Sunday, June 04, 2023

Stepping Stones Reveal a Path into Italy's Dark History -- for PBS site

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Writing stories culled from your travels is a dream assignment. I rarely get paid to do it! But in this case I did, and what's more, the...
Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Leo's Coronavirus Journal

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Well, it's not really his Coronavirus Journal -- it's an excerpt of my own journal that features pithy comments from Leo. May 12, 20...
Wednesday, April 12, 2023

What I'm reading? Often Modiano

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Yep, I read a lot of Patrick Modiano -- thank God he is so prolific! So I figured why not review his latest work from Yale University Press...
Monday, March 20, 2023

Coronavirus Journal, three years later

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A publisher put out a call a while back for Coronavirus diary entries and I happily obliged since, of course, I'd been writing in my jo...
Tuesday, March 07, 2023

When I like to write

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I like to write in the morning after a fractured night’s sleep has left me feeling so emotionally fragile it feels like a form of grief. I’m...
Thursday, March 02, 2023

Running very little very often

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I have a photo of myself and my son that became instantly beloved to me the moment I saw it. He’s on his bike and I’m chasing after him, in ...
Monday, February 27, 2023

What if the Dodgers never left?

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I've been thinking all year about the uncle I never met. Which means I have also been thinking about the Dodgers. The Brooklyn Dodgers, ...
Thursday, February 16, 2023

Hunger Mountain Translation Prize -- "Silvia" is now published!

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The first short story connected with my NEA grant , indeed the first short story I ever translated by Edith Bruck -- it's now published!...
Friday, February 03, 2023

What I read after my father died

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That was my original title for the essay -- what I read after my father died -- and still the one that best reflects what inspired this rem...
Friday, January 27, 2023

Edith Bruck on surviving Auschwitz

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This line alone says so much:  "Chi ha Auschwitz come coinquilino devastatore dentro di sé, scrivendone e parlandone non lo partorirà m...
Monday, January 23, 2023

Before and after Auschwitz (Liana Millu) Jan. 27, 2023

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In writing a summary of the research I did during a short-term fellowship at the New York Public Library this year, I had to leave out some...
Tuesday, December 27, 2022

The Year in Writing and Failing (final edition)

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The year went so badly for writing that I pre-empted this now-annual post with a precocious version over the summer, declaring that " w...
2 comments:
Thursday, December 15, 2022

What I read in 2022 & What I plan to read in 2023

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Reading is much more than a hobby for many of us, right? It's the equivalent of a runner's pre-marathon workouts. It's breathing...
2 comments:
Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Dialogue I once overheard on the bus to Bennington town from campus:

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“Down there in Texas when I was working for A&M, they asked me to make some pizzas," a passenger says to no one in particular. ...
Monday, December 12, 2022

Spode Christmas cup time (sort of like pumpkin spice season?)

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It's the little things, right?  Always the little things that make life worth living. So Spode Christmas coffee cups for my Italian co...
Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Why you should press 'record' on Thanksgiving (for the Boston Globe)

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I began by recording Leo, and ended up recording my parents.  And I've published an essay about doing both while also researching the Un...
Friday, November 18, 2022

Why does it have to be so hard?

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April 12, 2022 Lost diary entry Last night after a day of working in the garden in Avon and admiring my father’s books and running on the ...
Monday, November 14, 2022

Writing about Didion for CNN and revisiting 'The Second Coming'

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I spent yesterday writing a piece about the Joan Didion auction , and immersing myself once again in her seminal 1968 essay collection Slouc...
Sunday, November 13, 2022

On all of the Joan Didion items you might want to buy (for CNN)

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Every now and again, I file stories for CNN (instead of simply editing other writers' stories), and every now and again I am able to co...
Sunday, November 06, 2022

Feeding my Modiano obsession (and yours)

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From the novel,  So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood: He had written this book only in the hope that she might get in touch with h...