Quiet Rebel Writer

I rarely go to book readings or literary events. I learned early on that I’m a very visual person: listening to a person speak or read from a book, no matter if I normally find the topic fascinating or the book compelling, is enough to make my eyes cross and my mind go blank. But […]

For those of us, the lucky ones, who have never experienced the death of a spouse or significant other, it’s not something we like to think about. When I consider what would happen if I lost J, I focus on the practical. How I would have to sell our new loft and find a smaller […]

I like knowing what to expect. Call me a creature of habit, but I like knowing that almost every Wednesday night I have date night with J, that Friday nights we’re probably going to order sushi, that Saturday afternoons we hit LaBamba for a burrito lunch and then go book shopping. Patterns and routines can […]

The pain, fear and anger from these words are shocking, but necessary:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, […]

I’m not a massive fan of memoirs. There are some good examples (like this, and this), but sometimes this genre seems packed to the gills with middling stories and less-than-stellar writing. One winner that defies the rest of the field, with a funny, sad and sweet story combined with evocative writing, is Love is a […]

When I was five, my twin brothers were born. The chaos was such that I truly don’t remember much of the next three years, aside from an occasional, wispy memory of school. The story in our family is that I was the gopher, running for diapers, bottles, blankets, clothes, and anything else my freakishly frazzled […]

Mikhail Bulgakov lived and wrote in the painfully tightening noose of Stalinist Russia. He wrote his first major work about his experiences fighting the Russian civil war, and the book, called White Guard, went on to become a successful play in 1926 Moscow. In fact, Stalin, recently ascendant to the leadership of the Communist Party […]

And now, the inaugural edition of what will certainly be my insanely anticipated and influential take on the weekly cultural offerings. Take notes. Â
Tunes: I’ve been digging on Vampire Weekend this week. Sure, their buzz was ridiculous. They were touted as the second coming of every big indie band in the past few years, along with […]

Us writers are supposed to have thick skins. It’s a catch-22: we’re supposed to be intuitive, observant, and sensitive to the things around us. That’s what gives us the material to be witty, satirical, heartbreaking, or simply kickass at selling stuff. But at the same time, we’re supposed to be hard, resistant to the “slings […]