It’s mid-October and I’m bundled up, wearing long sleeves that cap the tops of my hands, a normal thing for me. Ever since I started doing outreach with teens, I’ve become even more self-conscious about the scars that run down my wrists from cutting, and the tattoos that remind me about the journey I’ve made. […]

Blame it on four-dollar cupcakes. And capitalists and philistines. Because of them, the bookman has been forced out of his spot on Columbus Avenue just outside 67 Wine at 68th Street. At least, that’s what the angry words scrawled in black magic marker on a piece of salvaged wood propped up against a parking meter […]

1 The manuscripts had collected in my bottom drawer.  This verbal clutter consisted of poems, stories and film scripts, all fused into the genre of unwanted black ink on white paper; in short, words rejected by the eyes of editors. And then in early December 2009, an idea struck me.  I decided to try to […]

I. May 30th, 2010. Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In which I insist upon the veracity of the enclosed. The characters in the following narrative were once really alive, even the kangaroo. What is your name? How old are you? Do you have any relatives? Are you married? Where do you live? Where do you work?

Dear Mr. Castro, I know you have little tolerance for the big bad neighbor to the north that has for years antagonized your slender island jewel. So let me admit right up front that I am indeed one of those Americans who lolls around in the mud of our freedom—I surf the Internet; I criticize […]

by Fred Skolnik    In the pantheon of the Classic American Novel, An American Tragedy and U.S.A. had been novels about the essential division of America between those who have and those who have not. Dos Passos produced an energetic narrative that raced along without lingering to give its characters a human face while Dreiser […]

Otavalo, Ecuador: Camera stolen in the early morning haze of travel, either on the bus or in the bus terminal, literally snatched from a bag I was carrying, that I never even set down beside me or had away from my view. Do I remember when it happened? No. Perhaps the girl behind me leaving […]

So last Thursday I went, by myself,  to the post office to buy some stamps.  It’s early summer here in New York City.  Which means our city weather is in a schizophrenic state, not knowing whether to refresh us with spring breeze or scald us with relentless sweat-stewed heat.  On this special day it was […]