I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, perhaps sharing good times with your family (real or cobbled together). From all those smiles I see on holiday cards and social media, it looks like you did.
But…those public photos seldom tell the full story.
My family is perfect, of course—proof found in that photo of my daughter Sahara—but I recently peered into the messiness of family life. Continue reading “Love and Other Things”
I’ve met so many unforgettable people in my years at Gotham I can’t remember them all. I’ll discuss one of them here because a documentary about him was recently released. It’s called Jacob and you’ll find it on Amazon Video. It’s fascinating, fun, and I’m a featured player, so lots of reasons to watch.
The person’s name is Jacob M. Appel. He used to teach fiction for Gotham, and he’s a prolific writer, having published countless short stories, several novels, not to mention plays, essays, and poems. But that’s not all. Continue reading “I’d Like You to Meet Jacob”
What’s the secret of success for a story? That’s the mystery I tried to solve when I interviewed Weike Wang this past weekend at the Gotham Writers Conference. The answer may vary depending on the story, but I hoped to find insight that would be useful to other writers.
Weike released her novel Chemistry in 2017. She got written up and reviewed in all the good places (New York Times, New Yorker, etc.). The novel won a Whiting Award for emerging writers and the PEN/Hemingway award for debut novels (awards that have been won by the likes of Jhumpa Lahiri and David Foster Wallace). Most importantly, lots of people read and loved her novel. Continue reading “A Story’s Chemistry”