75 Years of Controversy: The Israel Question for the Children of Holocaust Survivors

My father was a Holocaust survivor, but his relationship to Israel was complicated. And so is mine. The image above is of an affidavit my father had to sign attesting to thefact that he had no nationality. He was a man with no passport, because theNazi state had stripped him of his nationality for the …

My Father Never Told

(Please order my forthcoming memoir, The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family's True Holocaust Story.) When you tell on someone, it’s usually a bad thing. But there was something great that my father never talked about. But why? My father, a German Jew – probably more German than Jewish in his everyday life, but …

Ineffable Greatness

Paul Mirat alongside a portrait of his grandfather, Paul Mirat. How hard do you figure it is to be great at any one thing? I mean, how hard is it to become a great painter? It would take a lifetime. How about horse breeder? Probably another lifetime. Or how about getting elected mayor of your …

Digressing with Vince Passaro

Vince Passaro is the author of the novel Crazy Sorrow, which you can order here. During this podcast we talk about the rare dinosaur that is Gordon Lish, when and if to pursue an MFA, the shallowness of most editors, his hatred of doing anything except writing, and how smaller presses are going to save …

Digressing with Dawn Raffel

An insight I had during this wonderful podcast with Dawn Raffel: Editors have a low opinion of the reader's intellect and her ability to leap from one idea to another, while the writer has an inflated opinion of the reader's ability to guess intent. Editors want writers to connect the dots with thick, confident pencil …

Digressing with Myself, Imposter’s Syndrome, and God

Thanks to Vipal Monga for sharing this song with me. There are days when you just need to know that things can be sweet and dandy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcKYZbDjBEA Today was one of those days when I wonder what the hell I'm doing here anyway, a place way more hopeless than imposter's syndrome. And while I'm at …

Digressing with Michael Seidlinger

I had a great conversation last month with Michael Seidlinger, a prolific author, professor and onetime indie lit publisher. During our podcast, Seidlinger shared his strategy for writing fiction and keeping his head above the poverty water line. We also discussed the current state of the book publishing industry, and how the independent presses are …

Digressing with Ming Holden

We're often presented with binary choices. You can be this or you can be that -- but you can't be both. You can't be all things to all people. You can't serve both God and Mamon. You can only fool some of the people some of the time. You get the idea. Well, not everyone …

Digressing with Chris J. Farley

Chris .J. Farley has written five novels and several biographies and other books of non-fiction. He’s also an executive editor at Audible. One of the fascinating things about Chris is that he's such a polymath (except, I think, when it comes to sports). He's as comfortable talking about his relationship with Beyonce as he is …

Digressing with Lance Olsen

Lance Olsen is the author of Skin Elegies (Dzanc Books), and a smart, fascinating, and sweetheart of a guy who splits his time between Utah and Idaho with his artist wife Andi. During our podcast, we talked about the landscape and ecology of writing that doesn't come from the top-5 New York-based publishers, and how …

Digressing with Sarah Kornfeld

Sarah Kornfeld is the author of What Stella Sees, and the just-released The True, a narrative non-fiction that is being published in English, Romanian and French – each with its own ending (as we discuss during our podcast episode). Sarah is also the founder of Rising Media, a research and consulting company that serves the …

Digressing with Nick Kolakowski

I just dropped a new episode of "But I Digress" (How Writers Make it Work) with the amazing Nick Kolakowski. I've always admired Nick, loved his writing, and been curious about his professional and artistic journey. I'm very grateful he agreed to do this podcast, which I think you'll find very interesting. A few of …