I’m thrilled to share the link to my latest published short story, Featherly: http://www.summersetreview.org My sincerest thanks go out to the editors and artists of The Summerset Review for their guidance and professionalism — and for their fabulous presentation of...

When the news is endlessly violent and depressing it becomes hard to be amused by anything. But even when we need to cry, we must also find ways to laugh. And that’s why I remain on constant lookout for examples of outstanding humor writing. I’m a sucker for buying...

I recently boarded a downtown #1 train at Lincoln Center ahead of meeting my daughter for dinner at a restaurant overlooking the video screen maelstrom of Times Square. Earlier that same afternoon I started to read Plainsong...

When an author—even an established, best-selling author—receives an advance of $2,000,000, there’s invariably a ton of buzz, and, naturally, the expectation of transcendent brilliance. Such was the case with Garth Risk Hallberg’s City On Fire...

I know I said my next post would be about audiobooks, and that’s coming, but last night I attended the musical HAMILTON ( http://www.hamiltonbroadway.com ) on Broadway and a few words are in order. First off, my family has a strong tie to the name, Hamilton: my mother...

Between the post-MFA letdown, and, unanticipated health distractions, it’s been hard to maintain any semblance of a summertime writing schedule. But reading in service of craft counts as some form of literary discipline…right? Okay, I admit it: for a book nerd,...

You wake on the morning you’re scheduled to give your MFA graduation residency lecture with severe double vision and dizziness. The room is spinning as you plant your feet on the floor. Not good. You’ve experienced bouts of imbalance and an inability to coalesce your...

It’s been two years since my last blog post, yet it seems like a lifetime. When I first set up my website I had every intention of regularly posting my observations on the writing life and anything else that popped into my age-addled consciousness. But then I was...

A substantial amount of literary industry ink has lamented over the Pulitzer Committee’s failure to designate a winner for the 2012 fiction prize, but none of that should take anything away from this year’s winner, Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son. In fact, this...

My LP record collection—over 1,500 disks, alphabetized and housed in custom designed shelves—is peppered with selections from CTI Records (Creed Taylor Incorporated). One can easily identify the CTI titles: glossy, primary colored spines, each offering a hint of the...