphia. This book-length essay is a log of the author’s life on the road, peppered with reflections on his family, history, and life’s simple pleasures. In these pages, Ingram confronts the disappointments of middle-adulthood set against his Big Desires. “It was okay,” he writes of a roadside meal he gets along the way, “in the way that about eighty-five percent of life is okay.”
“In Mike Ingram’s hands, loneliness becomes extraordinary: the state of being fully present to one’s life in all of its randomness, absurdity, grace, menace, and potential. Notes from the Road gets under the skin through the most indirect and ingenious ways. I felt so lucky to be along for the ride.”
—Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
Selected Essays
“A Life of Leisure” for Awst
My father told me once that he missed the way I used to dress. “You always looked so sharp. Like a young Republican.”
“How I Confronted the Truth About My Racist Fraternity” for Medium’s Human Parts
An early draft of this essay began with the line, “I was once a member of a white supremacist organization.” It struck me as too hyperbolic, too clickbaitey, but is it untrue?
“My Trouble With Men'“ for The Smart Set
In graduate school, a female classmate told me I read like a girl. We were at a house party. Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Prep had recently been released in paperback, and I mentioned that I’d read it over the summer and enjoyed it. “Really?” my classmate said. Her face began at surprise and then traveled toward disapproval. “I don’t know any other men who liked that book.”
“Biking: A Love Story,” for The Smart Set
My 30s, it occurs to me, have been my decade of biking. They’ve also been my decade of dating. You’re probably supposed to date in your 20s, but in my 20s I had girlfriends, women I met through work, or school, or friends of friends. Usually we knew each other a while first, so when we decided to be together we were just together: an all-or-nothing proposition. In between these relationships I tended to feel unmoored, and vaguely nervous I’d never meet anyone else, though on some level I must have recognized that this fear, like so many other fears, was absurd.
Editorial Work
Barrelhouse Magazine
Founding editor of literary magazine publishing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in print and online since 2005.
Barrelhouse Books
Lead editor on books projects for Barrelhouse, beginning in 2014 with Lee Klein’s Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck. Other titles include Year 14 by Michael Konik (novel), Tell Me If You’re Lying by Sarah Sweeney (essay collection), Mercy by Marcia Trahan (memoir), and An Encyclopedia of Bending Time by Kristin Keane (memoir).
Journalism & Professional Writing
Freelance and contract work for a variety of commercial and industry publishers. Areas of expertise include health care policy, clinical trials, and FDA regulatory compliance for drug and medical device manufacturers.