Digressing with Sam Apple

I worked with Sam Apple more than a decade ago, while he was launching The Faster Times, which was a sort of precursor to Quartz. I knew Sam to be a supremely nice guy, but I took for granted his smarts and his talent as a writer. I can hardly think of someone better suited …

Digressing with Sheila Kohler

We're lucky to have Sheila Kohler. She's a brilliant storyteller, a mordant observer of human character, and a real tough cookie. And I mean that in the kindest way possible. She truly believes that the best thing we can do is teach one another what we know -- as if perhaps the true vocation of …

Digressing with Michele Herman

Please check out my digression with poet, novelist, and short story writer Michele Herman. An adopted New Yorker, she shares how she has manages to live in one of the most expensive cities on earth without either a trust fund, a Wall Street salary or a sugar daddy -- all while raising a family, being …

Digressions with Annie DeWitt

Many years ago, in the aftermath of a Gigantic launch party, I ran into Annie DeWitt on a Manhattan-bound F train. The magazine was called Gigantic, it published only tiny stories, and Annie was one of its hugely talented founding editors. She was a force of nature then, and she’s a force of nature now. …

Digressing with Lincoln Michel

One of the most interesting things about my conversation with Lincoln Michel was our discussion of genre fiction – not because he’s a “genre writer” but because he’s a “genre-bending” writer. The funny thing is that he talked about the odd segregation between genre and literary writers, genre and literary awards, and genre and literary …

Digressions with Sayeeda Copeland

I hope you all have an opportunity to listen to my podcast episode with Sayeeda Copeland, a rising talent and an amazing person. Sayeeda blows my mind with her strength of purpose and her strength, period. And as for her writing, well, she just pulls you right in. Here's how she opens her novel, Queens: …

But I Digress… My Podcast With Victoria Redel

Victoria Redel is a brilliant writer and human being. If you want proof of the degree of her awesome, look no further than the Facebook poetry reading series she conducted all throughout the pandemic lockdown. It was a gift to her FB friends, but as she tells me during the podcast (you can listen to …

But I Digress… with Michael Gottlieb

My first podcast episode of But I Digress is now live! Michael Gottlieb, the author of more than 20 books, joins me to talk about the role of art in life, which he says is "to help us live our lives." He talks about New York, the hidden New York, how poets live their lives, …

But I Digress … The Eve of the Eve

September 2, which is in two days, the first episode of But I Digress, drops into the world. It's been quite an adventure thus far, learning how to record, edit, and prepare a podcast. Photo credit: Liisalh 2013 I feel very lucky that the first episode of But I Digress features Michael Gottlieb, whom I …

On Borges, Fiction’s Clay and Purpose

The lines between fiction and memoir are often blurred. This is problematic for anyone who writes and still has loved ones! I'm grateful to the blogger Tim Ferris for providing this timely quote, as I try to find an agent for The Factory: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story. “A writer—and, I believe, …

Melvin McNair: World’s Nicest Hijacker

I met Melvin McNair on a dusty playing field in Caen, a city on the French Atlantic coast that had been bombed into permanent dreariness during WWII. He was managing the local baseball team, and I was managing a Paris-based team. During the course of a doubleheader, we chatted on the field, and off during …

How to market your unpublished novel… or not

I've been listening to the Ringo Starr song, It Don't Come Easy. The song is (forgive the pun) easy on the ears, and it's also kind of an anthem for anyone trying to do something extremely daunting. Like trying to get someone to represent, publish (or heck, read) literary fiction. So, ya want to be …